A lawyer’s job is to discern their clients’ risks and help them avoid them. We are both trained and paid to be paranoid. Years ago, when I was in Tokyo on a particularly sensitive international law matter, I left my hotel room as I had done pretty much every day for the last 7-8 days and
Seven years ago, we blogged about how we were getting calls from people who had visited a brothel in China and then were being threatened by alleged police officers seeking money. See also this 2014 piece from the Wall Street Journal: Latest China Scam: I’ve Been Arrested in the Brothel Crackdown! Our post focused on
We Americans do not like foreign governments or their agents meddling in our domestic affairs, whether it is China, Russia, Iran, Syria, or some less reprehensible regime. We do not even like friendly foreign governments meddling in our affairs. I am not talking about traditional CIA/007 spies or agents who operate in the shadows, mainly
This blog has not minced words when it comes to describing the grim situation in Hong Kong, which, as one of my former colleagues at the State Department puts it, “will get worse before it doesn’t get better.” Signs of Hong Kong’s demise as an international business center are plentiful. The city is in recession.
Since October 6, 2018, one of our recurring themes has been that China has become far more difficult for foreign companies. It is what we have been calling the New Normal. This New Normal extends to all foreign companies that do business in or with China, but it has hit U.S. and Canadian companies particularly
“It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” Bob Dylan, from Not Dark Yet In the 1990s, I represented a number of international fishing and timber and mining companies that did business with Russia. This was not so long after the fall of the Soviet Union and there were a bunch of large Russian companies
Three months ago, in Hong Kong for International Business, Stick a Fork in It, we predicted the slow demise of Hong Kong as an international business center. Many wrote us to say they agreed. Many wrote us to say they vehemently disagreed. Those who disagreed argued that we had underestimated the grit and the resilience
Contents of this Article: The Situation: Foreigners at Risk in China The Inconsistency of Chinese Law and Punishment Important Points of Chinese Criminal Law The Risks of Working and Living in China The Increasing Risk of Doing Business in China Stay Within Chinese Law How Can You Protect Yourself and Your Company A NOT New
Since the very beginning of US-China trade negotiations we have been unequivocally negative on the likelihood of a deal and we have just kept saying that foreign companies (especially those that sell their products to the United States) need to work on reducing their China footprint. Today’s micro-deal between the United States and China has
Should I stay in China or should I leave? Should I enter the China market or is it too risky? The answer to these questions is simple: it depends. The secret is understanding what those dependencies are and how your company strategically fits within them. What follows is an oversimplified view of the playing field
