Dan Harris is a founding member of Harris Sliwoski, an international law firm where he mostly represents companies doing business in emerging market countries. Most of his time is spent helping American and European companies navigate foreign countries by working with the international lawyers at his firm in setting up companies overseas (WFOEs, Subsidiaries, Rep Offices and Joint Ventures), drafting international contracts, protecting IP, and overseeing M&A transactions.
In addition, Dan writes and speaks extensively on international law, with a focus on protecting foreign businesses in their overseas operations. He is also a prolific and widely-followed blogger, writing as the co-author of the award-winning China Law Blog.
Every month or so, someone calls one of our China lawyers wanting to discuss “working with you to help your clients get money out of China.” These are nearly always phone calls (not emails) and we typically do not take the calls. We’ve been doing this long enough (and discussing this long enough with ultra-high
Before I explain what to do if arrested in China, I should set out the following “whys” behind this post: 1. Foreigners get arrested overseas all the time. Not just in China. 2. Foreigners get arrested all the time in China, for all sorts of things, including for things that would not be crimes in
Yesterday, in Would the Last Foreign Company in China Please Turn Off the Lights, Part 2, I discussed the recent arrest of Meng Wanzhou and Chinese government threats by the Chinese government against the United States and Canada for that arrest. A lot has been written about how China may retaliate against US and Canadian
My law firm’s China company formation lawyers are often asked about the steps it takes to form a China WFOE. So often, in fact, that we long along drafted a stock response to that question. Figuring this response would be helpful to our faithful readers, I am running it below. Please note that the below
China Law Professor Donald Clarke sent me a great article this week from New York Magazine, entitled, How China Drove Out Mister Softee. Professor Clarke’s email with the link said the following: Thought you might like this. Interestingly, it is NOT a story of “guy skirts rules, naively trusts Chinese partner, gets screwed.” It’s “guy does
Though we’ve written about this many times previously, I’m writing about it again today because my law firm’s China lawyers have been seeing a lot more of this lately, especially as against European companies. We have been getting a number of emails lately from companies asking us if what their Chinese counter-parties are asking them
We explain why it can be so difficult to leave China and the various precautions you need to take if you are looking to get out.
Nearly four years ago — during a time when my law firm’s international manufacturing lawyers were seeing a big increase in Vietnam work from companies diversifying manufacturing from China — I wrote a series of blog posts on sourcing product from Vietnam. Since that time, our Vietnam practice has steadily grown, until about five months
Countless foreign software companies wish to deliver their software as a service (SaaS) to China. But since China requires commercial ICP licenses for commercial Internet services within China and generally forbids foreign enterprises from obtaining such licenses, directly providing SaaS through a server in China is typically not possible for foreign software companies. So how can a foreign
I have been writing too much about foreign companies looking to leave China and not enough about foreign companies looking to get into China. For the last few months, the work lives of the international lawyers at my law firm have been tilted towards those looking to leave China, rather than to get into China,
