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Contracts, Practice And Law In Trade With China: Some Observations, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

Erh Ii gou ("two mile gully") is the street in Peking on which stands the "large import building", the headquarters of the Chinese state trade corporations which purchase machinery, equipment, chemicals and technology from abroad. The punning reference to the protracted length of negotiations there is relevant to this piece, because the writer spent seven weeks between mid-January and mid-April, 1978 participating in negotiations in Peking; the long stay provided an opportunity to test generalizations and to write with some immediacy.

This essay describes the process of negotiating sales of capital goods to the Chinese corporations and the contracts which …