International Law

Is China Going Green, Part XIII -- Clean Up Or Close Up. Well Sort Of.

Posted on February 06, 2008
Just came across a very interesting and informative article in the China Business Review (a really good publication put out by the US-China Business Council) that nicely sets out China's environmental laws, China's increasing enforcement of those laws, and, most importantly, what foreign companies in China should be doing to stay on the right side of those laws...

Bad China Products. Hey, It's A Criminal Thing.

Posted on February 06, 2008
I am a frequent speaker at conferences on China manufacturing/China sourcing/China products. Oftentimes, I talk about what foreign companies must do to avoid liability. Civil liability. I think some years ago I would mention something about how criminal liability was always possible and some lawyer does usually mention this at these seminars, but always in passing...

China's Consumers: More Than Just First Tier

Posted on February 05, 2008
This is so far outside my expertise that I cannot say anything beyond that it does look very helpful to those seeking to sell to consumer goods in China. The "it" to which I am referring is a 54 page Ogilvy PowerPoint report on Chinese consumers, emphasizing the consumers outside the first tier cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Tianjin, Changchun, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Harbin, Jinan, Nanjing, Shenyang, Wuhan, Xi'an, Dalian, Qingdao, Shenzhen, and Xiamen (h/t to China Vortex).

China's Five News

Posted on February 05, 2008
Tom Orlik has a great article out in a recent edition of The Economist Intelligence Unit's Business China [$10 to purchase]. The article, entitled, "Legal Obligations," nicely summarizes China's key recent law changes that will affect foreign businesses in China going forward...

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How China Can/Should Learn From Enron

Posted on February 05, 2008
Very worthwhile post up on the Experience Not Logic blog, entitled, "Energy: Learning From the Mistakes of Others," nicely laying out how in formulating its energy policies, China should be mindful of and ready to learn from the Enron debacle in the United States...

China's Weather Report: Because It Really Matters

Posted on February 04, 2008
Last winter, I went to Alaska at the last minute. Upon landing, I looked out my plane window and thought, "gee, snow. Guess I should have brought my coat." This same thing happened to me once when I went to Chicago. Weather bores the hell out of me, particularly weather in a place where I am not...

China: Programmed By Fellows With Compassion And Vision?

Posted on February 03, 2008
A just machine to make big decisions Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision We'll be clean when their work is done We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young Donald Fagan, IGY Could not help but think of the above song after reading Silicon Hutong's Post, "Who Got Your Vision?" Post is on the division of vision as between businesspeople and government leaders in the United States, versus businesspeople and government leaders in China...

Absurdity, Allegory, And China -- Promising Blog

Posted on February 02, 2008
Just came across for the first time, a most interesting China blog. It is called Absurdity, Allegory, and China, and it is hard to describe. I know, however, that I like it and that it is quite literary. It also clicks through to some great photographs...

China Media: The Truth Is Out There Somewhere

Posted on February 02, 2008
The Black And White Cat does a phenomenal job dissecting how Xinhua changed a Christian Science Monitor article to suit China's own purposes. The post is entitled, "Lost in translation: a one-edged double-edged sword," and it makes for fascinating reading...

China: It's A Foreigners' Thing.

Posted on January 30, 2008
A few years ago, I went to Goroka, Papua New Guinea, to recover two Kamov Helicopters on behalf of a client/friend from Sakhalin Island, Russia (man, I loved writing that sentence!). I flew from Seattle to Honolulu, from Honolulu to Sydney, Australia, from Sydney to Cairns, from Cairns to Port Moresby, and from Port Moresby to Goroka...

How To Fly Out Of (And Into) China On The Cheap

Posted on January 29, 2008
Highly informative post up on the always excllent Shangaiist blog, entitled, "Air Asia: Another way to get your ass out of China." The post gives a great rundown on the various budget carriers operating in (or near Mainland China): Air Asia, Tiger Airways, Jetstar, Cebu Pacific, Oasis Hong Kong, and Spring Airlines, including a quick take on the cities to which they fly.

