Quick Facts
| Detail | Info |
| Blog Name | China Law Blog (CNLawBlog) |
| Founded | January 10, 2006 |
| Run By | Dan Harris, Harris Sliwoski LLP |
| Based In | Seattle, Washington, USA |
| Focus | Practical Chinese business law for foreign companies |
| Prestigious Recognition | ABA Journal Blawg 100 Hall of Fame (2013) |
| Media Coverage | Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, BBC |
| Primary Audience | Foreign businesses operating in or entering China |
| URL | harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog |
| Status | Actively publishing as of 2026 |
Introduction: The Blog That Became a Reference Point
If you are an American or European business owner trying to figure out how to work with Chinese suppliers, protect your intellectual property in China, or understand what a contract with a Chinese company actually means in practice — there is one blog that has been the go-to resource for two decades. It is called the China Law Blog, and it lives at the corner of the internet where real legal insight meets practical business experience.
Started in January 2006 by attorney Dan Harris and his colleagues at what was then Harris Bricken (now Harris Sliwoski LLP), the blog was never intended to be theoretical. No dense academic analysis. No policy debates that circle back to nothing actionable. The explicit mission, from the very beginning, was to help foreign companies understand what Chinese law actually does — not just what it says — and how to use that knowledge to their advantage.
Over nearly twenty years, it became something much bigger than anyone expected. It landed in the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100 Hall of Fame, placing it among the top twenty law blogs of all time. It attracted quotes from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, and the BBC. Dan Harris himself has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission multiple times. The blog did not just document Chinese business law — for many in the field, it helped shape the conversation around it.
See also “Assimilasjon: How People, Cultures, and Communities Adapt“
How It Started: A Friend’s Suggestion That Changed Everything
Dan Harris did not wake up one morning with a grand plan to build the internet’s most recognized Chinese business law blog. The origin story is considerably more modest.
In early 2006, a friend convinced him that blogging could generate business for his firm’s China practice. This was the early era of legal blogging — a time when the idea of lawyers writing publicly about their work was still considered unusual, even risky. Harris gave it a shot anyway.
The first post went up on January 10, 2006. The blog quickly found an audience because it offered something genuinely hard to find at the time: clear, honest, practically-oriented writing about Chinese law aimed at foreign businesspeople rather than legal academics or policy analysts. It was written by attorneys who were actually doing the work — helping clients form companies in China, negotiate contracts, register trademarks, navigate labor disputes, and recover when things went wrong.
From the start, the editorial approach was direct. The blog would tell you what Chinese law actually does in practice, including when the answer was uncomfortable or complicated. It would challenge popular myths — including the pervasive Western belief that building relationships (“guanxi”) in China could substitute for proper legal compliance. (It cannot, and the blog said so clearly, repeatedly, over years.)
The People Behind the Blog
The China Law Blog has been primarily written by two attorneys over its history.
Dan Harris is the founding partner of Harris Sliwoski LLP, based in Seattle. He has more than two decades of experience advising American and European companies on Chinese business law — company formation, contract drafting, intellectual property protection, supply chain compliance, and international litigation. He holds a B.A. from Grinnell College and a J.D. from Indiana University.
Harris is not just a writer. He has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on three separate occasions — January 2015, September 2021, and May 2023 — addressing issues ranging from doing business in China to forced labor compliance to the geopolitical implications of the US-China relationship for American businesses. That kind of access and credibility does not come from writing alone; it reflects a reputation built over years of real legal work.
Steve Dickinson was the blog’s other long-running voice, based in Qingdao, China. A Harris Sliwoski attorney who specialized in Chinese civil and commercial law, labor and employment, and technology licensing, Dickinson brought something invaluable: on-the-ground perspective from inside China. He has appeared on NPR and China Central Television, which gives a sense of how seriously both Western and Chinese media took his analysis.
Together, Harris and Dickinson created a blog with two distinct vantage points — one from the American business and legal perspective, one from the Chinese legal environment — that made the content unusually well-rounded.
What the Blog Actually Covers
The China Law Blog earned its reputation by being relentlessly practical. If you landed on the site hoping for theoretical discussions of Chinese constitutional law or high-minded analysis of Chinese judicial philosophy, you would be in the wrong place. The blog has always been written for people who are either doing business in China right now or seriously planning to do so.
Company Formation
One of the most consistent content threads is how foreign companies actually structure their presence in China. Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprises (WFOEs), representative offices, joint ventures — the blog explains the differences, the pitfalls, the legal requirements, and the common mistakes that cost foreign businesses time and money.
Contracts That Actually Work
This is a topic the blog has addressed with particular force. Chinese contracts need to be in Chinese — not just translated from English — to be enforceable in Chinese courts. They need to reference Chinese law. They need to be structured around how Chinese courts actually interpret agreements, not how Western lawyers assume courts think. The blog has written about this extensively and has made the point in ways that have reached a lot of businesses who might otherwise have signed agreements that offered them essentially no protection.
