About 90 percent of the China expats have left, estimates China lawyer Mark Schaub in his latest China Chitchat. And while new people are slowly coming back, those who left are struggling to sell their business, he says. What are the challenges they are facing, Schaub summarizes in the first part.Read More →

China will implement a new PRC company law and veteran lawyer Mark Schaub expects most people will doze off before they make it to the end of that law. In his China Chit-Chat website, he summarizes the main changes and insists you should pay attention. He covers important issues like: “The new PRC Company Law sets a 5-year deadline to make promised capital contributions. Crucially this requirement will apply retrospectively. Ouch!” And who is the boss in a company, and how to fire a director.Read More →

London-based China veteran Mark Schaub summarizes in his China Chit-chat newsletter the meetings his law firm had with 24 Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) from China over the last three months of 2023. They were checking out opportunities in Europe and the Middle East, partly because their offspring was not really interested in joining their China business. They would look for lessons from their European counterparts but failed because of the differences between Chinese and Europeans, and because the concept of paying for professional legal advice did not yet take root among the Chinese visitors.Read More →

The German government has become much more assertive about the country’s wheeling and dealing with China. Veteran China lawyer Mark Schaub visited over the past few weeks Berlin and Munich and felt the pulse of the German business communities toward China, he reports in his China Chit-chat. “Politicians in Germany have limited ability to influence or pressure German business. Consumers can be upset … but will become upset about something else 5 minutes later,” he writes.Read More →

China veteran lawyer Mark Schaub looks back at the three decades he was involved with China and assesses how the country might look like in 2023, in his China chit-chat. What can larger foreign companies and the smaller ones expect? And of course: what is happening to the joint ventures?Read More →

The story that Western companies are fleeing China is as old as the presence of foreign companies in China. China lawyer Mark Schaub looks at the recent flare in Western media and explains why they are wrong, again, in his weekly China Chit-chat.Read More →

China lawyer Mark Schaub returned to London after three months of quarantine in Shanghai, including a COVID camp. He looks back at the experience in his resumed China Chit-Chat.  How bad was it really? How different is it from the US? And: are his Chinese friends leaving Shanghai?Read More →

Foreign firms have been isolated more than ever from their China operations because of COVID-19 and the ongoing lockdowns. China lawyer Mark Schaub looks at the situation in 2022: “If you intend to continue with your subsidiaries in China then greater local decision-making power seems to be a likely pre-requisite to success,” he argues in his weekly newsletter. He looks at the good, the bad, and the ugly general managers.Read More →

Foreign companies have been struggling how to manage their China investments for decades. Veteran China lawyer Mark Schaub, partner at KWM, looks at how the questions have remained, but the answers changed as China developed from a lucrative niche market into a major competitor for most industries, in his weekly Chit-Chat China.Read More →