[horsecaptin]

China is not a market. It is a very large vendor and customer with many departments. This isn't good or evil, but it may be depending on who you are and what you're willing to stand for.

In a traditional market, the organizers set rules for vendors and customers. The same rules apply to anyone should they decide to become a vendor or customer, but organizers usually avoid becoming a vendor because of obvious conflicts of interest.

If you are a vendor then your customers in China are basically some subsidiary of the very large organization that is China. If you are a customer then you are basically buying from a subsidiary. Since you are dealing with subsidiaries, you have to understand that all the subsidiaries are encouraged to share information with each other to build a stronger China.

Building deeper relationships with a subsidiary means building deeper relations with the whole organization and that means satisfying deeper requirements (taxes, knowledge sharing, local factory, IP sharing, equity sharing). All this is normal if you are say, just two companies doing business with each other. But you aren't. You are a company doing business with an organization who you may be misunderstanding for a market.

Finally, theres the case where two companies merge and share all resources to become a stronger, better organization. Unlike many other countries, the Chinese identity is very much an ethnic and a lingual one. This means that if you are not Chinese, you will never be Chinese. If you aren't already Chinese, then the chances that you will be able to move to China should China become a prosperous society are slim to none.