Home -> Law Blog Directory -> International Law Blogs -> China Law Blog

International Law

: China Law Blog

Protection Money And Your China Business. Are We There Yet?

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

"I won't pay. I know too much about extortion." Tony Soprano, Season 3, Episode 7, "Second Opinion" One of the "interesting" things about representing companies in emerging markets is the huge variance organized crime can play. The Associated Press, in a story entitled, "China readies for crackdown on organized crime," recently wrote on how the Chinese government is cracking down on organized crime There is one country in which my firm does a substantial amount of business (if you go to the multi-language landing page of our website you can probably guess which one) where we ourselves were told that we would need to make monthly payments for our "own protection." Thanks to the intersession of a local friend, the party seeking to "protect us" realized we were not a proper party for the proposed "business" relationship. Our clients tell us the need to pay for "protection" is pretty common here. None of our clients have ever told us of having to pay such money in China and I have never asked. I am asking now, though. Have any of you had to pay "protection" money in mainland China and, if so, in what city or cities? Do you have on good authority that others have had to make such payments? Were they domestic or foreign companies. My sense with China has always been that the government really does not want to see this with foreign companies and has made this fact sufficiently clear so as to generally prevent it. But we would love to hear from our readers on this.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on December 27, 2008 (boomark / email).