Southern Perspective Shenzhen

I play basketball with a group of foreigners in Shenzhen every week; we have been getting together for several years.

In a city like Shenzhen, people come and go quite often and it is nice to have a group of people from different walks of life that can get together.

Our group contains Americans, Canadians, Japanese, Chinese, Australians, French and occasionally African and Germans.

It is a great stress relieving therapy for most of us, a couple hours each week where you can run into people and talk about what frustrates us all about doing business in China.

One complaint that I hear quite often is about the lack of a legal system in China.

This is simply not the case, the system here is just very different from what most people are accustomed to in many other places.

In the US our legal system is designed to encourage its use in solving conflicts, in China the legal system is purposefully designed to dissuade you from ever setting foot in a Chinese court room.

This is the same for Chinese as any foreigner, the Chinese only use courts when there is ABSOUTLY NO OTHER CHOICE.

This quotation attributed to Emperor Kang Xi, (emphasis added)

“… those who have recourse to the tribunals should be treated without any pity, and in such a manner they shall be disgusted with law, and tremble to appear before a magistrate. …As for those who are troublesome, obstinate, and quarrelsome, let them be ruined in the law-courts – that is the justice that is due to them.”

M. Huc, The Chinese Empire (1855)

Justice can be had in China, but not through the same methods as in the west.

Choose your council wisely.