Trade Secrets in China The challenge is thus how a Chinese company can protect its trade secrets when an employee quits to either start a competing business of his or her own or to join a competitor without violating PRC law in the process As China continues to develop truly world-class e-commerce and other Internet […]

ICP License and China Law The Internet has exploded in China, and some of the world’s leading e-commerce and other web-based business like Alibaba, WeChat and others have originated from the PRC.  However, the PRC does exercise stricter control over the Internet and websites than some foreign businesses might be used to. In order to […]

Investment Law in China In 2016, China’s government passed a new foreign investment law (the Foreign Invested Enterprises Law) designed to make the PRC a more attractive environment for foreign investors.  In connection with this new law, the Chinese government, through the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), also issued new regulations regarding the formation and registration […]

China Employment Law and Employee Handbooks In many Western countries, written employee handbooks have been standard practice for most employers for decades. These handbooks provide a uniform set of guidelines that the employer follows in terms of employee dress codes, vacation policies, procedures and grounds regarding discipline and termination of employees, and a whole host […]

Franchising American restaurants in China was recently in the news amid reports that fast food giant McDonald’s has sold its mainland China and Hong Kong businesses to a consortium between the state-owned Chinese conglomerate Citic and the American private equity giant Carlyle Group for $2.03 billion. Among the key points of the deal was that […]

Under Chinese law, every company must have a legal representative when starting a company or opening a new business in the PRC.  A company’s legal representative is the individual who serves as the legal embodiment of the company’s interests for purposes of the Chinese government.  His or her name appears on the company’s business license […]

The EB-5 visa is a United States visa program for immigrant investors that was first instituted by the federal Immigration Act of 1990.  The EB-5 visa provides means to obtain a green card, and eventually a path to permanent residency in the United States, for foreign investors who invest large sums of money in the […]

The Companies Law of the People’s Republic of China requires that all foreign-owned corporate entities have a registered physical address in China.  However, many foreign investors have gambled (and lost) that Chinese authorities will not catch on if they simply use an inappropriate address (whether it be a virtual office or an address that has […]

As anyone who knows remotely anything about China can tell you, let alone anyone who has lived or is currently living in China, interest in teaching English in China by native (or not) English speakers has grown exponentially as China’s economy has exploded over the past several decades. There were over 300,000 English language schools […]