NNN Agreements
Many foreign companies dealing with Chinese manufacturers have heard of NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements), but the blog has been one of the primary voices explaining why standard American NDAs frequently fail in the Chinese legal context. The alternative — NNN agreements that cover non-disclosure, non-use, and non-circumvention together — gets discussed in practical detail, including how to structure them and what makes them enforceable.
Intellectual Property
Trademark registration, patent protection, dealing with counterfeiting — IP protection in China is notoriously difficult for foreign companies, and the blog approaches it with the kind of nuance that comes from representing clients who have been through the process (and sometimes lost). Key messages include registering trademarks in China even if you are not yet operating there, because trademark squatting is common and the first-to-file system means waiting is risky.
Supply Chain Issues
Supplier fraud, DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) shipping arrangements that disadvantage foreign buyers, manufacturing disputes, and quality control failures are recurring themes. The blog is candid about the risks of sourcing from China without proper legal frameworks in place.
US-China Trade and Compliance
Tariffs, trade war impacts, forced labor compliance under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, sanctions — the blog tracks the legal landscape that affects American companies with Chinese business relationships, often ahead of mainstream business media.
The Recognition That Defined Its Standing
The accolades came early and have been consistent.
The ABA Journal — the publication of the American Bar Association — has a long-running list called the Blawg 100, which identifies the best law blogs across all practice areas. The China Law Blog appeared on that list in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. That four-year run was remarkable enough. But in 2013, the ABA Journal inducted it into the Blawg 100 Hall of Fame — a distinction reserved for blogs showing “consistently excellent” quality over many years. Only twenty blogs in the hall have ever been inducted. Being among them places the China Law Blog in genuinely elite company.
Beyond the ABA, the blog received recognition from Blog Rank as the second most influential law blog overall. Chinalyst voted it the Best China Business/Law Blog. Business Week named it Blog of the Week. Newstex, which syndicates authoritative content to libraries and databases, chose it as a publisher — a signal of editorial credibility.
The media attention that came alongside these recognitions was substantial. Harris and the blog’s content have been cited or quoted by Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, CBC, CNBC, BBC, and CNN. Steve Dickinson appeared on NPR. That kind of cross-media presence is unusual for a legal blog focused on a single geographic area of practice.
The Controversial Period: Advising Clients to Leave China
Around 2017, the blog’s tone shifted in a way that generated real controversy.
As business conditions in China grew more difficult for foreign companies — tighter regulatory environment, rising labor costs, increasing political pressure, and concerns about intellectual property security — Harris began advising clients more openly to consider reducing or exiting their China operations. This was a provocative position. China had been the world’s manufacturing floor and one of its fastest-growing consumer markets for decades. Suggesting that companies reconsider their presence there felt almost heretical to some in the international business community.
The response was severe enough that Harris received death threats over some of these posts. He has since noted that subsequent news coverage — including reporting from Nikkei on companies quietly removing Hong Kong from their contracts and financial disclosures — validated the warnings that were controversial at the time.
The episode illustrates something important about what the blog is: genuinely independent commentary, not cheerleading for any particular agenda. Harris has stated directly that he personally likes China as a country while being critical of its government, and that the blog’s topic selection is driven by what is useful for readers, not by any attempt to frame China positively or negatively.
Editorial Philosophy: Why It Handles Criticism Differently
In 2021, Harris published a piece titled “The How Comes of China Law Blog” in which he addressed something that surprised some readers: the blog receives accusations of both pro-China bias and anti-China bias, often from different groups reading the same posts.
His response was essentially that this distribution of criticism suggests the editorial line is working correctly. The blog is not trying to please either camp. It is trying to accurately describe what Chinese law does and how foreign businesses should navigate it. When that produces analysis that China critics find too sympathetic to Beijing, and when it simultaneously produces analysis that China boosters find too skeptical of business conditions there, the editorial compass is probably pointing straight.
Comment moderation reflects the same philosophy. Posts are moderated only to filter spam and personal attacks. Substantive disagreement, including disagreement that is sharply critical of the blog’s positions, is published.
The Broader Landscape: Why This Blog Remains Rare
A 2016 survey by China Briefing found that fewer than ten regularly updated English-language China law and business blogs met basic quality thresholds — down from more than twenty in earlier years. The reality of maintaining credible, up-to-date legal commentary on a complex jurisdiction over a long period is harder than it looks.
The China Law Blog has outlasted nearly all of its peers from the early blogging era. The combination of consistent update frequency, genuine practitioner expertise, editorial independence, and the institutional backing of a law firm with actual China practice has proven to be difficult to replicate.
