Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alexander Rogi, and today's podcast was recorded in Beijing immediately after our Trace Workshop.

Two of our workshop presenters have agreed to speak with me about some of the anti-bribery challenges and trends they're seeing in China.

Joining me today is Cindy Hong, partner at K&L Gates in Shanghai.

Cindy works primarily in anti-bribery compliance and corporate transactions,

and has been a very valuable and regular expert panelist at Trace Events.

My second guest is Vasu Mutialla, partner at Kobre and Kim in their Hong Kong office.

Whereas Cindy focuses on compliance, Vasu represents individuals and companies in investigations

and enforcement matters, with an emphasis on FCPA.

His background includes stretches with both the Department of Justice and the SEC, so he's

well suited for this.

Vasu and Cindy, thank you for joining me,

and thank you for speaking at our workshop here earlier today.

I've exhausted you with a day-long event, so let's just jump right in.

Every country has bribery, and I always think of bribery as having a structure.

So in a place like India, for example,

it might be a pyramid with huge amounts of low-level corruption and then less as you go up

the pyramid. And then a place like Russia, it's sort of a solid block. There's a lot of corruption

in Russia and it's very difficult to find a portal into it. How would you describe bribery in China?

I think it would be very similar to what you just described in Russia, but the Chinese government

is trying to get their hand around that box to resolve some of those issues. Like what I discussed

earlier today about the way they are changing the laws

actually give them motif to go not only on demand side of the bride but also on the supply side.

...