Plain-English guides on the situations foreign buyers actually face — what the law says, what it costs, and what to do first.
Chinese lawyers charge in four ways: hourly, fixed fee, fixed fee plus success fee, and pure success fee. Here is how each works, the court fees and translation costs that come on top, and the engagement letter and invoice that protect you.
Read the guide →A Chinese judgment can reach more than the unpaid invoice: contract interest, LPR-based late-payment damages, lost profits, liquidated damages, court costs and — if you drafted the clause — the supplier's attorney fees. What is recoverable by default and what only comes if you wrote for it.
Read the guide →If your China contract is silent on governing law, the CISG may already govern it — and choosing 'Chinese law' does not exclude it. What the treaty changes for buyers: conformity, inspection duties, the two-year notice bar, interest, and the three clauses that fix it.
Read the guide →Chinese limitation rules run on several clocks at once: the three-year Civil Code period, the two-year quality-notice bar, the one-year maritime window. What starts each clock, what interrupts and restarts it, and what to do this week if yours is already old.
Read the guide →No clause doesn't mean no law: silence usually means Chinese law anyway. What the Chinese conflict-of-laws statute says about choosing your law, the proof burden that breaks foreign-law choices, the CISG interaction, and why arbitration changes the map.
Read the guide →Your bilingual contract has two texts and they are not the same deal. How Chinese courts decide which text controls, the words that don't survive translation (deposit vs 定金, penalty vs 违约金), and how to draft a hierarchy clause and defined-terms table that actually protect you.
Read the guide →You wired a deposit against a PDF proforma invoice and a WeChat confirmation — is that a contract? Under PRC law, usually yes. How offer, acceptance and performance form contracts without signatures, what courts reconstruct from PI plus chats plus payment records, and the terms a PI leaves out that decide disputes.
Read the guide →A US-style NDA gives you almost nothing in a Chinese courtroom. What an NNN agreement actually adds — non-disclosure, non-use, non-circumvention — the Chinese-law tools underneath it (trade secrets, pre-contract confidentiality), and how to draft one that is executable in China.
Read the guide →A factory, a distributor, or a stranger watching export data registers your brand in China first. How the first-to-file rule works, your three defensive windows — opposition, invalidation, buyback — and the paperwork that prevents the problem entirely.
Read the guide →How China customs recordal works: recording your trademark with the General Administration of Customs, the detention mechanism, bonds and complaints, the two directions of protection — and the third direction where a squatter's registration gets your own genuine goods detained.
Read the guide →Deposit paid, goods half-produced, and the supplier demands 8% more or nothing ships. Who legally bears a raw-material, FX or tariff move under Chinese law: the force majeure and hardship escape doors examined honestly, the buyer's options ladder (renegotiate, cover, cancel), and the evidence to build while the argument is hot.
Read the guide →Why a sealed golden sample wins quality disputes in China: what it legally is, why most samples fail as evidence, the two-sample sealing discipline, how judicial appraisal works, and the first-48-hours checklist when bad goods land.
Read the guide →A foreign buyer's guide to a Chinese supplier's bankruptcy: what freezes the moment the court accepts the case, your four possible positions and what each recovers, how to declare claims, claw-back risk on late settlements, and the early-warning signals to act on.
Read the guide →A deposit vanished and the supplier went silent. Civil suit or criminal report? How contract fraud works in China, how the two tracks really compare, and how to decide before the limitation clock runs out.
Read the guide →An “updated bank details” email redirects your balance payment to a fraudster. What business email compromise looks like in China trade, the first-24-hour playbook, the legal claims against the receiving account, and the prevention stack that stops it.
Read the guide →How pre-suit and during-case asset preservation works in China: the two Civil Procedure Law doors, security and insurance bonds, what can be frozen, the wrong-freeze risk, and the sequencing that turns a freeze into settlement leverage.
Read the guide →Chinese courts accept WeChat and WhatsApp records as evidence — but admitted and persuasive are different things. Identity, integrity, completeness, translation, and the traps that turn your own chats against you, with a step-by-step evidence package.
Read the guide →Winning against a Chinese supplier in your home court is half the job. How Chinese courts recognize foreign judgments under Article 299 of the PRC Civil Procedure Law: the treaty and reciprocity routes after the 2021 SPC symposium minutes, the country map, refusal grounds, and the pre-signing checklist.
Read the guide →Suing a Chinese supplier in your home courts: when it works, the Hague Service Convention problem, the enforcement cliff for mainland assets, and the drafting fixes (forum clause, service-agent clause) that decide the case before it starts.
Read the guide →China joined the Hague Apostille Convention on November 7, 2023: what the apostille replaces (consular legalization — not notarization), the document checklist for a China-bound litigation pack, the edge cases that still bite, and the sequencing that saves weeks.
Read the guide →An LC pays against documents, not against goods. Issuing bank identity, the documents clause, third-party certificates, surveyor appointment, quantity tolerance, NOR/demurrage — six clauses from a real 26,500-tonne import that decide whether the machine pays you or the seller's paperwork.
Read the guide →In a bilingual contract with a Chinese supplier, the Chinese characters ding jin decide whether your deposit is forfeitable — or just a refundable advance. Articles 586 and 587 of the PRC Civil Code, explained by a trade lawyer.
