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Doing business in China is extremely risky. Things can change, literally, on a whim. President Xi Jinping has to navigate multiple crosscurrents when dealing with foreign business, and underlings have their own political concerns. Investors must be wary of over-investing in a country where their investment could degrade overnight. OSI Group is a regrettable example. Trumped-up charges led to workers held without trial and massive economic damage to the company. Ever since Chinese President Xi Jinping took over, foreign businesses have been rightfully complaining at the hostility Xi has shown them. For much of the past two years, Xi has been pushing his agenda for reform, revitalization, and restructuring. In the process, however, foreign businesses have been subjected to harassment, fines, bureaucracy, and in some cases, outright fabrication of criminal activity. Meanwhile, state-owned enterprises receive government favoritism, and things like intellectual property rights are being dismissed, or adhered to on an ad-hoc basis. The American Chamber of Commerce in China reports that 60% of foreign businesses feel unwelcome, up from 40% last year. The result has been ever-declining foreign investment in China. For example, investment fell 17% in July and 14% in August, year-over-year. Here’s a brief list of some incidents, and then we’ll look at reasons and consequences. Earlier this year, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK ) was hit with a $489 million fine for alleged bribery, in a trial held behind closed doors. Earlier this year, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM ) paid a $975 million fine to settle an allegation that the company had charged “unfair” and “excessively high” royalties for the use of its smartphone technology. Part of the settlement included a reduced royalty calculation that, to one analyst, seemed to be totally arbitrary. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) had its China offices raided last year as regulators allege breaches of anti-monopoly laws. Then, without warning, the government banned Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system from government computers because it was allegedly filled with spyware. The company has been in data privacy dust-ups with China for awhile, but the pettiness and hostility of China towards Microsoft, whose revenue from the country is negligible, illustrates how out of control this issue has become. Yet the most egregious story comes from Illinois-based OSI Group, which should make anyone fume. In July 2014, two employees of the Shanghai government-owned Dragon TV applied for jobs at Husi Foods, the Chinese subsidiary of OSI Group. These “investigative reporters” were hired, but clearly under false pretenses . These reporters strapped on hidden cameras, and one filmed another intentionally dropping meat on the floor. This “shocking evidence” was magically leaked back to Dragon TV, which then aired a trumped-up “exposé”. The fiction grabbed attention of the government, which raided the plant on July 20, 2014, and later arrested six employees of Husi Foods. Subsequently, the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) claimed that Husi sold expired and repackaged meat to its customers. That kind of reputation damage led to lost sales, the loss of KFC (NYSE: YUM ) and McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD ) as clients, and have cost OSI Group hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars . Emboldening state-owned media to manufacture evidence serves nobody. According to Professor Joshua Eisenman in testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “In some cases, like that of meat distributor OSI International in Shanghai, entrenched domestic interest and local authorities appear to have made it far more difficult for foreigners to do business in China by clamping down on their operations and employing innovative discriminatory tactics to restrict their ability to conduct business.” No kidding. So what’s going on? Why is China engaging in such antagonism with foreign businesses? One of my sources that does business in China boils things down. Xi has to walk several tightropes. On the one hand, China needs Western intellectual, business, and technological assets to support its own developing tech industry. Paired with this is America’s need to access China’s massive population that has access to the internet – as many as 750 million people. Xi may have been maneuvering for negotiating position. By setting fires that he can also put out, he puts himself in the position of extracting concessions from America, both political and economic – such as killing retaliatory sanctions for its cyber attacks on our federal agencies. Xi also needs to be seen as protectionist, both to the Communist Party and to the general population. China comes first, the West comes second. He must create a delicate balance of carrots and sticks, so that the Chinese reap the benefits of outside investment without sacrificing the competitiveness of Chinese companies. Does this sound like China is focused too much on the macro issues? They are…and they aren’t. According to one source of mine who regularly does business in China, the issues are cultural and political. “The Chinese look at the larger picture, whereas Americans are more discrete in their perspective. Whatever incident occurs, there’s always something behind it that it totally opaque. Sometimes you are being sent a signal. Sometimes you’ve unintentionally offended someone. You cannot pinpoint the specifics of what actually happened. You never know when you are being made an example of, or for what reason, or if you just stepped over some invisible line. It may not even be about you at all, because there are multiple layers and crosscurrents constantly at play.” He provides an example. “Suppose you plan to release a movie in China, and it has a scene where dentists are being made fun of. Six months from now, the International Dentist Conference will be held in Beijing. So the person in charge of policing content pulls out the dentist joke because he doesn’t want to get blamed if the dentist joke offends someone.” Unfortunately, this all comes at the expense of basic human rights. It also comes at the expense of China’s own economic health. Meanwhile, monthly outflows from China have grown from $5 billion to $100 billion, according to the International Business Times . The government has tried to keep the money in-country by monkeying with currency exchanges rules and limits. The AP reports that GDP growth is slowing in the second-largest economy, growing by 6.9% in Q3, the slowest since the financial crisis. Growth in factory output fell to 5.7% in September from 6.1% in August. The government has had to cut interest rates five times. The situation is so bad that it isn’t only foreign investment that’s pulling out. Ever wonder why Chinese firm Dalian Wanda Group purchased the AMC Theatre chain? Or why Shuanghui International spent $7 billion to purchase Smithfield foods? Or any of the other massive deals that have occurred ? Or why, talking about real estate with an agent in Montenegro, so many Chinese are buying land there? So Chinese businessmen can get their money the heck out of China. The future is in China’s own hands, but until it reconciles itself with the fact that the West is going to help it grow, and drops politics from its agenda, it’s going to continue to scare business away. As for investors, I would be extremely cautious about investing in companies that derive significant revenue from China. It’s one thing to understand risks that are quantifiable and invest with an eye towards those risks. With China, however, you may as well invest in a war-torn third-world country where the government might nationalize assets at any time. As my source says, “Your contracts with the government are always at the risk of being broken with two simple words: ‘things changed'” China’s behavior has not only made setbacks to any given company a possibility, but a completely random one. As we’ve already seen, if Xi wakes up one morning and decides to hassle a business whose stock you own, that stock could crater. I would avoid all ETFs that invest heavily in China, ETFs that weight China more than 5% of a portfolio, and any company that derives more than 5% of revenue from China. Yes, that eliminates some big names from your portfolio. However, as a risk-averse, long-term diversified portfolio advocate, why expose to risk you don’t need? Scalper1 News
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