Fluent in two legal cultures

A conversation on building a China practice that Western clients trust, and what the next decade of dealmaking demands of advisers on both sides.

Editor's note. The Insider Interview is a recurring series. The conversation below is sample content for this template; replace it with your own interview before launch. Conversations are condensed and edited for clarity.

You have said that language is the least important kind of fluency in this work. What do you mean by that?

Translation is a commodity. What clients are actually buying is judgment about how the other side thinks. When an American general counsel asks whether a contract term is enforceable in China, the literal answer is rarely what they need. They need to know how a local court actually treats that clause, what the regulator's posture is this year, and whether their counterparty believes the term matters. The firms that win cross-border mandates are the ones fluent in two legal cultures, not just two languages.

Where do Western clients most often misread the Chinese legal system?

They assume the text of the law is the end of the analysis. In practice there can be meaningful distance between legislation and enforcement, and that distance is where the real advice lives. Resale price maintenance is a good example: the statute reads one way, the courts read it another, and the administrative regulator reads it a third way. A client who only knows the statute knows the least useful third of the picture.

And the reverse, where do Chinese parties misread Western markets?

Mostly on process and disclosure. Foreign-investment screening in the United States and Europe is now a substantive hurdle, not a formality, and it rewards early, complete and well-documented filings. Parties accustomed to relationship-driven deal processes sometimes underinvest in exactly the paperwork that decides the outcome.

What does the next decade demand of advisers?

Regulatory strategy as deal design. Security review, data rules and industrial policy are no longer closing conditions to be managed at the end of a transaction; they shape the structure from the first term sheet. Advisers who treat them as an afterthought will produce deals that do not close.