https://www.scmp.com/rss/501711/feed Frank Hong is a corporate lawyer and the founder of the Shanghai-based Cook Ding Institute. www.cookding.org en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Since Chinese variable interest entity (VIE) companies made their debut in the early 2000s in the first wave of the internet economy, once in a while, international lawyers and investment bankers get anxious and ask: when is China going to crack down on VIE structures? This is not so much about a US$4 trillion ticking time bomb – the capitalisation in the MSCI China Index estimated to be held by more than 100 VIE companies – as a hammer in search of a Chinese nail to hit. Yet Western... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3115587/why-china-turns-blind-eye-vie-tech-firms-and-their-foreign?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3115587/why-china-turns-blind-eye-vie-tech-firms-and-their-foreign?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 Dec 2020 17:30:09 +0000 Serious news organisations in the United States have been avoiding the obvious question: is there anything that America can learn from China – as far as saving lives is concerned? The consensus behind this dodging is as subtle as it is deep-seated. One is an authoritarian nation, while the other is a leader of the free world. There is no moral equivalency, as the saying goes. Sporadic reporting on China’s experience in battling Covid-19 is cast as exotic tales from a remote land. When Americans... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3113517/covid-19-us-society-puts-individual-public-health-lacks-common?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3113517/covid-19-us-society-puts-individual-public-health-lacks-common?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 11 Dec 2020 17:30:06 +0000 If you had to choose one word to describe China, what would it be? Adding “communist” or “red” before “China” has become so hackneyed that only someone as stodgy as Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s trade adviser, still gets a kick out of uttering the words on live television. The word “authoritarian” is a safe bet. Still, as America suffers from excessive dogma on both the religious and secular fronts, this otherwise loaded concept no longer packs a moral punch. China has so far avoided the word... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3109758/strong-proud-china-right-be-assertive-pursuing-its-national?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3109758/strong-proud-china-right-be-assertive-pursuing-its-national?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Nov 2020 02:15:10 +0000 As a candidate for the 2016 US presidential election, Donald Trump vowed to name China as a currency manipulator “on day one” as president. On August 5 this year, he finally made the move, but hardly with the triumph of fulfilling a campaign promise.  The immediate context of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s declaring China a “currency manipulator” is that the renminbi fell below the psychologically important level of 7 yuan to the US dollar, which of course happened on the heels of Trump’s... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3021779/trump-finally-labels-china-currency-manipulator-it-may-be-too?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3021779/trump-finally-labels-china-currency-manipulator-it-may-be-too?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 07 Aug 2019 16:30:12 +0000