据今日披露，中国本周早些时候突击搜查了一家规模庞大且声名显赫的美国公司，扣押了该公司五名员工，并勒令其停止在华运营。此事影响重大，我认为有必要尽快撰文探讨。
1. 突袭行动的事实背景
我关于此次突袭行动的信息来源包括《纽约时报》、《华尔街日报》、路透社、BBC新闻和 《金融时报》，我认为这些媒体提供的中国相关报道均具有高水准且值得信赖。
Today (as I write this, it is 6:45 a.m. Pacific Time, 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time, and 9:45 p.m. in China), it has been reported that the Chinese government on Monday raided Mintz Group's offices in Beijing, detained five of its staff there, and closed down its China operations. Per its website, Mintz Group focuses on providing "background checks" on companies and people, "fact gathering" during disputes, and "internal investigations" after allegations. In other words, it is a high-level international investigation firm.
Randal Phillips heads Mintz Group's Asia operations from outside of China. He is the former chief representative in China for the Central Intelligence Agency. Per BBC News, Mr. Phillips often criticizes China:
虽然目前没有迹象表明此次突袭与菲利普斯先生有关，但他此前曾表示，美国应解决因中国政策而导致的贸易结构性失衡问题。
In 2018, Mr Phillips also testified before Congress on China's efforts to exert international influence.
I'm a longtime fan of Mintz Group's Deep Background blog and its Where the Bribes Are map, which shows China in brightest red.
Per Reuters, "Mintz Group has not received any official legal notice regarding a case against the company and has requested that the authorities release its employees,"" the company said. The five Mintz Group employees are being held "incommunicado" outside Beijing.
2. 突袭的时间和原因
One of the main reasons I read so many articles before writing this piece is because I wanted to see how various media put this raid in context. Most noted how the raid came on the heels of yesterday's hearing regarding U.S. plans to force a sale of TikTok or ban it. Though that hearing came after the raid, China certainly knew before the raid how that hearing would go down.
The Financial Times (like many others) put the raid in the larger context of "deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing, which took a turn for the worse last month following a row over a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US."
This raid as another data point in what I have since 2018 described as a straight-line decline in China's relations with the Free World. See e.g., China’s Relations With the West: Straight-Line Decline. This arrest is China punching back against the United States for its efforts to block China's access to high-end microchips, ban TikTok, and embarrass Xi for his relationship with Putin and with Russia, and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's recently announced upcoming visit to the United States.
3. The Raid's Likely Impacts on Your Business and Your Travels
Per the American Chamber of Commerce in China's latest survey (taken before China's balloon was caught hovering over the United States), U.S. businesses operating in China indicated increasing pessimism about their China prospects, with two-thirds citing rising tensions with China as the top business challenge. This raid will increase those tensions.
There are two ways this raid will likely impact your business in or with China. First, it is yet another action that will ratchet down China's relations with the Free World. And as is nearly always true, there will be a U.S. counterreaction, and then a China reaction to that, and on it goes, with more companies likely to get caught in these crosshairs. This is nothing new.
The other way your business will likely be impacted by this raid will be in its declining ability to get necessary information. Not only was the timing of this raid not a coincidence, the company China chose to raid was no coincidence either. Plain and simple, China's raid is intended to reduce the information the world gets about China. Just as the United States, Japan, Australia, and the EU are increasingly seeking to block China's access to their data (see TikTok) China too is increasingly seeking to limit foreign access to its data. China's going after the Mintz Group sends a message to those who reveal information about China that China does not want revealed.
This is not the first time China has sent out this message. The case of British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey immediately sprang to my mind, and as per Reuters, I'm not the only one to see this link:
英国企业调查员彼得·汉弗莱及其美国籍妻子余英曾曾经营风险咨询公司ChinaWhys，因替英国制药集团葛兰素史克（GSK）工作，于2013年被拘留。
Humphrey, who spent two years in jail for allegedly acquiring personal information by illegal means, which he denied, told Reuters that providing due diligence in China was even harder now because of a "massive tightening in access to information."
"The foreign business community needs due diligence in order to conduct safe business, to pick the right partners and the right hires, to invest in the right companies without losing their shirt ... But Beijing has made it impossible to do this," he said in an email.
"This is at a time when Western companies need transparency more than ever," he added.
The Financial Times also weighed in on how this raid is tied to China's efforts to clamp down further on access to information:
一位前明茨公司员工表示，他注意到在疫情期间，当中国基本封锁边境并实施严格的“清零”防疫措施时，官方对该公司的态度变得更加强硬。
“你不知道红线在哪里，”这位工作人员说道，他的工作主要就是翻译中国媒体的报道。中国过去曾拘留过与外国公司有关联的调查人员、分析师和记者。
By blurring the "red line" on information, China is telling companies and individuals that coming close to the line might put them at risk. This message will cause people to stay far away from the blurry line and it will mean companies will increasingly need to transact their China business in the dark, or at least in deep shade. For what this could mean for your due diligence, I refer you to this post on the importance of international due diligence.
