Legal Industry News

SMEs In China: Much Opportunity But Little Room For Error.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010
Source: China Law Blog

By Dan Harris and Simon Malinowski

Many years ago, a friend of mine who helped head up the international division of a well-known United States multinational asked me how I thought his company should go into a particular country (not China). I told him I would ask a friend of mine from that country who really knew how things worked there. This friend told me exactly how the multinational needed to enter and he assured me that if it did anything different, it would encounter big problems.

My friend told me that his company had never done what my guy was proposing and it would not do that in this country either. It didn't and one year later my friend confessed to me that his company had made a big mistake and they actually hired my in-country friend as a consultant (which he had not even suggested in his original manifesto).  Within months, the multinational's problems had disappeared and it is now very profitable in that country.  

When I made my friend take me out for an "I told you so lunch," he downplayed everything saying his company's mistakes had "only" cost them one year and less than...

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A ‘Disappointed & Shocked’ Top Judge is Reprimanded for Refusing Execution-Eve Appeal

Sunday, July 18th, 2010
Source: ABA Journal Top Stories The top criminal appeals court judge in Texas was reprimanded today for refusing to accept a late appeal hours before an inmate was executed and hence failing in her duty to maintain open access to the courts. The Commission on Judicial Conduct found that Presiding Judge Sharon Keller of the state Court of Criminal Appeals engaged in “willful or persistent conduct that casts public discredit on the judiciary or the administration of justice” by neither instructing the court clerk to wait a short time for the appeal filing nor telling the clerk that another judge was assigned to handle last-minute… Read the rest of the...

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On Why Being A Friend Of China Matters To Your Business.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010
Source: China Law Blog

Great piece of cultural information from Jason Patent's blog post, "Friend of China or ... Other?" Patent's post starts out talking about Lenovo Chairman Liu Chuanzhi's recent comment on how Lenovo is "lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble."

Patent expects this comment "has been well received" in China and he attributes this to the fact that "few things are more important in China than being a 'friend of China.'"  Patent then quotes from Dr. James Chan, who has this to say about the importance of "Acceptance" in doing business with China:  

There is one thing many Westerners don't think about when they walk into China. What the Chinese people really want from Westerners is "acceptance." If you want to sell anything to the Chinese or, for that matter, build relationships with the Chinese, you must make your customers, contacts, associates, and partners feel you are not behaving that a "barbarian" or "marauder." This is a key perception that is deeply-rooted in the Chinese psyche based on thousands of...

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