What “cnlawblog.it.com” Is Not
A note on disambiguation: there is a separate website using the name CNLawBlog at cnlawblog.it.com. This site covers broad American legal topics — business law, family law, criminal law, real estate, and employment — with no named editors, no institutional affiliation, no media recognition, and no history of awards or external citations. It has no meaningful footprint in any legal or journalistic context. It is not connected to Harris Sliwoski or the China Law Blog in any way, and searching for “cnlawblog” will surface it alongside (and sometimes instead of) the China Law Blog. For anyone researching authoritative Chinese business law commentary, the Harris Sliwoski site is the relevant entity.
Final Words
The China Law Blog did not become what it is by accident. It got there through nearly two decades of consistent, practical, independent legal commentary written by attorneys who were simultaneously doing the work they wrote about. The ABA Hall of Fame recognition, the congressional testimony, the media citations — these are the results of that consistency, not the cause of it.
For foreign businesses navigating the genuinely complex intersection of Chinese law, American business expectations, and international trade realities, the blog has been and remains one of the most useful resources available. That is a difficult thing to build and a harder thing to sustain. The fact that it is still actively publishing in 2026, twenty years after its first post, says something about the quality of what it set out to do and continues to do.
See also “Assimilasjon: How People, Cultures, and Communities Adapt“
FAQs
1. What is the China Law Blog (CNLawBlog)?
The China Law Blog is a long-running legal commentary blog operated by Harris Sliwoski LLP, an international law firm. It focuses on practical Chinese business law for foreign companies — covering everything from company formation and contracts to intellectual property, supply chain risks, and trade compliance. It was founded in January 2006 and remains actively updated.
2. Who started the China Law Blog?
The blog was founded by Dan Harris, a founding partner of Harris Sliwoski LLP (formerly Harris Bricken), based in Seattle, Washington. He co-authored it for many years with Steve Dickinson, a Harris Sliwoski attorney based in Qingdao, China.
3. Why is the China Law Blog considered authoritative?
The ABA Journal inducted it into its Blawg 100 Hall of Fame in 2013, recognizing it as one of the top twenty law blogs of all time. Blog Rank named it the second most influential law blog overall. Its writers have been cited by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, and BBC, and founder Dan Harris has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission three times.
4. Is the China Law Blog free to read?
Yes. The blog is freely accessible at harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog. No subscription, registration, or payment is required to read any of its content.
5. Who is the blog written for?
Its primary audience is foreign businesses — especially American and European small and medium-sized companies — that are operating in China or considering doing so. It is also widely read by law students, legal professionals, journalists, and others following China’s legal and business environment.
6. What topics does the blog cover most frequently?
Core recurring topics include company formation (WFOEs, joint ventures), contract drafting in Chinese, NNN agreements for supplier relationships, trademark and IP registration, supplier fraud, DDP shipping risks, US-China tariffs, and forced labor compliance. It focuses on practical application rather than legal theory.
7. What is the difference between an NDA and an NNN agreement in the Chinese context?
An NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) protects confidential information from being disclosed. An NNN agreement adds two further protections: non-use (the receiving party cannot use your information to compete with you) and non-circumvention (they cannot go around you to deal directly with your customers or suppliers). The blog has argued extensively that standard American NDAs are often insufficient when dealing with Chinese business partners because they lack these additional protections and may not be enforceable under Chinese law as written.
8. Has the blog taken controversial positions?
Yes. Around 2017, the blog began advising some clients to consider exiting China as business conditions for foreign companies deteriorated. Dan Harris received death threats over these posts. He has since noted that subsequent reporting by Nikkei and others confirmed the trends he was describing.
9. Is the China Law Blog the same as cnlawblog.it.com?
No. There is a separate, unrelated website at cnlawblog.it.com that covers general American legal topics with no named editors, institutional affiliation, or media recognition. It has nothing to do with the China Law Blog or Harris Sliwoski. The two sites share no content or editorial relationship.
10. How often is the China Law Blog updated?
The blog has maintained consistent update frequency since 2006. It publishes multiple posts per week on timely topics related to Chinese business law, trade developments, and compliance issues. It has remained active through 2026.
11. Does the blog take a political position on China?
Not explicitly. Dan Harris has stated that the blog’s topic selection is driven by what is useful for readers, not by any attempt to present China positively or negatively. He has noted that the blog simultaneously receives accusations of pro-China and anti-China bias — a distribution he considers evidence that the editorial approach is genuinely independent rather than agenda-driven.
12. Where can I find the China Law Blog?
The blog is at harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog. Harris Sliwoski LLP also maintains an active presence on LinkedIn and other professional networks where blog content is shared. Dan Harris’s congressional testimony records are publicly available through the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission website.
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