China is not an employment-at-will jurisdiction and terminating China employees is nearly always difficult. To make things even more challenging, many foreign companies doing business in China manage their China affairs from afar.
Many American companies (at least outside California where employee non-competes are generally considered invalid) love non-competes and they use them as a matter of course with most (sometimes all) their employees. Generally, a non-compete agreement or a non-compete provision in an employee contract provides that the employee cannot work for one of the employer’s competitors
Our international lawyers have been getting an increasing amount of work involving the provision of services across borders. International service agreements are more complicated than international product sales agreements because they typically involve an ongoing and more amorphous relationship without easily definable deliverables. It is easier to write a contract to buy 1,000 widgets from
As China steps up its tax enforcement against both foreign companies and foreigners, we are seeing increasing instances where expat employees working in China are having their salaries “split” by their Chinese or foreign company employers. We strongly counsel our employer clients against doing this sort of salary splitting and we even more strongly counsel
As part of our China employment work, our China employment lawyers are often tasked with helping expats navigate the China employee onboarding process, including reviewing and revising their employment-related documents, such as employment contracts. This involves our making sure our clients’ contracts protect their interests and achieve their goals and minimize the likelihood of confusion
If you want to set a probation period to test out a new China employee hire, you need to clearly say so in the new hire’s employment contract. Both the employer and the employee can use the probation period to their advantage: for example, a probationary employee can resign with only 3 days’ notice—a much
China employers must have written employment contracts with each of their full-time employees. Not having a written employment contract exposes employers to penalties (payable to their employees), administrative fines and the risk of being deemed to have entered an open-term employment contract with the employees lacking the written contract. Most companies now understand this, but
Contents of this Article: Confirm Legality Create a Contract Protect Your Intellectual Property Comply With Export Control Laws Understand Employment Laws Comply With Tax Rules Lawyers love checklists, and we international business lawyers are no exception. Me, I love clients, not only because they are the lifeblood of my law firm and thus my livelihood,
China Employment Law FAQs
It has been eight years since my graduation from law school and business school. I started law school in the Fall of 2008 before the world fell apart . . . the last time. The reverberations of the financial crisis that started roiling the world in 2008 continued into 2012 when I graduated and started
