New blog out there called "The Life of a Lawyer at a Chinese Law Firm: Practicing Law in a Country Where There is no Law." It is a most unusual blog and certainly worth a look-see. The writer has wisely chosen to remain anonymous, though it took me one e-mail to get the writer’s name. … Continue Reading
Monthly Archives: June 2007
Can China Law Blog Get Mushy Here?
Posted in Good PeopleJust a brief GFW update. I am hoping that by tomorrow China Law Blog will be independent of Typepad and, thus, no longer prey to the Net Nanny. Now for the mushy part. During this time of "blockage" we have received countless words of support online and via e-mail and they mean a lot to… Continue Reading
Working With An Interpreter — The How Tos
Posted in Recommended ReadingAnybody who does international business knows how important it is to have good interpretation. Now, thanks to an excellent post over at ImageThief, entitled, "How to Work With Interpreters," we have a better idea of what we can do to help assure this occurs. This post is a must read.
Bad Chinese Tires And More
Posted in Legal NewsMust read story in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled, "Accident Raises Safety Concerns On Chinese Tires." To summarize, an American tire "distributor" imported about 450,000 Chinese SUV and truck tires and it now appears many of them may have been dangerously defective. Company appears to have been slow to learn of the problem and then… Continue Reading
China: Beijing Cares About You And Me
Posted in Recommended ReadingNew Blog, The Pacific Narrows, has a very interesting http://paidcontent.org/article/no-more-knight-ridder-street-not-thrilled-with-mcclatchy-acquisition/ a href=”http://pacificnarrows.wordpress.com/?s=child+slave”>post that pulls extensively from EastSouthWestNorth’s exceptionally fine coverage of the recent incidents involving slave labor in China. I have not done anything on this important story yet, mostly because there is plenty of excellent coverage on it already. But I am writing on… Continue Reading
China’s Joint Venture Jeopardy
Posted in Legal NewsThe Wall Street Journal just ran an article I wrote, entitled, "Joint Venture Jeopardy". It is on the Danone-Wahaha dispute and it gives a few basics for avoiding joint venture problems. For those of you coming here for the first time from that article, I say welcome. The easiest way to find us again is… Continue Reading
China’s Legal Revolution, July 3 On PBS
Posted in EventsOn July 3rd, 9:00 pm Eastern Time, PBS will be running a documentary on the Chinese legal system, entitled, "The People’s Court: China’s Legal Revolution." And is it just me, or is the guy on the far right of the site a near dead ringer for Lloyd, from the HBO series, Entourage? PBS e-mailed me… Continue Reading
Take Advantage Of “China’s Rampant Employment Discrimination”
Posted in China BusinessEmployers will always discriminate on the basis of something. As human beings, we just cannot help it. Obesity, ethnicity, height, looks, disability, race, gender, religion, age, sexuality, the list is endless. Smart employers try to avoid this. Basic economics dictates this. The employer willing to pull its employees from a larger pool of potential employees… Continue Reading
The Long March to Law Firm Success In China
Posted in Legal NewsI know if I write on something relatively neutral and light like Chinese food or great Presidents I will get a lot of comments and no e-mails. I know if I write on a highly technical legal subject I will get just a few comments and a few probing e-mails. I now know that when… Continue Reading
China: Losing Face By Looking At A Menu
Posted in China BusinessInteresting blog out there called NewFrontierChina Blog, written by Cooper Strange, who owns and runs a cafe and a consulting business in Liuzhou, China. Strange describes Liuzhou as "in Guangxi Province (officially ‘Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region’) touching both Vietnam and the South China Sea. Guangxi is the only coastal province in Southwest China, which is… Continue Reading
Shanghai Condo Buzz, Of The Illegal Kind
Posted in Legal NewsBy Charles Moure I just returned from a couple of weeks in Shanghai, where illegal condo "sales" seems to be the talk of the ex-pat town. Seems a common trick of Chinese condo developers is to "sell" large numbers of their condos to their own companies/individuals, set up as "straw men." This allows the developer… Continue Reading
China’s “Next” Top Ten Cities for IT Outsourcing
Posted in China BusinessAlsbridge Consulting, a Dallas, Texas, based consulting company that describes itself as an "award winning outsourcing, offshoring and shared services advisory firm, just came out with its list of "China’s Next Top Ten Cities for IT Outsourcing" (h/t to the Alan Weinkrantz Blog). Alsbridge’s press release regarding this list says these ten Chinese cities were… Continue Reading
China Trends 2007
