No sooner than President Trump signed the Hong Kong human rights and democracy act into law, China announced retaliatory measures, banning U.S. warships from Hong Kong and restricting the work of American NGOs. These responses were narrowly tailored—perhaps in part because China is wary of rocking the boat too much, in a way that could
Had lunch yesterday with two long-time friends, both international lawyers who have spent many years living and working in China. During a discussion about an international real estate matter on which one of the lawyers was working, someone asked if we remembered back when foreigners were able to freely buy real estate in China. We all
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
The numbers coming out of China continue to amaze. There are 855 million digital consumers in China and they have more than twice as many internet users as the US has people. The Chinese are spending an average of 358 minutes per day online. They spend 8% of their online time streaming video content. A
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
Our China lawyers are often asked to explain the relationship between Hong Kong and China. When I would get asked this, I would usually start by telling American clients to think of Hong Kong’s relationship to China as being similar to New York’s relationship to China. For our European clients I would use London or
This isn’t the first time I’ve written on the China Law Blog about the California Consumer Privacy Act (or “CCPA”), California’s massive new privacy law that many compare to EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (or “GDPR”), but it’s certainly becoming more important now as CCPA takes effect in about six weeks. If you weren’t taking CCPA seriously
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
