Doing Business With China: A First Person Account

Doing Business In China

A First Person China Business Story

Eons ago, a veteran China hand responded to one of our blog posts by writing me with his own story of China problems. I found his story both typical and fascinating and sought his permission to run it. He gave me permission to run it anonymously and then I promptly lost it in the shuffle. Until now.

This story provides two great takeaways for doing business in China. First, get everything in writing — in Chinese and in clear and excruciating detail. Two, figure that your relationship between you and your Chinese partner will change and that your great relationship now could easily go sour later. Which gets us back to why the first takeaway is so important.

The below is his story, and it is every bit as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. I added the headings, but left the rest exactly as written.

My China Journey

I started coming to China from Australia in late 2006 to find a company or companies to process wood flooring products I had been marketing in Japan for over ten years. My going to China was driven by rising costs and my firm's view that the Australian dollar would strengthen as the mining boom accelerated.

Initial Observations on Doing Business with China

I quickly found that it was not a matter of negotiating a deal, putting it in writing and heading off over the horizon to market my competitive advantage. I was soon pinned down in various factories making sure that my material was not turned into boiler fuel. Timber is a not a complicated business, but it does require systems and a great degree of care, but here there was a great void in most cases between the tea drinkers in the office and the ordinary workers who were generally farmers with no idea how a factory should work. Systems, management and QC were no more than marketing slogans (along with win-win). Even when the Chinese company appeared to be modern and prosperous, a few days on site quickly left one disillusioned — yet another lemon.

Deciding not to Joint Venture

After a year or so, and half a dozen or more factories, I decided that, in spite of the obvious challenges, I would be better off doing this on my own in my own factory, not with a Joint Venture. No doubt I did everything wrong in terms of how I went about finding information and setting up a WOFE, but with the help of the local government I managed it without major hassles and even after almost five years there have been no significant problems associated with this. I figured that if I had the support of the local government I would not be kicked out and having learnt a little of how things work I also thought that problems could be ironed out one way or another and would probably cost me no more than had I enlisted expert help. I can hear Dan grinding his teeth from here, but small-time entrepreneurs have a different view of risk and opportunity. With more to lose I would certainly have gone about things in a more orthodox way.

My China Business Crisis

My big problem had nothing to do with this. It started the day in December 2008 when I found my bank account frozen. There was no notification and no immediate explanation from the bank in response to our phone calls. After a couple of days in limbo we received a letter from the local city court advising that we were being sued for failure to pay a debt. The lights came on.

I had been doing business with a local company and was on good terms with the owner until a few months earlier. When I was setting up in mid-2008, I asked his advice on some secondhand equipment that I was intending to buy. He was about to leave for Vietnam and so suggested he look at it when he got back, which was fine with me, but on his return, he offered to help me to purchase and install an entire production line because a factory had gone belly up in Shanghai. This seemed to be a good idea, provided the equipment was what I needed. He claimed to have seen the equipment and said that it was only six months old. He would talk to the factory and get a price when he was next in Shanghai. I said that I would not buy anything that I had not seen, but he responded that if I were to turn up with him the price would undoubtedly be higher. I would not have agreed to this except that he assured me that if I did not want it, he would take it himself. All he needed was a returnable deposit of 30% from me and I would get the choice. I did not think that he would renege on this as we had been friends for over a year and a half and had conducted regular business, worth about $25,000 per month, and he had always kept his side of the bargain until that point.

My Agreement with the Chinese Company

We put everything in writing, and I was intending to get it drawn up into a formal contract. I did it up as a quasi-legal document based on my limited legal knowledge from a previous life. I was very clear about the deposit being returnable without conditions. We both signed this document (which was in Chinese), and I had my translation as well as a detailed appendix of the equipment with a break down showing the value ascribed to each item. (Hold this last thought).

The deal was good and the equipment, if as described, would have served my purposes well, but when it was delivered, there had been a few changes. He explained to me that the Taiwanese sander on the list was not as good as he had thought and so he had substituted a better one. I was beginning to feel that things were going pear shaped. If he had seen the equipment, why was it no longer good? (I learned later that the "bad" sander had been delivered to his factory and he had given me his Chinese one worth about 20% of the price.)

My Legal Challenge

I went to check the machinery the next day, but it was difficult to see in the unlit storage area and it was covered in dust. Half the equipment was absent, and it turned out that there was a second truck that went to another location, which in retrospect was to drop off some equipment my friend thought was superfluous to my humble requirements. The next day more equipment was delivered, but a major component, the dust extraction system, was not among them. I was told it was big and awkward and would be brought over later when we did the installation and set-up.

There was a two-month delay in installing the equipment because the local authorities in the industrial park had run out of money and could not afford to connect the power. Hmmn. In the meantime, while I patiently watched several revised deadlines float by, Lehman Brothers collapsed. That was of course before my troubles started and, although worrying, did not seem to be a showstopper. Perhaps it should have been, but it was too late anyway. I had contracted with the factory and had all this equipment ready to go in.

Equipment Issues and Discrepencies

Finally in October we got power on in the factory and could now install the equipment. At this point my benefactor explained that the dust extraction system would not be good enough for my factory, which was in an industrial park with relatively high environmental standards. He deducted a trivial amount from the contract, equivalent to one eighth of the amount noted in the annex. The explanation for this was that it was a "package price" and the individual prices were just rough numbers.

I was shocked and realized that I had been stitched up. The equipment, now that it was in the light and cleaned up, was not six months old, but four years old. I immediately went to see my former friend to get an explanation and to ask him either to reduce the price drastically to reflect what I had received or to take it all away. He was calm in the face of my obvious anger and anxiety. He explained to me that it would all be fine and that everything would work. It was like a car, the outside might not look so flash, but it would still get me from point A to point B. I countered that I had paid for a six-month-old Mercury and had received a four-year-old Volkswagen Santana and I did not want a Santana. My customers would not want a Santana either. They would expect to see good quality equipment with very fine tolerances, not a bunch of old crap. I said I wanted my money back, to which he responded that I should have done this in July when the equipment arrived. But there was no such condition. The equipment was to be delivered and installed and I had the option not to accept it. It was unequivocal. He then said that he would finish the installation and I could see how it all functioned. I said that was not going to change anything.

Legal Complications and Confrontations

Incidentally, concerning the age of the equipment, the English version of the contract said it was six months old, but the authentic version, the Chinese, said it was used for six months. This should not matter because normally equipment that is six months old is used for six months, but when it is four years old, there is no way to prove that it had only been used for six months. The clock on one key machine showed that it could indeed have been used for six months if it had been run 24 hours a day for six months with no shutdown. In reality, the clock showed that it had been operated normally for about three years. I asked him why he did not tell me it was four years old. He said it was good enough for my factory and he did not think it was an important fact.

To install the line, I now needed to buy a dust extraction system and so I contracted with a company to provide a new one with a high specification that would do the job whatever equipment I finally ended up with. The line was duly installed, and we did some test runs. There were various problems, but he had people come in and patch these up. I was not happy, but believed at this stage that the best solution was to negotiate a new price, use what was acceptable and buy replacement machines where necessary. We started operating, using equipment that got me from point A to point B, but that was not a long-term answer. I let him know that I would not pay another cent and that he could come anytime and take the line out. It was a gamble, but I figured he knew he had done the dirty on me and he would just opt for what he could get.

Over the next month or so we had a few meetings, but it was a stalemate. I had the equipment, and he had my deposit, and in my view it was a reasonable deal, so I had no intention of budging.