Jenny Zhang, Attorney at Law, Lawyer, Law firm in Dalian, China

Usually, I don’t like to write articles beyongd the topics of laws here in my legal blog. But this time, I am really angry, I intend to take advantage of my limited influence to tell a real Dalian.

I have no idea until I got the call from my best friend in Shanghai. She was too worried about me and the conditions in Dalian. When I got home at night on July 16, I got the whole picture on TV. Fire,exhausted  fireman, oil, polluted sea—all these days, my eyes and ears are flooded with these key words. Ten days passed, I decided to have a look by myself. 

Dalian New Port is an industrial port in Yellow Sea and it is about 35 kilometers from downtown. We drove to Dalian Development Zone, where is obviously affected by the oil. The rocks in the seashore are wearing black. No seagull at all.  Boshi Shore(which means white rocks), which is a famous seashore in Developent Zone and where sea-view buildings and fancy resteraunant located,  seems very ugly and the beautiful constrution form a distinct contrast with the dirty seashore.

We drove to one of my relatives. There we were told not to go to the New Port in that it is not accessible to visitors. We had to quit our plan but anyway, we would drive along to Gloden Pebble Beach. Misery! The shining fine white sand in the beach was gone forever, black , nothing but desolation. In this tourism season, it should have been full of visitors. BUT—

I felt very sorry for the scene. Even though I got the new from local govenment that the clean-up in the sea has made great development, I could not expect how long the beautiful beach would turn back to its oringinal picture.

Whose fault for this disaster? NO NEWS. How to compensate? NO NEWS. But I got that  the distance of  oil tanks is only 5 meters, which is the minimum distance speculated in the  Code for design of petroleum depots. When the fire broke up, the fire fighter truck could not go through the oil tanks to  the site of the explosion and thus delayed the putting out.

for more information, pls check China Dalian oil spill cleaned nine days after accident.

News from DalianNews.

The U.S. International Trade Commission has found in favor of a Dalian steel company, in an anti-dumping case against the U.S. Department of Commerce. This is first time that the trade panel has ruled that Chinese steel products aren’t harmful to the U.S. industry.

Dalian Eastfound Metal Products Company is China’s largest exporter of metal wire decking to the U.S. market. In June last year, the U.S. Department of Commerce slapped dumping charges on more than 20 Chinese firms, including Dalian Eastfound. Last month, the department announced it would impose duties ranging from 14 percent to 437 percent.

Jiang Ming, Sales Director of Dalian Eastfound Metal Products said “That basically meant the U.S. market was closed to us. We can’t sell products there anymore. 400 of our employees will lose their jobs.”

But Dalian Eastfound decided to appeal the decision, submitting detailed materials in its defense. The U.S. International Trade Commission allowed the appeal, voting 4-2 that U.S. producers didn’t suffer injury or threat of injury as a result of steel imports from China.

Fan Huisheng, Vice GM of Dalian Eastfound Metal Products said “As an exporting firm, we not only have to produce, but we should be aware of international trade regulations and adhere to them.”

Dalian manufacturers are highly reliant on exports. But in 2009, they were rocked by 4 anti-dumping cases. Dalian industry officials say businesses should actively respond to lawsuits. They also recommend Chinese manufacturers to invest in research and development, in order to build their own brands.

The 8th China International Software and Information Service Fair just closed its curtain today.  On 23rd, I attended the seminar of IP Protection of Software.

As the previous seminar, two experts from EU-China Project on the Protection of IP Rights gave the speeches about patent protection and IP rights on outsourcing. Both of them provided some pertinent suggestion to the software industry in Dalian.

And what I felt especially resourceful is the report from Ms.Liu in King & Wood. She analyzed the protential legal risks in software outsourcing and also focused risk prevention.

In all, this seminar is more successful than the previous one and I guess the new information that I got from this seminar would be helpful for my work.

(DALIANNEWS) – Overseas enterprises invested in the port city of Dalian slumped in numbers but increased in terms of scale last year aimed the global financial crisis, according to the local Industry and Commerce Bureau, January 17.

Investment in modern service industries such as construction, real estate and banks accelerates fast.

New investment value totaled 6.577 billion dollars and registered capital reaches 5.473 billion dollars last year, up 146 per cent and 158 per cent respectively year- on- year.

Japan leads the list of investment source countries and regions, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, U.S. and Canada.

As of the end of the year 2009, an aggregate of 8074 foreign companies have invested in Dalian with the value totaled 52.25 billion dollars and registered capital of 29.94 billion dollars.

(From:DALIANNEWS.COM)

Long time no see, my blog! During my absence, too much things happened. The recent hot issues are Dalian Davos 2009 and the trade war between China and U.S. in steel industry.

According to Dalian government, the Davos 2009 was very successful although the Chairman Mr Schwab didn’t announce the next host city as usual. Dalian was too warm-hearted for the forum and desired  to be the regular host for it. Did Schwab not want to hurt Dalian’s heart? Who knows? Anyway, self-improvement is the most important for the growth of the city. We could not expect Davos brings everything.

Both government officials said there is no trade war between China and U.S.. Maybe it’s because the scale of spat is still low. China has appealed against the WTO ruling. We began to learn make use of WTO. Good news.

The International Investment Dalian Summit 2009 was closed this Wednesday.

The summit invited senior management leaders of U.S. New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Nasdak Stock Market and financial elites in risk investment fund, private equity investment institutions, investment banks to join.

As I knew the summit pretty late, I just attended a road show on the last day in the New World Hotel. I believed it a good opportunity for many small and medium sized enterprises in northeast of China. That could be a platform for these enterprises to attract more overseas capital, or at least our enterprises can know where to find “help”.

In that meeting, I also met my counterpart, a lawyer from the U.S. Really a nice guy and nice meeting.