Per Reuters, "news of the raid and detentions comes as Beijing is gearing up to hold the three-day China Development Forum . . . where executives from multinationals and representatives from international organizations will be among the more than 100 overseas delegates present":
One U.S. business community person told Reuters the Mintz Group incident sent a "remarkable signal" that Beijing wants foreign money and technology but that it won't accept credible U.S. firms conducting due diligence on Chinese partners or the business environment.
"Red alerts should be going off in all boardrooms right now about risks in China," the source, who did not wish to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the matter, said.
中国表示欢迎对外贸易和投资，但强调安全优先于发展。
The red alerts have already gone off and I know that because I started getting emails from clients within hours of this raid hitting the media asking how this will impact what they are doing in China. I also got an email from a company that wants my law firm to provide it with a legal risk assessment of its China business "as soon as humanly possible". This is not a normal morning.
此次突击检查不过是中国一贯的做法，即“杀鸡儆猴”——明茨集团成了“鸡”，而其他所有外资企业则成了“猴”。虽然没人真正知道中国政府下次会在何时何地出手，但风险程度确实因企业而异，也因行业而异。
Very briefly, foreign companies in industries China does not like are at higher risk, while foreign companies in industries China likes are at lower risk. Companies with executives that speak out against China are at higher risk and companies with executives who speak out for China are at lower risk. Companies not in full compliance with China's laws are at higher risk and companies in full compliance with China's lows are at lower risk. See A Legal Checklist for Doing Business in or with China.
In How to Handle China's Rising Risks, I wrote that "China is going to get tougher on foreign companies doing business in China" and "everything foreign businesses and foreigners do will be under heightened scrutiny."
在《如何在中国为最坏情况做准备，以及为何你应该这样做》一文中，我曾提到外国企业和外籍人士在中国面临的风险日益增加，并建议企业完善其中国撤离计划，以防万一：
It seems like every time I talk with serious China people these days, they want to talk about what is going to happen in China regarding treatment of foreign companies and foreigners. Many of them say they wince every time there is an announcement of a Western company planning to leave China or reduce its footprint there. As a friend of mine puts it, "The fewer foreign companies and foreigners that remain in China, the greater the chance it will be my company or my family that gets singled out for mistreatment."
即便你不认为中国对外国人的政策未来不会进一步恶化，未雨绸缪也未尝不可。我可以告诉你，几乎所有规模足以聘请风险咨询公司的大企业都在这么做。坦率地说，人们竟不常思考这类问题，我始终感到惊讶。
So good for Joseph Sternberg of the Wall Street Journal for way back in 2011 writing A Businessman's Guide to China's Collapse: It might not happen soon, but when it does it will pay to be prepared. The article focuses on the need to be aware of and prepare for China risks.
It is just wrong to assume and act as though things cannot and will not change. As Sternberg notes, "Four months ago, no one would have predicted imminent mass unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen or Libya," and he warns companies to "consider managers trying to evacuate staff, safeguard physical property or keep supply chains operating as smoothly as possible." He then provides "a brief guide to keeping your business afloat if China goes kablooey":
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- 首先，要认识到这种情况确实可能发生。人的本性总是认为现状会无限期地持续下去。
- Understand where your vulnerabilities lie. "You may already have 'a detailed list of expat staffers in China, their addresses and dependents, to aid in a worst-case evacuation' but you should also 'track executives who might be visiting, in case one of those should happen to be in town' when something serious goes down."
- Think about your specific risks. "Are your factories identifiably 'foreign,' and will that be a sore point in the eyes of locals? Have you previously stirred controversy for hiring lower-wage workers from other regions instead of locals? Are you in a controversial industry . . . that could make you a target?"
- 企业在中国面临的最大风险或许是显而易见的供应链安全问题。关键在于实现供应链多元化——尽管并非所有企业都已采取这一措施。这种做法未必廉价，但那些在其他国家投资建设少量冗余产能或购买供应链中断保险的企业，终有一天会发现额外支出是值得的代价。
- Think ahead as to how you will "respond to varying degrees of disruption." What events would trigger a factory closure for a couple days, or a reduction in factory hours, or moving workers' dependents to another area, or in the worst case an evacuation of expat staff entirely? Who would make those decisions, based on what sources of information, and how would the decision be communicated down the line. And so on.
未雨绸缪本无可厚非。看看俄罗斯入侵乌克兰时，俄罗斯境内的企业遭遇了什么就知道了。
如需进一步了解与中国开展业务的困难和风险，请参阅以下内容：
I also urge you to read Russia’s War Will Impact Your China Business because what happened to foreign businesses in Russia is instructive as to what could happen to foreign businesses in China and because Xi's "unlimited [and growing] friendship" with Putin will itself impact companies that do business in or with China.
你看到外面有什么？