A China Inheritance Tax. Steve Dickinson On CCTV-9 Says "Please Don't."

Posted on January 28, 2008
CLB co-blogger was on CCTV's Dialogue show last week discussing whether China is ready for an inheritance tax. The Moderator was Tian Wei and Steve was on there with David Lee, from the Beijing Dacheng Law Offices. The show was described as follows: With China's rapid economic development, the wealth gap in the country is also widening...

International Risk Analysis, China Style

Posted on January 27, 2008
Brilliant post over at Paul Denlinger's China Vortex blog, entitled, "Risk is in the Eye of the Beholder," on how and why Chinese companies measure risk differently than do Western companies. I have often wondered about this, but without the business background even to know on what I was wondering...

Plane Goes Down. Blame China?

Posted on January 27, 2008
Is it just the lawyer in me -- perhaps too rigorously trained to deal in facts -- or am I justified in being troubled by this post over at the usually superb The China Game? Midler may very well be right (these sorts of things do happen) in his assessment, but it just seems way too early to start ascribing blame.

Why Paying More Is Good China Business

Posted on January 26, 2008
My friend Chris Carr, dean of the CalPoly MBA program and the brains behind the International Business Tour blog has a very thoughtful post, entitled, "Will Paying More Change Behavior And Make Someone More Ethical?" Thoughtful, but wrong. The post centers on whether paying more gets you better performance and/or better ethics, and Chris pretty much says it does not: Some suggested that we could solve the problem of too many defective products coming from China by paying more to the Chinese suppliers that make this stuff...

Shanghai Commuting As China Business Metaphor. Or, Trust Kent Kedl With Your Business But Not Your Life.

Posted on January 25, 2008
Heard a great story on NPR's Marketplace last night on commuting in Shanghai and how it "is kind of a metaphor for doing business there." It is. As NPR reporter, Scott Tong, explains, China's lack of commuter civility today can be explained by its history: SCOTT TONG: The morning starts out nicely enough...

Chinese Cultural Awareness Simplified: Don't Be An Asshole

Posted on January 23, 2008
I have written many times on how cultural awareness is a grossly overrated skill for doing business in China, but never quite so bluntly as my friend Stan Abrams does over at China Hearsay, in his post, entitled, "Cultural Awareness." As you can see from my previous posts, here, here, and

China Trademarks -- Do You Feel Lucky? Do You? Part II

Posted on January 22, 2008
In an earlier post, entitled, "Do You Feel Lucky? Do You?" I wrote about how Ferrari had just lost a ten year battle to prove its horse constituted a famous mark such that it did not need to register it in China to achieve trademark protection there. I made clear that the best way to avoid such fights is simply to register: Our advice to all our clients is to register their trademarks in China before they go there...

China SMEs -- Own If You Want To Own

Posted on January 19, 2008
In the song, "Positive Vibrations," Bob Marley sang, "Live if you want to live." On AmchamDaily's blog, Jeremy Goldkorn says if you want to own something in China, you have to make sure you own it. Marley and Goldkorn both speak great truths. AmCham Daily is doing a series of posts on starting up and running a small business in China and the one that caught my eye first was an interview with Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei, entitled, "Danwei to danwei: Get lost!" I hit upon that one because I know Jeremy and know he knows whereof he speaks...

China Seeks To Whip Inflation Now

Posted on January 18, 2008
China Challenges has a nice quote up from an FT article regarding the likely futility of China's governmental efforts to clamp down on inflation: The raft of price control edicts issued over the past week by Beijing in an effort to rein in inflation has carried a whiff of old-style central planning and prompted scepticism over their likely effectiveness...

China M&A -- The One Sentence Answer

Posted on January 18, 2008
Two days ago, I did a post on a Steve Dickinson article in China International Business Magazine on mergers and acquisitions in China. My friend, Jeremy Gordon over at China Business Blog, has inadvertently summed up both the article and the blog post n his post, "Don?t Quote Me (On Winning Strategies)...

