China Law Blog

I am teaching business (BBA) candidates at a well regarded school in the South of China and I guarantee you that you only want 1-2 of my current students anywhere near your business.

China may be teaching English at every school, but it takes little more than a white face and citizenship from any English speaking country (besides African ones) to qualify as a teacher.

Companies need to vigilant and spend a great deal of time and energy locating resources. And every company needs culturally sensitive expats actively involved in hiring and ongoing training.

A firm like ALTEC (www.altec.com.cn )can help a staff, on both sides of the cultural divide begin and maintain communication.

The FCPA issues were big in my summer, and there were particular problems in terms of agency and misaligned incentives--i.e., employee working on commission and playing with company slush fund bribing officials with result that he secures more contracts and gets higher commissions. How did they handle the "grease" payments provision?

Lonnie --

Thanks for checking in. I completely agree. There are something like 600,000 engineers in China but McKinsey says only around 14,000 of these are of hiring quality for a multinational company. I have no reason to believe the numbers are not similar in most of the professions, including accounting.

I checked out Altec on the web and they do look good. But what they appear to do is to improve the language and cultural skills of existing Chinese and ex-pat staff, so I would not think they would be of much help to a small or medium sized company looking to get started in China. Once that company has staff in place, Altec would make sense. Do I have this right?

Bart --

Thanks for checking in. I am not terribly well versed in the FCPA and I am not entirely sure I understand your question. They said that "willful ignorance" is not good enough and one can be held responsible for the actions of another if those actions are willfully ignored. They said the key is to make sure that you are so clear to anyone who works for you in any capacity that you will not permit bribery. Then, if bribery occurs, the Justice Department will believe you are surprised by it and that you have done what you could to prevent it, and things will be much better for you. Does this answer the question? If not, I will need to go back to Brian and/or Frank for their input.

I personally think that Chongqing has a lot to offer, but it will depend on the company. ford and heavy industry are there for the steel and history of heavy manufacturing. they are not there for the English skills, and any company that bases their decision to move to China, or any city of China, based o the availability of English speaking talent is not going to last very long anyway.

KPMG recently announced the opening of an office of 30 or so, and the rest are sure to follow. There are already a significant number of service providers cropping up from logistics companies, real estate, and the like all there to make sure foreign companies are able to operate in their city. (Chengdu's entire 12 person FDI team are all returning Chinese with excellent English).

Middle/ senior management is being provided by locals from Shanghai and Beijing, and as these are typically high end local managers, the lack of English is not a problem (as long as the guys at the top are dual language).

with so many companies now looking to the western side of China, it will not be long before posts on labor shortages will be the norm.

One of our recent studies was of manufacturing capabilities in 15 second tier cities. for those looking to move from the coast, or open there second sites within China, going west is the best option... if you want to remain competitive that is

Have fun at the conference Dan, and thanks for the reports.

Rich --

Thanks for checking in. I wish you had been one of the speakers at the seminar. Truly.

These updates have been very helpful to read. Thank you. Sounds like a great conference.

Chris --

Thanks for checking in. Glad you have enjoyed them.