With the last quarter of the year approaching and with China increasing its scrutiny of foreign businesses operating in China, now seems like the right time to talk about what foreign businesses (WFOEs, joint ventures, representative offices) should be doing to protect themselves on the China compliance front. If you have familiarized yourself with applicable
China basketball: Where is the Joy? I am convinced I can understand about 50% of a country by going into five of its grocery stores and by watching five basketball games of its best players. I have a friend who is a dancer, and she says she can understand a country by watching its people
The US Importer of Record is liable for antidumping and countervailing duties tied to the product imported. The Importer of Record is the company listed in Block 26 of the U.S. Customs 7501 form. Importer of Record must exercise reasonable care in importing products and in filling out Customs forms Under US Antidumping (AD), Countervailing
China Hostage Situations Our China lawyers regularly get contacted regarding China hostage situations. So often in fact that they have become relatively routine. I will set the typical hostage scene by harkening back to a 2009 article, entitled, China Hostage Situation. Now IS A Good Time To Pay Your Debts [link no longer exists]. That article
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.
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
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
