Mainly it just made me mad. This is somewhat par for the course in China, but it is still frustrating. The real jewel here is that I was on a conference call with a new client when we were stopped and I had to end that so in order to stand in front of the driver's side door to prevent Arthur redneck from taking the van without a written receipt with the towing company stamp. If he did this, it would be like us giving the vehicle to them and if he wanted to steal it, he would have a free and clear head start of at least 2, maybe 3 days. It is a frequent occurrence.
We went through a deal last year with this same van where there was a mistake on the tag number vs. VIN / registration. Even thought the traffic control department admitted that it was a mistake, they would not release the van to us for what was said to be at least 6 months to "clear the situation". I paid a bribe of close to $6,000 to get the thing back.
We are not talking Ferrari here- this is a van worth maybe 20 grand in the USA, but costs close to $45,000 here in China and we only have 2 of them.
I have endless stories of frustrations here in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Phillippines etc... This is the price to be paid for the opportunities that exist for my company. We anticipate the bubble here to last maybe through the Olympics in Beijing (2008). My opinion is that China will have the mother of all economic crashes in a few years. Risk management for us? We owe _RMB 0.00 in China or Hong Kong.
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