Observations of doing business in China

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Mon, 12/11/2006 - 8:52pm.

When I was in high school, I took three years of Chinese. Did I decide to take Chinese out of a concern for the future? No, we signed up too late and it was either Chinese or Russian.

Learning Chinese was exciting, but after three years we could only speak like Chinese 3rd graders and could only write like Chinese 2nd graders. Meanwhile, the folks who took Spanish, French or even Russian were speaking and writing like high school students. Go figure.

Yes, I still remember some Chinese, but mostly it's how to count to ten.

I am still very interested in China, so I try to read how things are going in the country. A blog entry from Bunnie:Studios explains how business is done in the new China.

It's a fascinating look at the reality of today's China. What gripped me the most was this:

I don’t know if this is accurate, but I was told that in China, if you accidentally kill someone, you don’t go to jail. You are fined 50,000 RMB to the family (about USD 6,500) of the victim. Every time you kill someone, the fine goes up, until your fourth incident, where you will go to jail or be sentenced to death yourself, unless you pay off an official.

Ouch.