Every so often, and for various reasons, the Chinese government mounts a crackdown on foreigners in China without the proper visa. The last really really big such crackdown was right before the Olympics. Things had been pretty quiet since then, with just a few minor crackdowns which were mostly confined to one or two cities. … Continue Reading
Monthly Archives: March 2011
China Wage Increases. Slowing Just A Bit.
Posted in China BusinessTom Orlick of the Wall Street Journal has an article entitled, “Exporters’ Gain Is Workers’ Loss in China’s Labor,” focusing on China wage rates. Though wages are definitely still rising, they are rising at 9% to 15%, not the 20% to 30% many had predicted. Orlick describes these lower than expected wage increases as “a short-term… Continue Reading
China vs. India On Poverty Reduction. China Gets The Kudos Here.
Posted in China BusinessWhen people criticize China too harshly, I like pointing out the incredible (unprecedented?) job it has done in bringing its people out of poverty. Don’t get me wrong. Hundreds of millions in China still suffer from real poverty, but compared to China’s recent history, the transformation has been, well, transformative. Starvation and illiteracy have been… Continue Reading
Foreign Companies In China: A Chasm Between Big And Small.
Posted in China Business, Legal NewsDavid Wolf is someone who just “gets” China and I lap up what he writes about it and I nearly always agree with it. He wrote something the other day on his Silicon Hutong blog to which my first reaction was along the lines of “amen brother, I need to write on this.” What he… Continue Reading
On The State Of Intellectual Property In China.
Posted in Legal NewsChina policy guru Benjamin Shobert has written an excellent article for the Asia Times on IP in China. The article is entitled, “China’s IPR thorn still needles West,” and it says what we have been saying: IP protection in China is getting better, but it is not there yet. Shobert quotes from a recently… Continue Reading
China’s Private Sector Rising.
Posted in China BusinessI know this is relatively old news, but until I saw it so well summarized at Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globalization Blog, I did not have the idea for this post. In Barnett’s post, “Charts of the day: The decline of state capitalism….in China! Barnett highlights a recent Economist article on how China’s rising entrepreneurship and… Continue Reading
It’s Your Business. Not Your Chinese Partner’s.
Posted in China Business, Legal NewsIf you are a foreign business, it will not be easy or cheap for you to set up a business to operate legally in China. The following is just the most basic of lists of what you need to do to set up and operate legally in China: Register your legal entity in China. This… Continue Reading
Barbie In China. Retail Lessons To Be Learned.
Posted in China BusinessI have read dozens of post-mortems on Barbie’s recent closure in China, but none have resonated like the one I just read, entitled, “Shanghai Barbie Undressed: What’s to blame, consumer preferences or strategy.” This one resonated with me because (as far as I know) this is the only one by a true expert in China… Continue Reading
How To Buy Product From China.
Posted in China Business, Legal NewsThe always helpful Quality Inspection Blog has a must-read post entitled, “Should you tell your China suppliers about your China price.” In the post, Renaud Anjoran, China quality control inspecter, extraordinaire, does a really nice job explaining the steps you should go through in sourcing your product from China (my comments are in italics): Here… Continue Reading
China As Center For Dirty Money. Literally.
Posted in China BusinessAs anyone who has been to China knows, it is very much a cash based economy. Not that long ago, I had to use cash to purchase an airplane ticket at Biejing Capital Airport. Credit card acceptance, particularly outside the tier one cities, is spotty at best. So obviously there is a lot of cash… Continue Reading
China Trademark Emails. It’s A Scam!
Posted in Legal NewsEarlier this year, in a post entitled, “China Domain Name Scams. It’s A Scam!” I wrote of how companies have been receiving emails alerting them to how someone just sought to register “their” domain name in China. I wrote of how this is virtually always just a scam and described how to handle these: If… Continue Reading
Global Sources And Alibaba For China Sourcing. Tell Me Who Do You Love?
Posted in China BusinessClients sometimes ask me whether they should be using Global Sources or Alibaba as a first cut for finding China suppliers. My response is always that I do not know, but that “I hear better things about Global Sources.” Asia Business Media just did a post, entitled, “Alibaba and Global Sources: Competing less and less,”… Continue Reading
Chinese Companies As Prime Litigation Target. DMG v. VisionChina, Part II.
