Not sure why nobody has just come out and said this yet, but Hong Kong as an international business and financial center is no more. I take no comfort in saying this because I have many friends in Hong Kong and I’ve always loved going there, but Hong Kong’s special position is over. Kaput. Fini.
A few months ago, we did a post titled, Want to Keep Your Business in China? Do These Things NOW. We wrote that post because we were (and still are) seeing a massive uptick in foreign companies getting into legal trouble with the Chinese Government. China’s government has a long history of cracking down on
It is not news that Chinese labor authorities have been cracking down on employers that fail to make social insurance payments for their employees. What is news is that Chinese labor authorities are taking that enforcement to the next level. Last week, 28 government departments (including the National Development and Reform Commission, the People’s Bank
China manufacturing contracts are very different from Western manufacturing contracts, for reasons which stem from differences in laws or differences in economics. This means our China manufacturing lawyers often must explain why they are doing something in China manufacturing so different from the way the client “always does it” in the West. One of the
Chinese companies (especially SOEs) increasingly require their contracts with foreign companies provide for disputes to be resolved by arbitration in China. Our China lawyers are seeing mostly CIETAC and BAC arbitration clauses. Many of our American and European clients are uncomfortable with arbitrating against a Chinese company in China as they are convinced they cannot “get a fair
Our China business lawyers see 5-10 China contracts a month written by others. We often are sent these from a potential or actual client who wants us to review and revise their contract or determine how it might fare were they to pursue a breach of contract claim. Other times, we get them simply because
You should have a China-centric contract when doing business in China or even with China. See China Contracts: Make Them Enforceable Or Don’t Bother. This holds doubly true for employment contracts with China employees because those agreements are highly local. And though I should not have to say this, translating your existing employment agreements into
The China legal world has been abuzz this last weekend about a Chinese court in Wuhan enforcing a California judgment against a couple of Chinese citizens. On one level this is indeed a huge deal, but on a practical level, this really does not change anything with respect to what you as an American company
Employee probation in China has to be one of the most misunderstood issues in China employment law. Westerners just assume their probationary employees are at will employees who can be fired at any time, for good reason or for no reason at all. Wrong. The probation period is PART of the normal employment term and
A German lawyer, representing a German company owed lots of money by a Chinese citizen, wrote me last week to discuss retaining my law firm to help the company collect on its debt by seizing U.S and Canada real property held by the Chinese citizen. This lawyer was coming to me because he had liked
