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 harder to metabolize. It is puzzling. The problem is as corrosive in one country as in the other.
I disagree and I do so based on my law firm’s own experiences and on the experiences of foreign businesses, as reflected in the leading corruption indexes. I know Russia and Russia is no China. Not even close.
Let’s start with corruption. Transparency International ranks China 80 out of 177 countries. Russia is 127, right between Pakistan and Bangladesh. World Audit ranks China 61 out of 150 in corruption, with Russia at 110. I have noticed the difference in concrete ways.
Last year, I spoke at an Economist Magazine Business Without Borders event on China. I mostly spoke about intellectual property protections in China, but my introduction dealt with China’s legal system as a whole. Video of my introduction is online and transcribed below.
I’m going to start out not really focusing so much on intellectual property, but talking about China’s legal system generally. I’ve been dealing with emerging market countries for the last 20 years or so, mostly helping American companies navigate emerging markets. And my focus in the last 10 years has mostly been on China. In comparing China to other emerging market countries, my conclusion is that China’s legal system is actually more advanced and less corrupt than just about any other emerging market system.
And I’m not the only person who believes this.
As I was driving in this morning I was listening to BBC interviewing a Russian oligarch who was talking about how great Russia is for business, and he mentioned that Russia is actually better than China for business. And the interviewer called him out on that and said well you’re saying that, but no one else seems to say that. And he quoted a number — which I was going to quote today — which is that Transparency International (which is the most respected and the leading ranking of countries on corruption) ranks China 75 out of 176 countries, so it’s actually in the top half in terms of the least corrupt countries. The World Bank ranks China 91 out of 183 in terms of ease of doing business. And in my firm’s own experience, China is not that bad.
We have registered thousands of things with the Chinese government — trademarks, copyrights, licensing agreements — and not once have we ever been hit up for extra money. That’s not true in a lot of other emerging market countries where you do get hit up for a fee to expedite things. But you’re not really being hit up with a fee to expedite things; what they’re essentially telling you is if you don’t pay the fee to expedite your trademark application, your company trademark application is going to go into that “dark corner” over there. And that generally does not happen in China.
Now, just yesterday, the new AmCham China member survey came across my desk. This is a survey of American companies that do business in China, and one of the questions asked of the members who have been involved in intellectual property litigation in China was what their impression was. And 63% of those members said that they were either satisfied or very satisfied. Now to me that’s an amazing number, because here in the United States, the word “satisfied” is usually not a word that’s associated with litigation.
So, I’m not saying China is perfect, it definitely is not and there are major issues there, major issues of corruption, major issues with its legal system, but what I am saying is for the average American company, it’s not that bad at all. And those are the sorts of things I am going to be talking about later.
I have been to China probably five times as often as I have been to Russia and yet I have been shaken down for bribes by police officers in Russia multiple times and that has never happened to me in China.
I have a lawyer friend in a Russian province who tells me that 9 out of 15 judges are on the take.
Now let’s talk about costs and safety. Russia can be an incredibly expensive country to visit. I remember a few years ago when one of my firm’s lawyers went to Moscow and I saw his $900 a night hotel bill. I asked him why he needed to stay in such an expensive hotel (in Moscow). His reply was that it was a Courtyard by Marriott and the Marriott was $300 a night more! He went on to say that one pretty much has to stay within a certain area of Moscow for safety reasons and there just are not that many hotels there.
Violence against businesspeople is also more common in Russia than in China, not that it is unheard of in China. I am basing this both on the experiences of my clients and of what they tell me, and on what I have read.
Saying that both have corruption is meaningless. The United States has corruption. Even Denmark has corruption. The issue is not the existence of corruption; the issue is how prevalent it is and how much it impacts foreign businesses seeking to do business there. Everything tells me it is far worse in Russia than in China and I think I would be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees with me on that.
I am not saying American companies or European companies or companies from anywhere outside China and Russia should be ignoring Russia. Russia has a wealth of opportunities for those with the staying power to cut through its difficulties. Heck, we represent a number of foreign companies that are thriving in Russia and some of them have been doing so for nearly twenty years. But Russia is difficult for so many reasons, and if you are going to go there, it behooves you to understand this before you leave.
I am also not saying China does not have its own major problems, because it does. And I am not saying doing business in China as a foreign company is easy or fair, again because it isn’t. But again, it just isn’t as bad or as risky as Russia. It just isn’t.
I just got back from a long trip to Vietnam, which generally ranks a few notches below Russia in the various corruption indexes. And yet I am bullish on Vietnam for many reasons — not the least of which is that the US has deemed it to be in its political best interests to do whatever it can to assist Vietnam — and my law firm’s legal work there just keeps increasing. At the same time, just as with Russia, its “difficulties” should not be downplayed.
One interesting thing in the Russia/China comparison is that we have found Russian companies are better able to function in countries in which bribe-paying is not a wise way to go. We have confronted bribery issues head on many times with both Russian and Chinese companies and they virtually always respond very differently.
A couple of times, Russian companies have strongly hinted or just come out and suggested we pay off government bureaucrats or judges to get things done. Each time they have done that, we make clear that our law firm will not be a part of that and that if they are not comfortable with that, they should fire us right then and there. I then point out to them that their Russian lawyers referred them to us because we know how to handle things in the United States and the right way to handle things in the United States is not by paying a bribe. Every time I have had this discussion, it has worked. Sometimes, in fact, the Russian company has come back and said they had mentioned our conversation to their Russian lawyers and their Russian lawyers had said we should not be fired.
Our results with Chinese companies have been different. They tell us “so and so told them they can get this done in two weeks because they know so and so at the government and they know how the system works.” We tell them this is not how the United States system works and, in fact, what they are proposing to do is only going to turn something relatively easy and straightforward into something difficult and illegal. The Chinese company often acts like we are a bunch of naive idiots and moves on, which is fine by us.
I think the difference between Russian companies and Chinese companies (and yes, I realize I am generalizing from a relatively small sample) is the Russian companies are better able to adapt to where they are doing business. They have a better understanding that just because they do business one way in one country does not mean they must do business that same way in every country. I do not have any illusions about whether the Russian companies who choose not to pay bribes in the United States are paying bribes elsewhere, but I am impressed with how they are able to do things correctly in the United States. Far too many Chinese companies seem unable to believe not all countries do business just like China.
Anyway, Russia is worse than China, it just is. But it does have its opportunities and it should not be ignored.
Kedl concludes his article with the following:
I agree with virtually all that Kent says directly above. Russia and China do “contain the same risks” in that any company doing business in either country should conduct the sort of due diligence Kent calls for and they also should require their employees participate in full-fledged anti-corruption training taught by outside professionals.
But the degree of risk is different. It just is.
