China Business Law Journal – December 2023/January 2024

Let there be rain

After bidding farewell to a year characterised by sluggish capital markets, real estate downturns and the disruptive popularisation of AI, we arrive at the dawn of a Year of the Dragon, which, to the Chinese people, is quite the special occasion.

For thousands of years, dragons have been revered as a totem of authority, auspiciousness and prosperity, spanning innumerable Chinese myths and legends. In these tales, the appearance of a dragon is often accompanied by wind and rain, which, for an agrarian society, is a most welcome spectacle.

While dragon-induced rainfall may be able to rejuvenate parched farmlands, modern companies going through financial distress have to rely on a more practical form of lifeline – bankruptcy reorganisation. It is fortunate then that “bankruptcy” is no longer regarded as a taboo word, but generally accepted as an essential route for debt-ridden companies to resolve past burdens and take on a new lease of life.

In Back from the brink, leading insolvency lawyers discuss the maturity of China’s bankruptcy regime and how it acts as a reliable tool for market correction, covering issues such as difficulties in locating strategic investors, the critical role of a government-court linkage mechanism, and other steps to take to help distressed companies realise their full potential.

Surprisingly, burgeoning businesses can also be perceived to be falling short, and such is the case for China’s AI industry. This, according to Wang Sijia, director of IP and data compliance at NetEase Group, can be attributable to the lack of sufficiently comprehensive and high-quality Chinese-language datasets, the bread and butter for machine learning behind generative AI.

In our exclusive interview with Wang, Breaking AI impasse, she deciphers the main challenges, both technical and legal, hindering China’s AI metamorphosis, and addresses concerns that our pressing needs for tech advancement may not be always compatible with time-tested rules for IP protection. After all, sometimes you need to look back to better move forward.

In this spirit, there is no better time to review and remember last year’s heavyweight deals and cases that defied challenges, shattered records, set precedents and trailblazed new paths where there were none.

After extensive research, the editorial team of China Business Law Journal proudly presents the Deals of the Year 2023, a collection of the past year’s most exciting moments for business and legal communities alike. The winning deals, divided into 12 categories, include heavyweight listings, blockbuster acquisitions, defences against industry-wide sanctions, and resolutions to years of dramatic disputes.

We would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to all law firms that participated in these winning deals.