The Hong Kong Intermediary Trap: Do Not Contract with the Wrong China Company Foreign buyers like dealing with Hong Kong intermediaries. The emails are clear, the invoices look familiar, the bank account feels safer, and the person on the other end usually speaks better English than the factory contact. But in China manufacturing, invoices are
China Supply Chain Restructuring: Legal Traps in Moving, Selling, or Exiting China A U.S. manufacturer decides to move production from China to Mexico. The company’s technical team starts shipping over production files and the company opens early talks with a Chinese buyer for the plant. The move looks routine. Then the files raise an export-control
China Manufacturing Contracts: Why U.S. Drafts Do Not Work Clients often send us a U.S. manufacturing agreement and ask whether it can save time or money on a China manufacturing contract. It cannot. Sometimes the ask is smaller: can we just spend a couple of hours reviewing it? We decline because we will not bill
China Manufacturing Contracts: When One Agreement Is Not Enough A U.S. company recently called one of our international dispute resolution lawyers after receiving a message from its Chinese factory. Future orders, the factory said, would require a 34% price increase, effective immediately. The factory had the client’s molds. It had the client’s designs. And it
China’s New Supply Chain Security Rules Raise the Risks for Foreign Companies On April 7, 2026, China turned supply chain decisions into national security decisions. The regulations took effect the same day. No transition period. These regulations, issued as State Council Order No. 834, give Chinese authorities a formal mechanism to investigate and punish foreign
China NNN Agreements work when they deter Chinese companies from misusing your IP. Here is when they help, when they do not, and how to draft one that will actually work.
Moving production to Mexico is more than just a sourcing decision. It is a legal and operational rebuild. Companies that treat China/Mexico contracts, labor, IP, customs, and transition sequencing as afterthoughts often end up paying to fix avoidable mistakes.
Your leverage is usually strongest before your China factory knows you are leaving and before your plans in the new country become obvious to everyone else. That window does not stay open for long. Once it closes, fixing trademark gaps, tooling problems, and bad contracts becomes slower, more expensive, and much more difficult. Sometimes it does not just make the exit harder. Sometimes it makes the exit fail.
If you are manufacturing in China, you almost certainly need a China Trademark.
How to Negotiate with Your Chinese Manufacturers Most American companies hear the line “That’s not how we do it in China” and immediately start retreating. They soften their tone, over-explain, and offer compromises before they have identified what matters. They treat the phrase like a cultural law that cannot be questioned, instead of what it
