Executive Summary

The unprecedented amount of Chinese funds funnelled into the Belt and Road Initiative and Beijing’s vision of global connectivity will face a harsh reality that encompasses a wide spectrum of threats. Chinese corporations have just started to acknowledge that the risks associated with outbound foreign direct investments carry higher failure rates due to intertwined factors such as economic crisis, conflict, civil unrest, nationalisation, and currency devaluation, to name a few. In several cases, the Chinese state-owned enterprises’ infrastructural projects add stress to the already unstable socio-political environments because of their size and speed of implementation. Understanding and managing this stress is a challenge that cannot be ignored if benefits of these projects are to be realised. The solution to political and criminal violence requests a broader participation that encompasses the insurance and private security sectors.

About the Author

Dr Alessandro Arduino is the co-director of the Security & Crisis Management program at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science (SASS-UNITO) and external affiliate at the Lau China Institute, King’s College London.
Dr Arduino’s two decades of experience in China encompasses security analysis and crisis management. His main research interests include Private Military Security Corporations, China’s political economy, Sino-Central Asia relations, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and China’s security and foreign policy. He is the author of several books and he has published papers and commentaries in various journals in Italian, English and Mandarin Chinese.
He has been appointed Knight of the Order of the Italian Star by the President of the Italian Republic.