Meet China's New M&A Policies. Same As The Old Policies.

Posted on January 16, 2008
Co-blogger, Steve Dickinson, has a new article out in China International Business Magazine, entitled, "New M&A Law:No Major Changes," Steve posits that for all the hype, China's new mergers and acquisitions (M&A) law, set to go into effect on August 1, 2008, will, as a practical matter, leave things pretty much unchanged: Contrary to expectations, the new law leaves the system for review of foreign M&A transactions unchanged...

Stopping China Online Content Theft/Seattle Blawging

Posted on January 15, 2008
At least half a dozen times, fellow China bloggers have written me, apoplectic, about someone stealing their online content. Each time, I offer to write a threatening attorney letter (for free) but tell them that may not be terribly effective. I then suggest they first very nicely ask the offending party to take down the content...

Limits On China's Soft Power: Booty Shaking

Posted on January 14, 2008
In its post, "Hu Jintao Needs to 'Get Retarded'" the always original Mutant Palm Blog convincingly argues how China's plan to use its cultural industries to advance China's soft power worldwide is doomed to failure. The post pulls the following quote from Hu Jintao's call for developing China's cultural industry: ?[we must] create more excellent, popular works that reflect the people?s principal position in the country and their real life...

China And The United States And The Balance Of Financial Terror

Posted on January 13, 2008
Brilliant (word NOT used lightly) article, entitled, The $1.4 Trillion Question, by James Fallows over at The Atlantic Magazine (h/t to China Economic Review Blog) Thesis is that China has essentially been subsidizing the United States for a long time and the key questions are whether this will continue, for how long, and what mind end it...

Zhou Enlai 101

Posted on January 13, 2008
One of my favorite blogs, Jottings From the Granite Studio, has a superb post up on Zhou Enlai, entitled, "This date in history: The Death of Zhou Enlai. Peking Duck rightly describes this post as "blogging at its very best" and additional kudos to the always formidable Danwei for spotting it first and for pulling out the following, which I too see as the key to the post: Is our lasting image of Zhou Enlai to be the smooth, urbane diplomat showing up for talks in Geneva in a tailored-suit, silk tie, and fedora? Or will it be the Zhou Enlai standing on top of Tiananmen with a red armband and a little red book, screeching in a high-pitched hysterical frenzy, "Long Live Chairman Mao!" as hordes of fanatical teenagers chant in the square and the Chairman looks on in approval? I am unable to provide a reasonably intelligent answer to that question and I am not even sure if it is because of my own shortcomings on Chinese history or if it is because it is still too soon to be able to jduge dispassionately.

Beijing Is Polluted

Posted on January 12, 2008
Since I had promised myself I would never devote a post to Beijing's pollution, please consider this to be on government manipulation of statistics and the perpetual need to examine Chinese government reporting. The International Herald Tribune just did an article, entitled, "Air Quality Improvements in Beijing Challenged," on a study claiming the sole basis for Beijing's claimed air pollution improvements rest on its no longer "including readings from two stations in polluted areas and [its now] ...

China's Class of '77 -- The Elite Of The Elite

Posted on January 12, 2008
Fascinating NY Times article on China's "class of '77," entitled, "1977 Exam Opened Escape Route Into China?s Elite." Article is on the huge successes of those who passed China's first nationwide university entrance exam since 1965 (h/t to my friend Chris Carr, over at the CalPolyMBA Blog)...

Building Workplace Trust In China -- Be Nice

Posted on January 10, 2008
Interesting article at knowledge@Wharton, entitled, "Building Workplace Trust in Some Cultures Blurs the Line Between Professional and Personal Life." The article is on a study by Singapore Management University professor of Tan Hwee Hoon, and management professors S...

Inherent Limitations On Chinese Law: Poor People Need Not Apply.

Posted on January 09, 2008
And the sign said anybody caught trespassin' would be shot on sight So I jumped on the fence and-a yelled at the house, "Hey! What gives you the right?" "To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in" "If God was here he'd tell you to your face, Man, you're some kinda sinner...

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