A while back (I am being intentionally vague here to avoid identifying anyone) a U.S. client company contacted our China lawyers about shutting down its China WFOE and/or terminating all of its roughly 47 China employees in one fell swoop. The U.S. company had discovered rampant corruption among its employees and its CEO wanted the WFOE excised “tomorrow.”
My response (put into one email and modified to hide any identifiers) was as follows, with the client identified below as “Company A.”
I spoke with one of our China employment lawyers and with our lead China corporate lawyer and both agree there is no way we can provide you with anything even approaching sound advice by tomorrow.
You essentially have two choices. One, you slink away in the middle of the night and neither Company A nor anyone who China might ever identify as having been associated with Company A ever