Contracts aren't background noise in China — they're the baseline. Whether you're signing up to teach, advise, consult, or launch a product, what you put on paper becomes the lens courts and regulators use to judge your choices later. Foreign professionals often assume local norms, foreign law, or good intentions will fill the gaps. In practice, those assumptions rarely survive a dispute. What you signed still writes the ending

Here are three cases from lawyer Jiabin Yan, each starring a foreign professional who thought they were doing everything right - until they weren't.

1. The Sanitizer Deal That Went From Pandemic Gold Rush to Toxic Waste

2020 was chaos, and hand sanitizer was basically liquid Bitcoin. A Canadian brand teamed up with a Guangzhou maker, slapped a label on bottles, shipped containers to Canada, and watched cash roll in.

Then regulators found benzene - yes, that benzene - in several batches. The license got yanked, stores pulled the products, and entire shipments were dumped like radioactive soup.

The Canadian side sued. The factory argued the classic excuse: "We're just OEM; not our circus."

The court replied: Nice try.
Purchase orders, fixed quantities, exclusive territories, payment before resale — this was a sale, not "processing services." And the manufacturer had signed a quality agreement promising compliance with Canadian standards. That alone decided the case.

Chinese export inspection? Irrelevant. The moment those bottles hit Vancouver, Canadian rules became the manufacturer's problem, because they agreed to it in writing.

Moral: If you export and you promise foreign-market compliance, congratulations, you've just adopted that country's standards. Hope you like reading regulatory PDFs.

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2. The Teacher Who Thought "30 Days' Notice" Was a Magic Exit Button

Emma, a British teacher in Shanghai, resigned by the book: proper notice, full semester completed, polite emails. Instead of a cake and goodbye card, she got two months of salary deducted and a claim she'd breached contract.

She waved the Labor Contract Law like a shield.
The court basically said: That only covers five things for foreigners. Everything else lives in your contract.

Her contract happened to include a "three-month salary if you leave before the term ends" clause. She left early. The court enforced it. End of story.

Moral: In Shanghai, foreign employment law is less "protective mother" and more "you signed it, you live with it." Notice doesn't erase penalties.

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3. The Professor Who Thought Remote Work Counted (It Didn't)

Dr. Choi, a South Korean pharmacologist recruited with a respectable salary and research funding, signed a contract requiring 10 months on campus each year. Pretty standard for China's talent programs.

When the university cut his pay over "poor research performance," he pushed back, saying he'd still been doing academic work remotely while abroad. He claimed he deserved a full 12 months' salary and annual leave.

The court asked for evidence.
There wasn't any.

And more importantly: the contract explicitly tied salary to physical presence on campus. Remote work wasn't listed, monitored, or evaluated. Courts love contracts. Remote vibes don't count.

He won the unpaid wages the university improperly withheld, but nothing else.

Moral: Working from overseas because "academics work everywhere" is a great philosophy, not a legal argument.

The Pattern: China Doesn't Reward Wishful Thinking

Across all three cases, the same tripping hazards appear:

• OEM is not a magic liability shield. If you act like a seller, you are one.

• Foreign employees live and die by their contract. Shanghai doesn't improvise.

• Remote work is meaningless unless your contract says it isn't.

• Regulators abroad > test reports at home. Courts look at real-world impact, not paperwork that arrived after the disaster.

If you operate in China: teaching, producing, researching, treat every clause as binding, every quality promise as permanent, and every assumption as a lawsuit waiting for a plot twist.

The safest thing you can do isn't being careful; it's being precise.

A Lawyer Worth Having Before Things Go Sideways

Jiabin Yan, partner at Duan & Duan, spends his days untangling cases just like these — cross-border manufacturing blowups, employment messes, academic-contract disasters. He combines big-firm litigation experience with a habit of telling clients the uncomfortable truths early, before they become expensive truths later.

If you have any legal inquiry or need a pro English-speaking lawyer who actually understands contracts you can live with, check Jiabin's profile on SmartShanghai: Thomas Jiabin & Associates