Posted in Legal NewsIt is not at all uncommon for English language publications to write about our posts on here, but it is quite uncommon for Chinese language publications to do so. This only makes sense. So I was both surprised and delighted to learn that Caixan, probably China’s best business magazine had written on one of our… Continue Reading
Gmail In China Not Working As It Should. The Cloud In China As Pie In The Sky?
Posted in China BusinessIt’s official. Gmail in China the last week or so has become seriously erratic. I know this because just today I have recieved three emails from China telling me so. One came from someone in Shanghai, one from Beijing and one came from my co-blogger, Steve Dickinson, who is usually in Qingdao but is right… Continue Reading
Is Twitter Relevant For China?
Posted in China BusinessToday is Twitter’s fifth anniversary. So what better day than today to explain my abrupt and unexplained termination of my Twitter account? Maybe a year or so ago, I started getting fairly active on Twitter. I would tweet maybe 2-5 times a day about mostly China. After a while I was following around 900 people… Continue Reading
When To Bring In Your China Lawyer. There Should Be Lag Time.
Posted in Legal NewsClients are always asking when I should be brought into a matter and my response is nearly always “the sooner the better.” Many times when clients are talking about doing a deal in China I tell them to keep me posted on their initial negotiations, but that we will not “turn on the clock” until… Continue Reading
Do You Want To Do China Trademarks Right Or On The Cheap?
Posted in Legal NewsI constantly get emails from people asking what my law firm charges for registering trademarks in China and I always respond by quoting our rate for a trademark analysis and stating that we will not “just” register their trademark in the category they tell us. If they want that, they need to retain someone else…. Continue Reading
China’s 12th Five Year Plan. Infrastructure, Infrastructure, And More Infrastructure. Did We Say Infrastructure?
Posted in China Business, EventsBy: Steve Dickinson On Monday, March 14, The PRC National People’s Congress approved China’s 12th Five Year Plan and the outline of the plan was released to the public yesterday. The full 105-page document can be found (in Chinese) here. I am now reviewing the plan and over the next several weeks I will provide a… Continue Reading
Martin Jacques On Understanding The Rise Of China.
Posted in Events, Good PeopleA client of mine directed me to a link of a Tedx talk by Martin Jacques on China. I watched it and liked it so much I wanted to share it with our readers. You can watch and listen to the speech here and below is a transcription of Mr. Jacques’ speech. It is certainly… Continue Reading
US-Listed Chinese Companies. Let’s Watch The Sausage Get Made.
Posted in China Business, Legal NewsAs we are always saying, you can win all the cases you want against Chinese companies in United States courts, but getting them to pay is another thing. Yet the march of Chinese companies to US stock market listings may be changing that ever so slightly. For small-time Chinese firms used to doing business on… Continue Reading
The Sino Japanese Relationship Made Less Complicated.
Posted in Recommended ReadingFor years, Jottings from the Granite Studio has been one of my favorite blogs. It is written by Jeremiah Jenne, “a PhD candidate at a large public university in Northern California” who is “currently in Beijing teaching history, doing archival research, and working on his dissertation.” If you have an interest in Chinese history (and… Continue Reading
China’s Public (And Not So Public) Records
Posted in Legal NewsI find it interesting how some countries grant wide access to government records on individuals and companies while others are far more restrictive. The United States is the most open of the countries of which I am aware. Here, things like divorces proceedings, birth records, and corporate records are generally available to just about anyone…. Continue Reading
China Legal For Business. The Basics And Nothing But.
Posted in China Business, Legal NewsA few months ago, the general counsel of a company for whom we had done some China work asked me to spend a few minutes alerting her to the “typical” legal issues American companies face when they do business with China. She wanted a legal checklist to give to the executives at her company so… Continue Reading
Registered Capital For Chinese Companies. Overrated.
Posted in China Business, Legal NewsA client said something to me today that gave me real pause. He said that he was not too concerned about giving a large amount of credit to a Chinese company because he had looked up that company’s registered capital and it would be enough to cover the debt. He then said that he had… Continue Reading
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