Ready to Rumble

Li Jianguo remembers the day he learned what his wealth might cost him. The multimillionaire owner of a Chinese herbal-medicine company, Li was living in Hainan in the early 1990s when a kidnapper snatched his friend’s young son from school and demanded $400,000 in ransom. Police rescued the boy, but not before revealing that the kidnapper had been a close friend of both men. Li says he “realized then that as soon as a Chinese person discloses his wealth, danger is waiting.” Today he refrains from inviting friends to his opulent Beijing villa, keeps his net worth a secret (Jianguo is a pseudonym), and pays a bodyguard $1,200 a month to ensure that “the poor people who hate us for using our talent to get rich” won’t come after his own sons.

The anxieties of Li and his thick-bankbooked brethren are spawning a lucrative boom in China’s private-security business. The body-guarding profession was officially abolished along with other “feudal” trades after the Communists came to power in 1949, and baobiao, the Chinese word for bodyguard, retains a tinge of ill-repute. Because of this political legacy, the industry still occupies a legal gray area, but bodyguards are now in such demand that the top earners can make $5,000 a month. “As China’s economy develops, safety problems will increase, and that means businesses like ours will continue to grow,” says Li Hongqi, whose recently established Beijing firm supplies the man who shadows Li Jianguo.

Few companies in China openly advertise themselves as bodyguarding outfits, and most of them register officially as investigators or providers of other business services. The homepage of the Shanghai-based Shuaika Commercial Consultation Co. shows smiling Westerners in a gleaming boardroom. But click a button that reads “élite bodyguards” and the screen fills with photos of bare-chested men flexing their pecs. Still, the majority of Chinese bodyguards are freelancers; typically ex-soldiers, ex-police or graduates of martial-arts academies, they find work through friends or former teachers. Ding Zhongmin, a kickboxing expert who runs the Yingcai Bodyguard Training Center in Nanjing, says he schools 100 bodyguards a year in everything from punching to “polite conversation and what you should wear in an office.” Clients often hire Ding and his students to resolve business disputes that in many countries would be dealt with by the police or resolved in court. He and his crew recently rescued a coal-mine owner in Xi’an who had been kidnapped by a colleague who believed he was owed money. After the rescue, they convinced the victim to make peace with his abductor by paying him $50,000. A real estate developer in Shanghai hired Ding when locals protesting outside his office became a nuisance. “We went with six people and negotiated a settlement without a fight,” says Ding. “People know us by reputation. It’s like when a country has nuclear weapons. It doesn’t have to deploy them to get results.”

Violent crime in China has declined over the past five years, according to official statistics. Police recorded 24,711 homicides last year, down from 28,429 in 2000. But the local media play up stories of wealthy Chinese getting kidnapped or killed. Last month, the Shanghai-based Xinmin Weekly ran a lengthy report on crimes against “moneybags” in the booming city of Wenzhou. It detailed the death of Lin Jing, a chemicals trader murdered by an employee who taped his eyes shut before garroting him with a rope. Other prominent abductees have included Chinese movie star Wu Ruofu and Jiang Yingwu, a regional manager of a popular chain of hot pot restaurants, who was killed by his kidnappers in 2004 even after they received a ransom of $60,000.

Still, when rich Chinese hire a security detail, protection isn’t always their primary concern. Cui Fengxian, a Beijing lawyer, founded Beijing Capital Bodyguard Security Consultants, which in 2002 was the first firm of its kind to receive government approval to do business, because he believed China lacked adequate means to protect its richest citizens. Now he estimates that about 30% of his 200 clients hire his guards—all former secret-service members—for “ornamental” reasons. Cui travels with eight bodyguards himself and dresses them in long leather coats. “It’s a question of image,” he says. “[These men] are a symbol of my status … like my watch. People look at it and think, ‘Cui has a 1.8 million yuan [$200,000] watch.’ Is it any wonder they want to do business with me?” And with his men to protect him, Cui doesn’t mind spreading the word that he’s rich.