International Law

Shanghaied In China. What Can I Say?

By Dan

A while back I imposed what is looking to be a stupid rule. The rule is that if I receive five emails on a topic, I will write on it. It seems whenever I get five emails on a topic on which I have not written, it is because I have concluded it is NOT a good topic on which to write. That is the case here, but with that rousing introduction, here goes.

Der Spiegel did a story the other day, entitled, "Shanghaied: The Flip Side of China's Economic Miracle," and I have now received five emails on it, essentially saying, "you should write about this." The article is on someone who bought product from China, never got the product for which he paid, and then did not get any help from the local police when he reported the people for having stolen his money.

But I really do not want to write about this story, and here are my reasons why:

1.  Yeah, so? This sort of thing goes on all the time. In China and just about everywhere else in the world?

2.  The trick to avoid this happening to you is to be really careful. Do your due diligence and have a great contract. The problem is that these things sometimes do not work when dealing with a seasoned professional crook, which seems to have been the case here.

3.  My experience has always been that if the police can call something a civil matter and thus avoid having to do anything about it, they will. This too is true around the world, unless you are Apple Computer.  

4.  Most importantly, when I write a post like this, I like to point out what the "victim" did wrong and how you can avoid the same fate by doing things correctly. The problem with this article is it appears the victim did nothing wrong.

So there you have it. It is, apparently, a jungle out there.  

Full post as published by China Law Blog on June 10, 2010 (boomark / email).