U.S. Investors Find Favor in Chinese Security

Sept. 17, 2007
Chinese security and surveillance firms incorporating in U.S. to attract American capitalists

Li Runsen, the powerful technology director of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, is best known for leading Project Golden Shield, China's intensive effort to strengthen police control over the Internet.

But recently, Li took an additional title: director for China Security & Surveillance Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies, jails and banks, among other customers. The company has just been approved for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company's listing and Li's membership on its board are just the latest signs of ever-closer ties between Wall Street, surveillance companies and the Chinese government's security apparatus.

Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour live video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software. Lehman Brothers bankers have spoken alongside the Ministry of Public Security at lavish banquets in China for security officials flown in from all over the country.

Now, the growing ties between China's surveillance sector and American capital markets are starting to draw Washington's attention.

Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was disturbed by a recent report in The New York Times about the development of surveillance systems in China by another company, China Public Security Technology, which, like China Security & Surveillance, incorporated itself in the United States to make it easier to sell shares to Western investors.

Lantos called American involvement in the Chinese surveillance industry ''an absolutely incredible phenomenon of extreme corporate irresponsibility.''

He said he planned to broaden an existing investigation into ''the cooperation of American companies in the Chinese police state.''

Chinese executives say they are helping their government reduce street crime, preserve social stability and prevent terrorism. They note that London has a more sophisticated surveillance system, although the Chinese system will soon be far more extensive.

Wall Street executives tend to defend the industry as necessary for preventing street crime and keeping the peace at a time of rapid change in China. They also point out that New York has begun experimenting with surveillance cameras and that corporations make increasingly broad use of surveillance cameras everywhere from convenience stores to automatic teller machines.

''Is New York a police state?'' asked Peter Siris, the managing director of Guerrilla Capital and Hua-Mei 21st Century, two Manhattan hedge funds that were among the earliest investors in China Security & Surveillance.

Lantos and human rights advocates contend that surveillance in China poses different issues from surveillance in the West, because China is a one-party state where government officials can exercise power with few legal restraints.

Lantos is part of a Democratic congressional majority that is increasingly eager to confront China at a time of high Chinese trade surpluses and considerable economic insecurity in the United States. He is also a longtime ally of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House and a fellow Californian, who first made her reputation in Congress as a passionate critic of China on human rights issues.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said he would not comment on specific companies, adding, ''It's not appropriate to interfere in the private decisions of Americans to invest in legally incorporated firms.''

The New York Stock Exchange said that it had no comment except to confirm that China Security & Surveillance was expected to list its shares on the exchange ''later this year, subject to the usual conditions, including approval by the SEC.''

Because the company is already traded on an American stock exchange and is not selling any additional shares, Securities and Exchange Commission regulations say approval is automatic once the company fills out a notification form and the New York Stock Exchange confirms that it has approved the listing.

Hedge funds and investment banks with ties to Chinese surveillance companies declined to comment.

Over the past year, American hedge funds have pumped more than $150 million into Chinese surveillance companies.

The Chinese government trade association for surveillance companies, which also regulates the industry, predicts that the surveillance market here will expand to more than $43.1 billion by 2010, compared to less than $500 million in 2003. Under the ''Safe Cities'' program adopted by the Chinese government last winter, 660 cities are starting work on high-tech surveillance systems.

Many Western experts, skeptical that China faces a terrorism threat, have suggested that the government may be using it as an excuse for tougher policies toward ethnic minorities in western China, notably the autonomous region of Xinjiang, and toward Tibet.

Terence Yap, the vice chairman and chief financial officer of China Security & Surveillance Technology, said his company's software made it possible for security cameras to count the number of people in crosswalks and sound an alarm to the police if a flood of people appeared at an unusual hour, a possible sign of an unsanctioned protest.

Yap said that terrorism concerns do exist and that his company had outfitted railroad stations and government buildings in Tibet with surveillance systems.

Yap and Lin Jiang Huai, the chairman and chief executive of China Public Security, said their companies did not do business with the Chinese military and should not raise concerns in the United States. They also said their businesses use technology developed in China and therefore not subject to U.S. export controls.

