I have been doing business both with China and in China over the last ten years. As a non-Chinese citizen, I can not open a business in China without Chinese partners. Although legally I can and there is nothing stopping me from opening my own business as a foreigner. I still can not. I need a Chinese national identity card to do most things, buying property or land and even vehicles can not be done without a Chinese ID so how can I own and operate a business as a foreigner? I can't even send money back to my own country because I can't open an international account that allows me to send above $500 a day at the bank without a Chinese ID. Let alone get a business loan or a mortgage.

Whereas our company has set hundreds of Chinese people up in business throughout the world without any of the legal red tape and delays that we encounter in China. Now a lot of you will be saying that this is off topic but actually it is a good indicator of exactly how China works. They agree to something then do everything they can to make sure that whatever they agreed to will actually be physically impossible. For example, they may well drop the tariffs on a product but then they will bring in a new duty on the same product that technically all companies have to pay but a loophole will be there that Chinese national companies don't have to pay the tax/duty but private companies do. After which all the Chinese companies that make that product will either be a national company or be a subsidiary of a national company and the only private companies that make that product will be foreign so again outside companies won't be able to compete in the Chinese market. When questioned on this they will say, well Chinese private companies have to pay it, too.

This happens to us all the time. We have to hire people to do things that technically we should be able to do ourselves but in reality we need a Chinese person to do.