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Quick Question Friday, China Law Answers, Part VI
What language for your China contract? It depends. Photo by Steven Snodgrass.http://bit.ly/1CPPrkp
Because of this blog, our China lawyers get a fairly steady stream of China law questions from readers, mostly via emails but occasionally via blog comments as well. If we were to conduct research on all these questions and then comprehensively answer them, that would soon become all that we do and we would soon be out of business. And that would be a bad thing for us and for this blog. So what we usually do is provide a super fast general answer and, when it is easy to do so, a link or two to a blog post that may provide some additional guidance. We figure we might as well post some of these on here.
One of the questions we are always getting asked is what language to use in a contract with a Chinese company and, if the language is Chinese, whether just translating an existing American contract into Chinese is sufficient.
The first part of the question is actually far more complicated than many realize and the second part is probably simpler.
The language of the contract usually depends on where it is going to be enforced/litigated. If your disputes are going to be in a Chinese court, your contract should probably be in Chinese. If your disputes are going to be in a U.S. court, it should probably be in English. This means that the tough question then is where you will want your disputes resolved and we leave that for another post.
What we are talking about here is the official language of the contract. It is usually a good idea to have your contracts with Chinese companies be be in both English and Chinese, but with only one language as the official language. For more on this, check out the following:
- China Employment Contracts: Why Ours Are In Chinese
- China OEM Agreements. Why Ours Are In Chinese. Flat Out.
- Using English-Language Contracts in China
As for whether you can or should just translate an American contract into Chinese and then use that as your contract between your U.S. company and your China counter-party, the answer is a resounding no.
The post Quick Question Friday, China Law Answers, Part VI appeared first on China Law Blog.
We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.
Source: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2015/08/quick-question-friday-china-law-answers-part-vi.html
