I've created a WFOE (Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise) in Shanghai. The red tape is incredible and it took us almost 6 months to complete the process. Also, in b

I've created a WFOE (Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise) in Shanghai. The red tape is incredible and it took us almost 6 months to complete the process. Also, in between the law changed and employees became significantly more expensive due to the new social security law... As a software development consulting company, the pro is that there's a big market but if you want to do your own product then HK is the way to go... Launching a web based product in China is dangerous because it's very hard to predict what will happen (you could be shut down by the government for one reason or another). Also cost of living and salary wise, Shanghai is anything but cheap (housing is cheaper than hong kong but the rest is not that much cheaper). For the internet connection, it's manageable when using a ssh tunnel to a private server in the US... But it's a bit of pain (without that and tsocks even doing a bundle install in ruby takes a very long time and often times out)