China Security & Surveillance has been aggressively raising money in the United States, including $110 million in convertible loans so far this year from the Citadel Group, a hedge fund in Chicago. The company has used the money in deals to buy 10 of the 50 largest surveillance companies in China, including three deals in July alone.

James Mulvenon, the director of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, which does classified analyses of foreign military and intelligence programs for the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies, said that Beijing clearly wants the company to consolidate the industry.

''They're really sort of the Ministry of Public Security's national champion,'' Mulvenon said of China Security & Surveillance. ''In terms of the gear and building the surveillance society, they are the ones.''

After the company announced sharply higher sales and profits on Aug. 13, a succession of American hedge fund managers and investment bank analysts took turns during a conference call in questioning and congratulating Yap.

Traded on the over-the-counter bulletin board market while waiting for the beginning of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the company has raised almost all of its money through the Citadel loans and private placements of stock with 17 institutional investors in the United States, including Pinnacle Fund and Pinnacle China Fund in Plano, Texas, and JLF, a hedge fund based in Del Mar, California.

Pinnacle Funds' investments have risen sixfold in 17 months. The funds, which raise all their money in the United States, are also the main investors in China Public Security Technology, with a stake that has tripled in value since February.

Barry Kitt, the founder and general partner of the Pinnacle funds, declined to comment. Citadel, JLF and Lehman Brothers officials also declined to comment.

Each time China Security & Surveillance makes an acquisition, it holds an elaborate banquet, with dancers. It calls the events press conferences, but the majority of the 500 or more invitees are municipal and provincial security officials, as well as executives of rival companies that may become acquisition targets.

''When they come, they hear central government officials endorsing us, they hear bankers endorsing us or supporting us, it gives us credibility,'' Yap said. ''It's a lot of drinking, it's like a wedding banquet.''

One such banquet was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where Li himself - of Project Golden Shield - addressed the crowd.

Based in Shenzhen, a high-tech manufacturing center in southeastern China, China Security & Surveillance purchased a ''shell'' Delaware company two years ago with no operations but a listing on the American over-the-counter bulletin board market. It turned the Delaware company into its corporate parent.

China Public Security, also based in Shenzhen, incorporated in Florida.

China Security & Surveillance is involved in some of the most controversial areas of public security. Yap said during the conference call with Wall Street analysts and hedge fund managers that one of the company's growth areas involved surveillance systems for Internet cafes. The Chinese government has been trying to clamp down on users of these cafes, contending that the crackdown is needed to discourage pornography and prostitution.

Critics say the surveillance is aimed at catching democracy advocates, adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and others whom the Communist Party regards as threatening.

Yap said investment firms from Europe, the United States and Asia are so enthused about the surveillance market in China that he typically leads a full-day tour each week to some of the company's factories and installations. At China Public Security, Michael Lin, the vice president for investor relations, said he also struggles to keep up with Western investor interest.

At an aging Shenzhen police station, where the scuffed and peeling yellow walls look as though they have not been painted in decades, a $100,000 bank of new video screens behind the duty officer's desk shows scenes from nearby streets. At a larger police station in another neighborhood, China Security & Surveillance has installed a $1 million system.

Many of the surveillance cameras are still assembled on long tables under fluorescent lights at a modest factory. But the company has used $20 million of the cash it raised in the United States to acquire a large industrial park with six just-completed factory buildings and six dormitories.

In Shenzhen, white poles resembling streetlights now line the roads every block or two. In a nondescript building linked to nearby street cameras, a desktop computer displayed streaming video images from outside and drew a green square around each face to check it against a ''blacklist.'' Since China lacks national or even regional databases of criminal photos, Yap said municipal or neighborhood officials enter their own blacklists.

To show off his systems, Yap strode across a nearby plaza flanked by apartment towers and a low-rise shopping area, pointing out tiny, unobtrusive domes and tubes attached to various poles.

''See, there's a camera on the lamp pole, and another one over there and another one here,'' he said. ''Big Brother is watching you.''