What are some of the major obstacles to doing business with China?
A major difference is that, here, businesses are guided by well-defined legal standards. Over there, you can get a sense of the direction of the law, but you have to talk to the authorities. The law isn’t as black and white, and there’s more negotiation as to how any law will be interpreted. In China, you have the law in books and the law in practice, and sometimes they don’t line up. For instance, there may be exemptions to their value-added tax, but the exemptions aren’t published, so you need to know what authorities to talk to. But [the situation] is getting better over time. What also concerns Westerners is the lack of protection afforded intellectual property rights. Even though great strides have been made to get such laws on the books [in China], the enforcement of those laws is inconsistent. Often, judges are political appointees and what is sometimes seen is an interpretation that is more political in nature than legal. Finally, Chinese banks historically have been controlled
