Dan Harris is a founding member of Harris Bricken, an international law firm where he mostly represents companies doing business in emerging market countries. Most of his time is spent helping American and European companies navigate foreign countries by working with the international lawyers at his firm in setting up companies overseas (WFOEs, Subsidiaries, Rep Offices and Joint Ventures), drafting international contracts, protecting IP, and overseeing M&A transactions.
In addition, Dan writes and speaks extensively on international law, with a focus on protecting foreign businesses in their overseas operations. He is also a prolific and widely-followed blogger, writing as the co-author of the award-winning China Law Blog.
Economist Magazine just came out with an article discussing what companies involved in China are doing these days with China, what they are thinking of doing in the future with China, and what they should do in the future with China. The article is entitled, Multinational firms are finding it hard to let go of
A while back (I am being intentionally vague here to avoid identifying anyone) a U.S. client company contacted our China lawyers about shutting down its China WFOE and/or terminating all of its roughly 47 China employees in one fell swoop. The U.S. company had discovered rampant corruption among its employees and its CEO wanted the
Our international manufacturing lawyers work with many experienced and really good international product sourcing consultants. These consultants are usually really good for the following reasons: They know the ins and outs of what it takes to succeed in buying products from foreign countries. They know the ins and outs of how to find good companies
Foreign companies see China as increasingly risky and they are looking to move out or reduce their footprint there.
If you buy products from China or have your products made in China, there is a good chance you are familiar with Sinosure. This post discusses how Sinosure has greatly changed just in the last few months in terms of how it treats foreign companies.
THE buzzword for the next 5-10 years will be "zero-China." It is mostly being used to describe companies seeking to re-jigger their supply chains to completely exclude China, but I think it will eventually come to mean any effort to be rid of China.
Selling a stripped down (off the shelf) WFOE seldom works. Sorry.
There are those who believe China's ongoing Party Congress will bode well for companies that do business in or with China. I am firmly convinced that the opposite is true and that it will used as yet another opportunity by China to show that it will not be cowered by the declining relations and sanctions/counter-sanctions between the United States / EU / Australia / Japan on the one hand, and China on the other. I see China using this Congress to let the world (domestic and external) know that it fully intends to fight back and fight back hard. In other words, this Party Congress will lead to China's decoupling from much of the world accelerating, not slowing down.
I am more convinced than ever that the CCP does NOT want to ameliorate COVID's impact on China because doing so would diminish its incredible power and control over its people. And I'm also more convinced than ever that COVID in China -- more accurately, the CCP's handling of COVID -- will negatively impact foreign companies there for a long, long time.
At least once a day, someone — usually a client — asks me if President Xi will hold onto power. And every day, I give a much shorter version of the following half-serious, half-facetious answer: He will hold onto power, but for how long I don’t know. It’s like the stock market. I can right
