Wahaha-Danone

As the semester draws to a close, I've been thinking a bit about how Chinese law is taught. In particular, it occurred to me that there's a lot of interesting ways in which students could better learn Chinese corporate law, other than sitting through slide presentations about specific code provisions. (After all, PowerPoint is evil.) The Wahaha-Danone dispute therefore came to mind, because that case covers almost the entire gamut of the New Company Law.

For those who are unaware, French yogurt manufacturer Groupe Danone entered into a joint venture with a Chinese company called Wahaha back in the 90s. Groupe Danone was to provide the capital for Wahaha's growth, and Wahaha was to provide the local expertise and branding that would make Group Danone millions. Over time, however, the joint venture devolved into a lot of name-calling, nationalism, and litigation, to the point where the parties are currently engaged in litigation or arbitration in no less than five different jurisdictions, including California, American Samoa, the British Virgin Islands, Sweden, and several different provincial courts in China.

So, left with a paper to write for my Company Law class, it occurred to me that perhaps I should write about how the Danone-Wahaha dispute could actually be used to teach company law to Chinese and American students of company law, such that they wouldn't be left to watch a law professor drone on about statutes, and law professors could enliven a class room with something a little more tangible than some poorly-translated cases from the Gazette of the Supreme People's Court. What follows, are my thoughts on the subject. Please keep in mind that we haven't yet studied foreign direct investment law, however, so my thoughts on the subject are somewhat limited by what we've learned in school thus far. For what it's worth, however, the paper is also a good primer on Chinese company law.