Private guns for China’s shipping lanes as chokepoint risks mount

On 24 April, more than 120 representatives from Chinese and international security companies gathered in Beijing at the Conference of the International Alliance of Security and Risk Management, the flagship event of a consortium dedicated to safeguarding interests related to the Belt and Road initiative (BRI). The meeting of the Alliance was not just a tactical response to mounting instability at sea; it signalled that Beijing is testing new instruments to secure its global lifelines without resorting to direct military force.

Chinese private security companies (PSCs) with boots on the ground have already been spearheading the protection of the BRI in highly complex environments from sub-Saharan Africa to South America. Now, China’s PSCs are rapidly expanding their capabilities and projecting power precisely where it counts most: the sea lanes of communication.

Since Somali pirates, and more recently Yemen’s Houthi militias, turned the Red Sea’s commercial arteries into corridors of risk, China has quietly encouraged its PSCs to expand into the region. Now, as Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz collides with a US-led counter-blockade, Beijing is responding on multiple fronts: overtly through diplomacy, engaging Pakistan and Gulf states, and more discreetly through the privatisation of risk management. 

Within this evolving space, several Chinese PSCs, among them Huaxin Zhongan Group, which supports the Alliance, are instrumental in shaping China’s maritime security posture. The capabilities these firms bring to bear are far from rudimentary, and their specialisations include advanced technologies, ranging from counter-piracy operations to anti-drone systems, cybersecurity and floating armouries, just to name a few.

These innovations come at a high cost. However, in Beijing, the expense is offset by rising insurance premiums and a more pressing strategic calculus: mitigating its growing energy dependence on Russia while avoiding the longer, costlier trade routes around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa — detours that impose delays and inflate logistical burdens.

Even so, these solutions are effective against pirates and insurgent militias but are virtually useless against a state navy, a limitation that is becoming increasingly clear as tensions escalate around the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Alliance members are quietly shifting toward new forms of defence in the region. Electronic jamming systems and anti-drone technologies are now under serious evaluation to protect commercial shipping from the unmanned threat that has redefined warfare in the straits.

Despite the strong Chinese presence, the Alliance has drawn operators from across the globe, from Kazakhstan to Ecuador, reinforcing a longstanding priority within Beijing’s strategic community: transforming China’s private security industry into a professional force capable of operating overseas. 

China, however, is moving simultaneously on two interconnected levels. From the top down, it is exerting calibrated diplomatic pressure on both Tehran and Washington to contain tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for Chinese energy security and trade.

Zhongnanhai is quietly but relentlessly pressing for a diplomatic resolution to the Gulf’s crisis, leveraging Pakistan, the region’s unlikely new power broker, after Qatar and Oman — long the trusted back channels between Tehran and Washington — were effectively sidelined when Iran targeted military and civilian objectives in retaliation for US and Israeli bombardments. 

Nevertheless, the Gulf States held firm, deploying their militaries solely to intercept Iranian missiles and the now infamous Shahed-136 drones, refusing to be drawn into kinetic escalation that could have ignited a broader regional war.

From the bottom up, Beijing is building operational resilience by expanding the role of PSCs and integrating them ever more closely with international security companies, Chinese insurers and the London market at Lloyd’s of London in a hybrid system designed to manage risk along the world’s most vulnerable trade routes.

As Beijing prepares for the politically delicate meeting between President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump expected on 14 May, the Strait of Hormuz crisis is expected to dominate the agenda. Beijing arrives with leverage: it controls exports of gallium and other rare earth minerals critical to American military radar systems and precision munitions, stockpiles that have been burning through at an alarming rate since the bombardment campaign against Iran. Production rate is slow by design for such expensive and complicated weapon systems, and the lack of necessary rare-earth components could further slow down resupply, affecting demands not only in the Middle East but also in other theatres such as Ukraine.

While the crisis in Iran is affecting China’s economy and geopolitical footprint expansion in the Middle East, Beijing remains reluctant to intervene militarily, and the reliance on private security is becoming less a temporary expedient than a structural necessity.

Especially as the threat environment around the Gulf of Aden and another strategic chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, continues to deteriorate. In recent weeks, multiple vessels have been hijacked off the Somali coast, fuelling concerns about a resurgence of piracy and a possible convergence between Somali pirate networks and the Houthis, Iran’s regional proxy in Yemen. Maritime security agencies have already warned that pirate groups are exploiting the diversion of international naval assets toward the Red Sea. 

An imminent danger is the emergence of a more hybridised threat environment in which piracy, militancy, drones and geopolitical confrontation increasingly overlap.

While security in the Strait of Hormuz remains primarily the domain of national naval forces, the growing hybrid threat posed by potential cooperation between Somali pirates and Houthi militants is elevating the role of PSCs as a flexible and cost-effective solution. For China, these firms offer more than protection for commercial shipping, as they provide a strategic buffer, allowing Beijing to safeguard its interests while avoiding direct entanglement in the Middle East’s quagmire.

Related: China’s urgent need to safeguard lives and investments along BRI | Rising global crises test Beijing’s Belt and Road security resilience in 2025