Delegating Digital Policing: The Evolution of China’s Security-Industrial Complex

Abstract How did China build its formidable digital policing apparatus so rapidly? While prevailing narratives emphasize top-down state direction, this statist perspective obscures critical local dynamics. This article argues that China’s security-industrial complex actually emerged from decentralized administrative pressures. Burdened by unfunded, time-sensitive central security mandates, resource-strapped local security agencies abandoned state-led technological development and outsourced to the private sector. Drawing on extensive field interviews (2017–2022) and policy analysis, this study traces the complex’s evolution through three interrelated mechanisms: the decentralization of internal security politics, the formation of hybrid public–private partnerships, and the varied transactional behaviour exhibited by capitalists, as well as between government and business, in a multi-layered system. By demonstrating how localized security projects inadvertently catalysed technological innovation, this research reveals the hidden market-driven roots of China’s security-industrial complex. It offers a novel framework for understanding how the party-state adaptively leverages capital for building a digital security state.