The China Law Blog focuses on the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts foreign companies that do business in or with China. The goal is to help readers understand what works and what does not work and what businesspeople can do to use the law to their advantage. China Law Blog’s aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.

China product development lawyer

International Product Development Agreements: The Basics

1. The Product Development Stage is the Riskiest Stage of Manufacturing Companies doing overseas contract manufacturing often “co-develop” products with their overseas manufacturers. In some cases, the company seeking a manufacturer has completed product development and the only involvement from the manufacturer will be to figure out how to manufacture the product at high volumes.

China business deals

Five Keys to International Consulting Contracts

Our international lawyers have been getting an increasing amount of work involving the provision of services across borders. International service agreements are more complicated than international product sales agreements because they typically involve an ongoing and more amorphous relationship without easily definable deliverables. It is easier to write a contract to buy 1,000 widgets from

Part time employees in China

China Expat Pay: Splitting with Hong Kong is Illegal and Dangerous

As China steps up its tax enforcement against both foreign companies and foreigners, we are seeing increasing instances where expat employees working in China are having their salaries “split” by their Chinese or foreign company employers. We strongly counsel our employer clients against doing this sort of salary splitting and we even more strongly counsel

manufacturing red flags

China Expat Employment Contracts: Red Flags

As part of our China employment work, our China employment lawyers are often tasked with helping expats navigate the China employee onboarding process, including reviewing and revising their employment-related documents, such as employment contracts. This involves our making sure our clients’ contracts protect their interests and achieve their goals and minimize the likelihood of confusion

cybersecurity

China Cybersecurity: No Place to Hide

Contents of this Article: I. Cybersecurity with Chinese Characteristics: The Party is the leader of everything. II. China’s Comprehensive Network Security Program III. China’s Regulatory System: The Multi-Level Protection Scheme (MLPS 2.0) IV. Cryptography is not a solution. V. A Concrete Example: The Golden Tax Malware Program  VI. How Companies are Pushed into an Insecure

china law blog

SaaS in China: Resistance is Futile

Software as a Service (SaaS) works great when confined to the Internet of a single country or region such as North America or the European Union. The core concept of SaaS is that an open Internet exists on which SaaS can be built and delivered. But what happens when companies attempt to deliver SaaS into

pipe bursting

Stop Your IP and Key Information from Leaking when Manufacturing Overseas

This post focuses on protecting against intellectual property losses arise from what we call leakage — the situation where a company has a contract preventing its foreign counter-party (usually a foreign manufacturer) from using its proprietary information, but fails to prevent that information from leaking to third parties not bound by such a contract. When

china law blog

Mitigating China Supply Chain Risk: Should I Stay or Should I Go, Part 2

This is Part 2 in the series Mitigating China Supply Chain Risk: Should I Stay or Should I Go? by David Alexander* This part gets into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to find new suppliers. We have an American client who has approached us several times over the past 5-7 years with questions or