A cautionary tale about doing business in China lately. Basically the Fellowes company, who make paper shredders and office products got their entire factory stolen lock, stock and barrel from under them.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/chin...ina-54204.html
Quote:
There are few paper shredders in the world that can rip an A4 piece of paper into 2,000 pieces, and come with functions like SilentShred, SafeSense, and “100% Jam Proof”—and most that do have the name “Fellowes” printed on top. But consumers may soon be able to buy, say, the deluxe Powershred C-480Cx, without the Fellowes brand, because the company’s entire business in China has been stolen by its joint venture partner.
Over 1,600 workers at the joint venture facility in China turned up one day in August last year to find that the factory gates were locked, trucks had blockaded the entrances, and a group of rough-and-ready enforcers were telling them to move on.
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What too often what happens once you set up and are successful in China is that the Chinese either steal your designs and intellectual property and start producing a competing line of products in their own factories, or they do what happened here, where they literally steal the entire contents of the manufacturing facility.
That's not a private action - it's undertaken with the explicit consent and involvement of the government. A business license is, of course, a government-controlled thing. Your politically-connected "joint venture" partner suddenly becomes you blood enemy and rips off everything you had in their nation. Then, having effectively frozen your operation, you get sued by your suppliers who you can't pay (since you can't ship the product) and the Chinese strip the carcass of whatever you were dumb enough to locate in their nation to the bone.
The ironic thing is that Fellowes is trying to start up again--in Illinois. Maybe if they had never left.
