Erik Prince hired to protect China’s New Silk Road

It seems that Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, has formed a new corporation for use in China. This is an interesting development. It shows that the governments of China and the USA are working together in the background, even if they appear to conflict in the newspapers.

http://journal-neo.org/2017/04/30/beijing-hires-princely-fox-to-guard-their-obor-henhouse/

The Chinese government newspaper, Global Times, made public that a Hong Kong-based company called Frontier Services Group (FSG) will build two operational bases in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Xinjiang and Yunnan provinces are at the heart or geographical pivot of China’s vast, developing One Bridge, One Road high-speed rail, port and energy pipeline infrastructure undertaking. What is notable about Beijing’s engaging this FSG security company, is its chairman.

The Chairman and principal operating executive of Frontier Services Group is the world’s most notorious mercenary, Erik Prince, founder of the now-defunct Blackwater Security…. [I]t’s a major event that China makes Erik Prince, ex-Navy Seal, CIA asset and co-founder of the notorious Blackwater, as guardian of its strategic New Economic Silk Road….

Interesting to note as well are Erik Prince’s ties to the Donald Trump Administration. Prince, who knows Trump personally, gave over $100,000 to Trump’s election. His sister, billionaire Betsy DeVos of the AmWay family, is Trump Administration Secretary of Education. More to the point is that Prince is close friend to White House Chief Strategist in the Trump administration, Steve Bannon. According to one former US senior official, Prince had even advised the Trump transition team before January 20 on matters related to intelligence and defense, “including weighing in on candidates for the Defense and State departments.” In addition to Bannon, Erik Prince is close friend of vice President Mike Pence, who as Vice President cast a rare tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 vote in the Senate that allowed Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, to become Education Secretary. Prince is also close with billionaire hedge fund operator Robert Mercer of Renaissance Technologies, a key financier of Trump’s election and of Brexit in the UK.

It can well be and is perhaps likely, that the Beijing authorities see two gains from hiring Erik Prince to run security on the critical arteries of China’s One Belt, One Road. One is the fact that Erik Prince is demonstrably one of the world experts at corporate security in terrorist-prone regions. And he knows techniques perhaps unfamiliar to Chinese security companies. The second reason could well be Erik Prince’s intimate ties with a Trump Administration that rhetorically campaigned on a hard anti-China theme, where Beijing hopes that Prince as their “friend” with direct ties to Trump people, might be able to mediate better relations with Washington.