Foreign businesses having to follow local rules is nothing new, whether it's in China, England, or Mozambique. China has, in the past, detained foreign executi

Foreign businesses having to follow local rules is nothing new, whether it's in China, England, or Mozambique. China has, in the past, detained foreign executives accused of breaking local laws. There was this pharma case involving GSK in 2014 (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/business/international/china-rules-glaxo-bribes-sex-tape-whistleblower-cautionary-tale.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/business/international/ch...) which found the company engaged in fraud in the country. GSK paid up $.5B and had to reform some of its practices as a result. What is troubling is when those rules are unevenly or unfairly enforced, are designed to give other businesses an unfair advantage, or are subject to additional requirements outside of the standard protocol. There's a good backgrounder on IP theft in China here (https://law.stanford.edu/2018/04/10/intellectual-property-china-china-stealing-american-ip/ https://law.stanford.edu/2018/04/10/intellectual-property-ch...). If you dig around it's not hard to find all kinds of horror stories involving "joint ventures" or unfair advantages given to domestic companies. I know someone whose relative was involved in a business dispute in China which resulted in that person being detained in a hotel without any charges filed at the behest of some local official. He couldn't leave the PRC until the dispute was settled to the satisfaction of the Chinese business partner.