Today Dan Harris of the China Law Blog wrote an interesting guest post for Shanghaiist in which he describes the top 5 trends he sees in China business law for next year. The trends he focuses on are ones that mainly involve foreigners or foreign businesses. A short version of his top 5:

1. Visa rules will be further tightened

2. Continued trend to shut down illegal and unregistered foreign businesses

3. Tax collection efforts will increase, with more focus on transfer pricing

4. Increased monitoring of M&A transactions

5. Employee law suits will increase and more will be resolved in the employees favor

It’s increasingly more difficult for foreign companies to set up a business in China. Not only because the number of regulations keeps going up, but more important because the existing rules are enforced more strictly. In his post Dan Harris describes why he thinks the government is making it more difficult for foreigners to become active here:

The Chinese government wants to satisfy its own citizens so as to maintain its own legitimacy and one of the best ways to do that is to show a desire to protect the citizenry against foreigners. China