Looking for an English Speaking Lawyer

[Brad Gies]

Here’s my situation: I’m Canadian, just married my Chinese girlfriend, living in Chengdu, but still just using my Chinese Visitor’s Visa (still have a couple of months left on it, and it’s multi-entry so could go to Hong Kong and back to extend it).

We haven’t decided whether we want to live in Canada, and visit China a lot, or live in China and visit Canada a lot ;). Not sure yet what we will decide on.

I currently work as a remote programmer for a U.S. company so have no need to work in China, but I want to investigate the possibility of starting a business here.

So… I’d like to have a chat with an English speaking Chinese lawyer, or at least get some legal advise from someone that can tell me what I would have to do to register a company here in China.

Can anyone recommend someone?

Brad.

[Rick in China]

ChinaLawBlog – their service isn’t cheap, but they’re (I think) the best-known corporate law firm with foreigners/English speaking staff..based in Shanghai for their China side services though.

You don’t need a lawyer to register a company, though, there are lots of full detailed walk-throughs on what you need to do. I think there are several on this site, even. http://www.chinalawblog.com has great information on a lot of doing-business-in-china as well as the same sort of “what you need to know” about different types of businesses here.

RE: Visa – if you’re married now, you should be able to switch to a marriage visa, which is 1 year visa at the PSB office at TianFu Square.

[Brad Gies]

Thanks Rick…. appreciated 🙂

I do all my own legal work in Canada (even represented myself a couple of times in court), but I’m really reluctant to commit any money to a business here without legal advice ;).

Brad.

[Mr. Klink]

If you want to go through the process of registering a business here as a foreigner and do it the WFOE way, the process is long, arduous, and full of idiosyncratic hullabaloo. All in order to start operations that leave you taxed in a biased way.

Starting a business with a Chinese partner runs it’s own set of perils unless you know your partner extremely well and can trust them wholly. You’re married right?

My two cents, have your wife go through the process of opening whatever business it is you want in her name, draw up a contract or agreement stipulating this relationship according to foreign trade principles (you’re married, you make this choice as you please — additionally, with a little elbow grease you don’t need a lawyer for this) and just run the show yourself. Not only in starting it is it easier, but managing the business afterwards is way more lax.

As Rick said you’re eligible for a marriage visa, so you don’t really need to sweat having the business provide you one which is a whole other set of heartaches granted you were to take a stab at opening the business yourself.

[Rick in China]

Brad, I just recently went through the process of starting my own business in HK with the specific reason of accepting remittance from a company who wanted to contract me directly and needed proper accounting practices in place, is there a specific reason you want to start a domestic WFOE/other local company? Do you need to provide 发票s or something similar? Unless you’ve got serious domestic market or solely domestic market that needs 发票 in order to do business, there is *really* no need, and in fact much downside, to registering a local business. Jacob’s right in both of his dissections of WFOE being a headache to start up (albeit not THAT bad, just lots of waiting and repeatedly going to same offices to find out “what else is needed”), and JVs are generally a very bad idea for small start-ups.

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