[lionhearted]

> But I've heard too many horror stories from entrepreneurs getting burned in China to want to put all my chips in that stack.

I had a girlfriend who was working at a Chinese media company five years ago, and her company said something unpleasant (true) things about an important company in the local province. The mayor called up the newspaper, and was pressuring them... it turned out alright in the end, but it was a minor headache.

If you're doing business somewhere where political influence plays in court, you should just factor that into the cost of doing business and take the mayor out to eat once in a while and do something nice for a local charity or university. The small time/money to be invested in that is still probably less than the costs of compliance in more regulated places (who also have corrupt laws, but the corruption is further upstream - see AirBNB... hotels don't pay off the judge, they pay off the governor).

[astrange]

> see AirBNB... hotels don't pay off the judge, they pay off the governor

The law you're thinking of allows having guests as long as you actually live in your residence. My impression was that it doesn't actually affect AirBNB because of this.

[_delirium]

In most cities that's true, but in a handful of big cities (mainly NYC and, from what I've heard, London), a large proportion of the AirBnB listings are actually quasi-hotels, listed by management agencies that are subletting dozens of condos, or even unlicensed hotels "subletting" out a whole building or large part of one. It shouldn't affect individuals renting out spare rooms, though, which is the less-shady part of AirBnB.

[fauigerzigerk]

I would also be concerned about the legal system in China, but political pressure on the media is very widespread in europe as well. During the Iraq war, the entire BBC top management was fired for being critical of the war. In many European countries, polititians are the bosses of journalists at the most important TV stations.

[semanticist]

Do you have a citation for that BBC claim? I don't recall anything remotely like that.

There was a lot of government pressure over the 'dodgy dossier' scandal, but nothing like 'the entire top management' being 'fired'. (By who? The BBC Trust?)

[fauigerzigerk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC "The 2004 Hutton Inquiry and the subsequent Report raised questions about the BBC's journalistic standards and its impartiality. This led to resignations of senior management members at the time including the then Director General, Greg Dyke. In January 2007, the BBC released minutes of the Board meeting which led to Greg Dyke's resignation.[19]"

I followed the events very closely back then. It's interesting that you should mention the dodgy dossier. It was a dossier that the government presented in parliament as an intelligence report when in fact it was lifted from a thesis paper and then sexed up by government officials. This was a clear case of fraud. But none of the so called independent inquiries even looked at this dossier. They preferred to look exclusively at another dossier that was less troublesome for the government. I watched as much of the inquiries as was possible and I came away thinking, what a farce, what a complete farce. The government ordered the inquiries, they defined the narrow mandate of the inquiries, they appointed the people who conducted the inquiries, everything. And the inquiries didn't ask the questions that would have been tough for the government.

Instead they used a minor note taking mistake by a small radio reporter to pressure the BBC leadership into resignation. I heard interviews with Greg Dyke afterwards. They were plain and simple fired and the renewal of the TV license was used as a lever.