I was interviewed last year by as part of an ongoing interview series on strategy and innovation. The below is that interview [it is no longer online anywhere else]. Dan Harris is the founder of Harris Sliwoski, an international law firm with offices in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Phoenix New York, Barcelona, Madrid and Beijing.
My law firm’s basic mantra about getting money out of China is that if you consistently follow China’s laws, it ought to be no problem. This though has not been true lately. In the last week or so, our China lawyers have probably received more “money problem” calls than in the entire year before that.
The China lawyers at my law firm are big fans in using China distributors to market and sell products in China. Our thinking on this goes as follows: 1. We have seen too many Western companies spend too much time and money trying to sell their products into China. 2. We have seen too many
When I spoke in Ohio last year at a China function, I met Eric McGraw. Eric lived in China for seven years and he is now based in Columbus, Ohio, where he and his company help American companies navigate China and Chinese companies navigate the United States. Eric and I talked about the increase in
By Lucas Blaustein* U.S. agricultural exports to China have increased by 120% since 2008, to nearly 28.9 billion dollars in 2013 and agriculture now accounts for nearly 24% of US-China trade . Since China’s admittance to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China and the United States have increasingly traded their comparative advantages. Daily, Chinese made
My friend Kent Kedl co-wrote an article for the Moscow Times today, entitled, Why Russia Is Just as Good as China, claiming businesses should be just as interested in Russia as they are in China and that corruption in Russia is no better or worse than corruption in China: For some reason, investors find Russian corruption
In China Payment Fraud, we wrote how it has “become somewhat of a December tradition to write about China payment scams in December because history shows this is the biggest month for those. This year it seems China fraud season has started earlier than usual for those doing business with China and, near as I
Our China company formation lawyers spoke with a software company the other day with fifteen “independent contractors” in China they view as “part of the corporate family.” This company was looking to form a WFOE in China, but they said they were in no rush. The first thing we did was tell them that what
VIE stands for variable interest entity and they are entities used to allow a company in China to technically be a Chinese domestic company, but be de facto controlled by a foreign-owned entity or entities. VIE structures are usually used to allow foreign companies to get involved in various sectors of China’s economy forbidden to
Ever since the New York Times did an article, Wary of China, Companies Head to Cambodia, on companies leaving China for Cambodia, there has been media and play and real life discussions on how “everyone” is leaving China for places like Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam or Mexico or Indonesia or Taiwan. First, let’s look
