law Posts

Dec262011

Posted By
Ryan

From Foreign Friends to Foreign Felons – new law wants your foreign fingerprints

Because living in China didn’t feel uneasy enough, a new draft law currently under review will require any foreigners staying longer than 6 months in China to have their fingerprints taken by the Entry & Exit Bureau and kept on file.

China Daily: Foreigners who stay in China for more than six months will be required to give their fingerprints to local police when applying for residence certificates, according to a draft law submitted to the top legislature on Monday.

The draft law on the management of the exit and entry of personnel also empowers the ministries of public security and foreign affairs to decide if a foreigner should leave their fingerprints or other human biological characteristics when they enter China.

Nov092011

9Comments

Posted By
Marian

Paying Taxes

I’m trying to be a good citizen or resident or businesswoman or whatever you want to call me.

I figure I use the things that tax money buys. I use the roads and the street lights at night. I use the parks and the heavily subsidized public transportation.

So I figure it’s only right that I ought to pay taxes.

My tax rate really isn’t all that high.

In fact, my accountant’s monthly fee to file my taxes is more than my taxes are most months. And that’s before the accountant plays around with numbers on forms so that I can be billed less.

Point of fact, however, avoiding paying my taxes is significantly easier than paying my taxes.

May192011

16Comments

Posted By
Ryan

Chinese search giant Baidu in some US legal (bai)doo-doo

This is clever.

So a few years ago Google enters China and is put under a global grilling lamp on whether or not it will adhere to local laws regarding censorship and its search results. Don’t Be Evil held for a little while, but 300+ million Chinese Internet users was bound to make anyone check their morals at the gate eventually. But then, after floundering around in the country for a few years, they largely said, “F this, we’re out!“.

So a few years ago Baidu enters the US market. That the search engine filters search results to suit Beijing goes relatively unnoticed, as does actual usage of the company for anything other than investment purposes. Routinely noise gets made about Baidu distributing copyrighted this and that, and Baidu just as routinely starts blocking access to those functions for visitors coming from outside of China. Happy medium.

Then today a couple folks in Flushing, NY, get a smart idea — if Google was forced to adhere to the laws of China while operating inside the country, shouldn’t Baidu have to adhere to the laws of the US while operating there?

Dec302010

24Comments

Posted By
Ryan

Using Skype in China becoming illegal

Usually I love living in China, thirstily drinking the kool-aid that this place is changing for the better, improving a little bit every day. Sure it has its warts, but compared to 5 years ago, 15 years ago, 35 years ago… it’s definitely improving — right?

Then Youtube gets blocked, Facebook and Twitter follow, as do pretty much all major UGC/SMS sites. Ok, ok, it’s a complete pain in the ass, seems totally backwards and is making the country look more like its paranoid DPRK neighbours than a major player on the world stage. But maybe things were getting a little too out of hand with free speach 2.0, and the whole system needed to be throttled a bit to keep Zhongnanhai comfortable with modernization.

But this is just getting ridiculous:

Shanghai Daily: The Chinese regulator has declared Internet phone services other than those provided by China Telecom and China Unicom as illegal, which is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country.

Oct312009

12Comments

Posted By
Glen

On Tyranny

“For we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us”

– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Before I came to China I was asked a series of questions which seemed normal at the time but now seem completely laughable. They included “Is there a curfew?”, “Are there police everywhere?”, and “You’ll be careful, right?”. Clearly my friends and family had seen the tanks in Tienanmen, and heard Richard Gere’s thoughts about Tibet. So I don’t blame them for their concern, it is touching. But it is also on the complete opposite end of how my experiences in China have been so far.

Mar142008

15Comments

Posted By
Ryan

Communist Tax Lawyer – Clever Socialist Spam

There’s a new… umm… blog(?) coming to town and it’s aiming to clean up capitalist China consultants like they were Lenin’s laundry. While chatting with Rich Brubaker today (who was in turn also discussing the issue with Chris Devonshire-Ellis) I discovered I wasn’t the only one receiving cleverly crafted proletarian posters insidiously inserted in my [...]