As usual the China Law Blog is right on the mark. It is nothing revolutionary but just basic common sense (to me now…after being here a year).
The best way to get into legal trouble in China is to listen to your Chinese staff or Chinese business partners on legal matters.
This is not to say that there are not a lot of very professional, dedicated and ethical people here (though I would say a definition of “ethical” is based on cultural norms and therefore is different depending on where one grew up or was educated). There are.
Just be damn sure when you have questions or concerns about the gray areas of Chinese laws that you defer to a real specialist who you are sure doesn’t have any potential conflicts of interest. And even then I would say that any gray areas should be treated with a lot of caution. Foreign invested enterprises in particular should error on the side of being safe instead of thinking that gray means you should be able to escape from trouble when the authorities come calling. You might be. If you’re wrong well…you’ll probably find out real quick that you have few friends here or even back home in headquarters.
Let yourself slip off the high road in search of faster sales growth or more profits and you might spend a lot of your time here digging yourself out of a never ending mess.