Posted in EventsBy Charles Moure I attended AmCham Shanghai’s June 8, 2007, China Trends Conference at the Pudong Shangri-La Hotel. I was quite impressed by both AmCham and the conference itself. The large conference room was nearly full. Brenda Foster, President of AmCham Shanghai, gave the opening remarks and she noted AmCham Shanghai is one of the… Continue Reading
Chinese Food And Seconding The Call For Dumpling Diplomacy
Posted in China TravelWhenever I return to Seattle from China, I cannot eat Chinese food for months. I simply do not want to spoil the memories. I know I am not alone on this. And since Seattle has a large Asian population and a relatively sophisticated food scene, I very much doubt things are any better in other… Continue Reading
China Court Kills Yamaha Imposter’s Joyride
Posted in Legal NewsA recently decided Chinese Supreme Court case highlights both the lengths to which Chinese companies will go to counterfeit product and also that the courts there are really starting to crack down on such violations. The case involved the well known Chinese scooter manufacturing company, Zhejiang Huatian, which manufactured and sold scooters under the name… Continue Reading
New York Times And Steve Dickinson On The Danone Wahaha China Dispute And On Avoiding Your Own
Posted in Legal NewsDavid Barboza, who has been doing a great job covering the Danone-Wahaha dispute (see his New York Times article, "Rancor Level Rises in Rift Over Danone China Venture"), just came out with a new story on the dispute in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times, entitled, "A brawl threatens a huge investment… Continue Reading
Time’s The China Blog Has Something To Say
Posted in Recommended ReadingWhen Time Magazine’s The China Blog first came out about six months ago, I hated it. In fact, I hated it so much I did a post on it: It is ironic Time’s China blog offends me so much since its overriding goal seems to be to say nothing so as not to offend anyone. … Continue Reading
China’s Big Government Hand Works Just Fine
Posted in China BusinessIn a post last week, entitled, "China Cell Phone Chargers — Capitalist Market With Socialist Characteristics," I questioned the propriety of Beijing mandating all cell phone chargers go USB. The always excellent How the World Works Blog just came out with a "follow up" post, entitled, "Cellphone Charger Authoritarianism," positing that Beijing’s willingness to move… Continue Reading
China’s New Bankruptcy Law — First Report From The Ground
Posted in Legal NewsCo-written by Travis Hodgkins China’s new bankruptcy law has been in effect for nearly two weeks now and so far nobody seems to be aware of any cases having been filed. For an English language translation of this new law, provided by the Bankruptcy Law and Restructuring Research Center of China University of Politics and… Continue Reading
China Education/China Jobs
Posted in China BusinessAbout a month ago, I did a post entitled, "Promising Blog: Ben’s Blog Is Certainly "Cutting Edge.’" The post was on Ben’s Blog, a blog by an ethnographer who had just started working in a Chinese barber shop for a month in an effort to understand China’s working class. The post was part of our… Continue Reading
Danone and China’s Wahaha: A Lecture on How (Not) to Make Allies Enemies
Posted in EventsYou are going to have to trust me on this. Lawyer’s instinct. I know the Danone Wahaha dispute is going to be a watershed event in Chinese law and business for foreign companies, though have no evidence to back this up. Yet. In the meantime, please excuse my obsession with this dispute, but since it contains… Continue Reading
China Payment Terms Made Easy — Sort Of
Posted in China BusinessClients are always asking what they can do in their international transactions either to ensure they receive payment for their product or to ensure they receive good quality product for their payment. Buying product from China is probably the toughest transaction because hardly any companies accept much less than full payment. A post on Laurel… Continue Reading
China Law: Selective Law Enforcement As Big Coincidence
Posted in Legal NewsWe are always writing on how China has strong laws on just about everything, but such laws are often not enforced. Until they are. We are also always saying that just because you see Chinese businesses ignoring a particular Chinese law does not mean you, as a foreign business, will be able to get away… Continue Reading
China Violence, China Peace
Posted in Recommended ReadingJust came across an interesting worldwide survey called the Global Peace Index, ranking the "peacefulness" of 121 nations, including China (h/t to the Private Sector Development Blog). China ranks dead middle at 60th: The study was done by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which describes itself as follows: The world leader in global business intelligenceThe Economist… Continue Reading
"...the widely respected China Law Blog"
