“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
In China Factories Are Exporting Lower Prices Around the World, Bloomberg News wrote this week about something our internmational manufacturing lawyers have been seeing: Desperate Chinese factories are lowering their prices. Are all Chinese factories desperate? Absolutely not. Are all Chinese factories lowering their prices? Near as we can tell, a great many are, especially
In China’s New Cybersecurity Program: NO Place to Hide and again in China’s New Cybersecurity System: There is NO Place to Hide we wrote how China’s new “cybersecurity” laws give the Chinese government and its prized companies full and total access to all data and IP held by foreign companies. Yesterday, in China’s New Cryptography Law: Still No Place to
The PRC National People’s Congress on October 26 enacted the long awaited Encryption Law (密码法）, which will come into effect on January 1, 2020. The official text of the law can be found here and an English language summary can be found here: The Law is another piece of the comprehensive cybersecurity system China is rolling
As regular readers of this blog know, we are very much down on Hong Kong as an international business center. See Hong Kong for International Business: Stick a Fork in It (August 13) and Hong Kong for International Business: Stick a Fork in It, Part 2 (October 22). We have seen and we believe we
The seemingly endless U.S.-China trade war keeps slogging along. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has already imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports on three previous lists (List 1 = $34 billion starting from July 2018, List 2 = $16 billion from August 2018, List 3 = $200 billion from
Pull out and look at your contract with your Chinese counter-party. Does it have a force majeure clause? If it does not, put it away and count yourself lucky. If it has a force majeure clause, pour gasoline or lighter fluid or nail polish all over it and light it. JUST KIDDING. Well only sort
You Need an NNN Agreement for China IP Protection Relying on a standard Western-style NDA to protect your IP from China sets you up for IP theft because NDAs have critical limitations that render them ineffective for China. You need an NNN agreement tailored specifically for China. This post explains what an NNN agreement is,
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
In a recent LinkedIn conversation someone raised the possibility of the “Made in GBA (Greater Bay Area)” label replacing “Made in Hong Kong” and “Made in China” as a country of origin marking in South China. It’s an intriguing idea that would certainly reflect the spirit of the GBA project. Could “Made in GBA” actually be a
