China
October 30, 2026 | 16 min
Where Do Your China Backups Live? Cross-Border Data Transfer Compliance for a Foreign Entity's IT
A telecom vendor's China entity backed up to a regional cloud outside China. Whether that was allowed turned out to be a legal question, not a technical one.
October 01, 2026 | 20 min
Delivering IT in Mainland China Without a Local Entity: Hardware Routes, Partner Structure, and What Changed in 2026
A research briefing for overseas and Hong Kong IT prime contractors — and the multinationals that buy from them — that have to deliver onsite IT in mainland China without a local entity. It explains the four exposures an informal partner arrangement creates, walks through the customs routes that actually fit IT hardware (ATA Carnet, temporary entry 2600, repair goods 1300, free-of-charge goods 3339, no-cost replacement 3100, and a third-party importer of record), sets out the four documents that make the partner relationship legible, and corrects three claims still circulating: there is no customs code 1318, the postal limit from Hong Kong is RMB 800, and since 1 January 2026 free services are no longer a deemed VAT sale.
September 19, 2026 | 17 min
Who Withholds the Tax on Your Engineer in Shanghai? China's New VAT Measures and the Contractor Delivery Model
A policy briefing for global IT prime contractors and the enterprises that buy from them. China's Administrative Measures for the Withholding and Remittance of VAT on Natural Persons take effect on 1 November 2026 and move the collection point from the individual to the domestic entity that pays them — with monthly filing, identity record-keeping, and a filing obligation even in months when no tax is due. This report reads the fifteen articles, explains why a delivery model built on freelancers paid from offshore now leaves a visible gap where a monthly record should be, separates the exposure that belongs to the prime contractor from the exposure that belongs to the client, and supplies a nine-question due-diligence checklist you can send to a provider tomorrow.
September 11, 2026 | 18 min
Five Days to Beijing: Destroying a China Office's Drives Without Shipping Them Out
A composite scenario: a foreign-invested group's China engineering centre retires ninety workstations and eleven servers, and its group process says ship the drives to Hong Kong. Why that one routing decision creates three separate problems, and why the destruction capability can travel instead.
September 11, 2026 | 18 min
The Number That Made Them Look Temporary: A 400 Hotline for a China Office
A composite scenario: a European instruments maker's sixty-person China office runs on twelve personal mobile numbers with no switchboard, and starts losing tenders on the after-sales line of the scorecard. Why a 400 hotline is an entity question rather than a technical one, and why the real gap was governance, not telephony.
September 11, 2026 | 17 min
Android Without Google: Managing Devices for a Foreign Company's China Staff
A composite scenario: a European group extends its three-year-old global MDM standard to a 70-person China office, and Android enrolment simply never completes. Why China-market Android breaks the Android Enterprise model, what a China-specific enrolment path actually requires, and why the licence was never the missing piece.
September 10, 2026 | 18 min
IT Support in Beijing for a Foreign Insurer's Office: The Evidence Test
A composite scenario: a foreign insurance group's licensed Beijing entity passes every day-to-day IT check and fails the one that matters at audit time - can it show access, patch and data-location records for policyholder data.
September 02, 2026 | 15 min
The Livestream That Couldn't Go Down
A composite scenario from Hangzhou: 45 people running a European brand's Tmall, JD and Douyin storefronts, with no local IT and a calendar dominated by 618 and 11.11. Why peak-shaped risk needs pre-positioned capacity rather than a permanent hire.
August 26, 2026 | 23 min
China Employment Law for Foreign-Invested Enterprises: What IT and Ops Leaders Actually Need to Know
A research report on the employment-law exposure a foreign-invested enterprise carries when it employs its own IT staff in mainland China — the September 2025 judicial interpretation, non-competes and trade secrets for technical staff, and what actually has to happen when a systems administrator leaves.
August 24, 2026 | 12 min
How to Build a Customer-Facing AI Chatbot in WeChat with Tencent Hunyuan
A practical build for a customer-facing AI chatbot on WeChat using Tencent Hunyuan — grounding answers in real product and order data, when it must escalate, and the PIPL obligations that come with it.
August 21, 2026 | 23 min
Managed IT Services Pricing Benchmarks: Hong Kong, China, and Singapore (2026)
A research report on what managed IT services actually cost per user per month in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Singapore — built on published, market-specific rate card data, with every source named and every evidence gap flagged rather than filled.