Read the guide →The 30/70 payment split is the industry default — and it protects the supplier more than the buyer. How to structure T/T milestones around verifiable events: loading photos, inspection reports, B/L copies. Structure templates by deal profile, and the red flag of full payment before container loading.
Read the guide →Contract entity, invoice header, bank account name: three names that must match. Personal accounts, offshore accounts, third-party payees — the risk profile of each, when there's a legitimate explanation (export agency structures), and when to stop the wire.
Read the guide →Soft clauses turn an irrevocable letter of credit into an option for the buyer. The classic catalogue — buyer-signed inspection certificates, original B/L sent to the applicant, credits effective only on license receipt, shipment dates at the seller's notice — with identification methods and deletion wording for each.
Read the guide →Around most LC presentations a discrepancy lurks: late shipment, documents inconsistent, a spelling in the wrong place, an unclean bill of lading. The ten most common refusal reasons under UCP 600 practice, the prevention for each, and what a beneficiary can actually do within the five banking days after a refusal notice.
Read the guide →You paid the tooling fee, but the mold sits in the supplier's plant. Without a tooling ownership clause, a mold can be held hostage, 'amortized' against your balance, or run for competitors. How to write ownership, retrieval and relocation into a China purchase contract.
Read the guide →'Quality per contract and samples' is unenforceable in a Chinese court. How to write AQL sampling (ISO 2859-1 / ANSI/ASQ Z1.4), defect classifications and inspection-report evidence requirements into a China purchase contract — with a model clause.
Read the guide →Late-delivery LD clauses are enforceable under Chinese law — but adjustable. How Article 585 of the Civil Code works, how high is too high, why LD and deposit penalties cannot be stacked, and how to draft a weekly-percent-with-cap clause that survives judicial review.
Read the guide →Retention of title under Articles 641 and 642 of the PRC Civil Code: how the clause works, why registration decides whether it beats third parties, how to combine ROT with bill-of-lading control, and what happens if the buyer enters insolvency.
Read the guide →You paid for exclusivity; your supplier sells to your competitors. What Chinese law clearly gives an exclusive buyer, what remains contested — competition-law boundaries, specific performance — and how to draft and preserve evidence so the promise is worth something.
Read the guide →Factory-direct saves the middleman margin but changes your litigation position. A contract-counterparty comparison from the enforcement side: paid-in capital, litigation records, control of goods and documents, contract quality, and who you can actually recover from.
Read the guide →The supplier asks you to sign with its Hong Kong trading company while the factory and the goods sit on the mainland. Why that gap between contracting entity and performing entity becomes an enforcement problem — and how to fix it before signing.
Read the guide →Company A signs, Company B produces, Company C collects. How related-entity structures in Chinese supply chains dilute your claim — what Article 23 of the Company Law (2023 revision) actually provides, including horizontal veil-piercing, and the commingling evidence courts credit.
Read the guide →Many Chinese factories export through foreign-trade agents, so the contract, the agency agreement, the customs declaration and the VAT invoice can each name a different entity. What that means for quality claims, tax invoices and payment paths — and how to draft through the structure.
Read the guide →Chinese courts, CIETAC, HKIAC — or no clause at all, which means statutory jurisdiction. A working comparison of dispute resolution clauses in China supply contracts, including the drafting traps that void arbitration clauses and what each forum means for enforcement.
Read the guide →Original bill of lading, telex release, or sea waybill — the release decision decides who controls the cargo until payment. Comparison, a payment-method × release-method matrix, and two expensive lessons from practice.
Read the guide →The goods are gone but you hold the original bills of lading. Delivery without BL under Chinese law: the SPC provisions that put the carrier on the hook, whom to sue, what you can claim, and how FOB forwarder nomination creates the risk.
Read the guide →The container arrived damaged — now the claim gets won or lost. The 48-hour evidence sequence: documentation, joint survey, written reservation of rights, carrier vs seller vs insurer, and insurance notice deadlines. A field checklist from real cargo-damage files.
Read the guide →FOB, CIF, EXW as a decision matrix: risk transfer points, document duties, and — the part nobody teaches — who holds which documents when damage happens, and therefore who can actually sue whom. Plus why the Incoterms version in your contract matters.
Read the guide →Should you take a discounted settlement from a Chinese supplier? The framework: settlement value = win probability × enforceable amount − remaining costs − time value − collection risk. How to estimate each input, and a five-step calculation process from a lawyer with an accounting background.
Read the guide →The complete path from "we have a problem" to "we have a judgment" — jurisdiction, the CISG, evidence, preservation, cost, and what to realistically expect at each stage.
Read the guide →Straight talk on the demand letter: when it resolves a dispute in days, when it's a waste of money, and how the letter in the case study recovered the goods within a week.
Read the guide →The checks that separate a real factory from a shell — registration, paid-in capital, one-person company risk, payment-account identity, and the financial signals a lawyer-accountant actually looks for.
Read the guide →Late, partial, or never-coming goods: the correct sequence of moves — from evidence to written demand to escalation — and the remedies Chinese law and the CISG actually give you.
Read the guide →Judgments are only worth what they collect. Asset tracing, enforcement tools, the dishonest-debtor list, and the shareholder-liability route that turns uncollectable cases collectable.
Read the guide →These guides cover the general map. If you want to know where your particular dispute sits on it — and what to do first — send me the facts.
Describe your situation