If China is becoming a virtuous country with low levels of corruption, why do foreign investors not trust Chinese data and financial reports?
Feb 16, 2017 – But yet if you ask Jim Chanos or whoever wants to invest in China, they are very wary of the issue of “cooked books”.
Couple that with how the government/Party is at least tangentially involved in nearly every industry and large business and it is very difficult for a non-PRC to do business there with any certainty. Rules can change quickly because it benefits a high ranking Party official. You can suddenly not take money out of the country even though you spent months to years following the then current rules of expatriating funds because they’ve changed. I’ve put together deals there and all of the sudden at the last minute someone’s (and you may never figure out who that someone is) nephew needs to hold a significant piece of the entity and is the new VP or it won’t get done.
I’ve done business across the globe in a couple dozen countries and like I said, there’s some good things going on in China but calling it virtuous is a big stretch.
