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CHINA LEGAL INSIGHTS
China Legal Insights
Practical China-law notes for overseas brands and sellers sourcing from Chinese factories.
NNN, Purchase & Manufacturing Agreements
Buying at the Canton Fair: What to Put in Writing Before You Pay a Chinese Supplier
Most buyers leave the fair thinking nothing binds them until they sign something formal. Often the price and quantity already bind, and everything that decides a dispute is missing.
Mold & Design Ownership
Paying for Molds in China: What to Agree Before the Factory Cuts Steel
Most mold disputes are decided by a quotation line nobody read closely. The six things to settle in writing before the deposit leaves your account.
Mold & Design Ownership
Buying an ODM Product from a Chinese Factory: Who Owns the Design, and Can You Get Exclusivity?
You chose a design from the catalogue, asked for a new colour and a different handle, and put your logo on it. Under Chinese law that usually leaves the design with the factory, and leaves you with no right to stop the next buyer.
Supplier Background Checks
Is Your Chinese Supplier a Real Factory or a Trading Company? How to Check Before You Pay
The licence alone will not tell you. What the public records can show, what they cannot, and why the answer changes who you can sue and who ends up holding your molds.
Supplier Background Checks
Your Chinese Supplier Is a Trading Company: How to Make the Contract Reach the Factory
Under Chinese law a contract binds only the companies that sign it. If your supplier is a trading company, the factory making your product is a stranger to your NNN, your quality terms and your mold clause, unless you change that before the first order.
Supplier Background Checks
Your Chinese Supplier Says It Has a New Bank Account: How to Verify Before You Pay
The email looks right, the invoice looks right, and the account is in Hong Kong "for tax reasons". Why you should treat every account change as unverified until the factory confirms it outside email, and what happens legally if the money is already gone.
Customs IP Recordal
China Customs IP Recordal: Can You Stop Fakes Before They Leave China?
Chinese customs checks exports, not just imports, and it can hold suspected fakes at the port. But it only acts on its own initiative for rights recorded with the General Administration of Customs, and only for rights you hold in China.
Customs IP Recordal
China Customs Found Suspected Fakes of Your Product: What to Do in the Three Working Days
The email from your agent arrives on a Thursday: a port in Zhejiang has stopped 2,000 units bearing your mark. You have until Tuesday. How to decide whether to detain, what the bond really costs, and how to turn one seizure into leverage against the source.
Customs IP Recordal
Your Own Goods Held at Chinese Customs Because Someone Else Owns Your Brand in China
Your factory has made your branded product for years. Then a shipment is stopped at the port, on the basis of a Chinese trademark you did not know existed, recorded with customs by someone who has never made anything.
NNN, Purchase & Manufacturing Agreements
NNN Agreements in China: How to Stop Your Chinese Factory from Copying or Selling Your Product
A Western-style NDA rarely helps against a Chinese manufacturer. What an enforceable NNN agreement looks like, what Chinese trade secret law adds, and the protections a contract cannot give you.
NNN, Purchase & Manufacturing Agreements
English or Chinese: Which Version of Your China Contract Prevails?
A prevailing-language clause helps, but it does not decide how a Chinese judge reads your contract. What PRC law says about bilingual contracts, where mismatches do the most damage, and how to draft so the Chinese text works for you.
Mold & Design Ownership
Chinese Factory Won't Return Your Molds? Tooling Ownership and How to Get It Back
You paid for the molds, but the factory has them and will not let them go. Who owns tooling under PRC law, when a factory may lawfully hold it, and the practical route to getting it out.
China Trademark Protection
Counterfeits of Your Brand on Chinese E-commerce Platforms: Takedown, Raid or Lawsuit?
Fakes on Taobao, Tmall, JD, Pinduoduo, 1688 or Douyin can be removed, raided or sued. Which tool to use, what each one needs, and why taking down listings alone rarely solves the problem.
China Trademark Protection
Someone Registered My Trademark in China: What Can I Do?
Opposition, invalidation, non-use cancellation or a negotiated buy-back: how to choose the right route against a trademark squatter, and what changes when China's revised Trademark Law takes effect on 1 January 2027.
Claims Against Suppliers
Suing a Chinese Company in a Chinese Court: What Foreign Businesses Should Expect
Filing from overseas, authorising a lawyer, getting foreign evidence admitted, how long it takes and who pays the legal fees: a practical guide for foreign companies considering litigation in mainland China.
Claims Against Suppliers
How to Freeze a Chinese Company's Assets Before You Sue: Property Preservation in China
A judgment is only worth what you can collect. How property preservation works in Chinese courts, what it costs in security, what to freeze, and when freezing too much backfires.
Claims Against Suppliers
Chinese Supplier Breached the Contract: What Can a Foreign Buyer Do?
Late delivery, defective goods or a deposit that bought nothing: what PRC law lets you recover, the deadlines that quietly kill claims, and why your dispute clause decides where you can actually get paid.
NNN, Purchase & Manufacturing Agreements
Signing a Contract with a Chinese Company: The Clauses That Decide Whether You Can Enforce It
Most contracts with Chinese suppliers and partners fail not on price or specifications but on a handful of clauses that only matter when something goes wrong. What to check before you sign, and why.
China Trademark Protection
How to Register Your Trademark in China: Chinese Brand Name, Subclasses and Timing
China is first-to-file, and a registration in Taiwan, Hong Kong, the US or the EU gives no protection in the mainland. What to file before you enter the market, how the subclass system catches foreign applicants out, and what it costs.
Claims Against Suppliers
A Chinese Company Owes You Money: How to Collect a Debt in China
Unpaid invoices from a Chinese customer or partner: what to secure in the first weeks, the limitation periods that quietly run out, how to judge whether the debtor can pay, and when to move from negotiation to court.
Claims Against Suppliers
Enforcing a Foreign Judgment or Arbitral Award in China: What Works in 2026
Arbitral awards, foreign court judgments, and Hong Kong or Taiwan judgments each take a different route into a mainland court. Which route applies to your document, how long you have, and what usually decides whether you get paid.
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