Deming Zhao

Practice Areas

Dr. Deming Zhao is a partner based in our Shanghai office. His practices cover corporate and regulatory compliance, customs and trade compliance, M&A, IP licensing and assignment, shipping and logistics, insurance, employment and litigation & arbitration. His clients include multinational companies, foreign-invested enterprises, insurance companies and state-owned enterprises and private domestic companies. Dr. Zhao is one of the pioneers who has developed the legal practice of customs & trade compliance in China, which has won wide recognition among multinational clients.

Apart from general corporate work, Dr. Zhao has also provided regulatory compliance and crisis solution services covering anti-monopoly, anti-commercial bribery, customs and AQSIQ, product labeling, import compliance regarding pharmaceutical, medical, food, healthcare, cosmetics and luxury products. He has acted as the leading counsel in various joint venture, acquisition, merger, divestiture and corporate restructuring projects, and also participated in overseas investment and offshore listing, covering aviation, banking, internet, mining, motor, electric, electronic, chemical, pharmaceutical, medical instrument, textile, cosmetics, other consumer product, shipping & shipbuilding, real estate and human resources consulting service industries.

Professional Memberships

Arbitrator, Xiamen Arbitration Commission

Arbitrator, Harbin Arbitration Commission

Visiting Professor of Law, Xiamen University and Xi’an Jiaotong University

Master Program Supervisor, Shanghai Customs College

Career

In context of customs & trade compliance, Dr. Zhao has advised, represented or defended many renowned multinational companies in matter concerning import & export duty and VAT, consumption tax, anti-dumping duty, retaliation duty, import duty deduction and exemption programs, export tax rebate, transfer pricing and valuation, tariff code classification, precedent database of customs tariff classification, customs pre-ruling, royalties, assist, country of origin, cross-border e-commerce, customs survey and inspection, import & export license, quarantine and non-tariff barriers, processing trade, bonded logistics models, customs supervision zones, plant relocation, deep processing transit (inter-plant transfer), and outsourced processing.

Deming Zhao has also advised, represented and defended many corporate clients in administrative and criminal cases concerning customs audit, query, ASB investigation and criminal cases with smuggling or other charges, with a good record of successful innocence defense for corporate clients either at the stage of criminal investigation or prosecution. He has led many legal audits and health-check projects on trade compliance, as well as trainings for business operations of multinationals in China. Dr. Zhao frequently presents speeches on practical and legislative issues concerning Chinese customs regulatory environment at customs law symposiums and at different law schools in and outside China.

As far as Chinese or foreign export controls and economic sanctions are concerned, Dr. Zhao advises and trains many Chinese or foreign clients, and helps them to establish internal control programs (ICP). Dr. Zhao frequently presents lectures on China’s export control and customs supervision practices at symposiums or seminars in Europe. Dr. Zhao was once invited by the International Anti-Corruption Academy to lecture on China and US export control practices in Seoul to professional audiences from Asian countries. He also lectured on China’s Export Control and Countermeasures, as well as RCEP and Country of Origin for students of the Master of Customs Administration Program at the University of Münster, Germany. In 2021 and 2022, invited by the Netherlands International Chamber of Commerce as the legal expert on China’s export control and economic sanctions, Dr. Zhao gave on-line speeches to an array of international audience on global trade control and economic sanctions, together with the EU export control officials, legal experts and U.S. economic sanction officials.

In 2022 and 2023, Dr. Zhao advised and trained Chinese and foreign corporate clients regarding Chinese and foreign export control and sanctions matters and the cross-border supply chain compliance as well, concerning issues of U.S. semiconductor export control, Xinjiang-related supply chain, Russia-related economic sanctions, export control compliance, and trade compliance due diligence in M&A projects. In an administrative review case some years ago, Dr. Zhao successfully defended a multinational client against the export licensing requirement for a chemical product, thus saving the export business from collapse.

Dr. Zhao has been a maritime law expert as well. He specialized in maritime law during his study at University College London and has many years of experience in teaching and practicing maritime law and serving as counsel for shipping companies. His services have covered contentious and non-contentious matters concerning insurance, charter parties, cargo claims, subrogation claims, bills of lading frauds, P&I defense, marine pollution, limitation of liabilities, collision, general average and international sale of goods. Dr. Zhao has also advised clients on their logistics and supply chain models.

Dr. Zhao has extensive experience both as an in-house and outside counsel in supporting human resources functions of multinational companies and foreign-invested enterprises. He has advised clients on labor union, employee representatives and employee club issues, labor aspects of M&A transactions, expatriate issues, overtime issues, social security issues as well as the risk control and management of labor arbitration and litigation and intellectual property protection in labor relations. He helps his clients prepare confidentiality and non-competition agreements, service invention agreements, corporate rules and policies, labor severance guidelines, employee handbooks, labor contracts, training contracts, optional employee benefits and secondment agreements.

Dr. Zhao has more than 30 years of experience in litigation and arbitration in relation to investment, M&A, financing, insurance, shipping, domestic & international trade and engineering projects. He has participated in CIETAC and other arbitration cases as an arbitrator, and acted as a Chinese law expert in arbitration proceedings in Singapore and London arising from international trade and shipping disputes, in both cases of which the parties to the arbitration settled expeditiously after Dr. Zhao’s submission of his expert opinions.

Education

Languages Spoken

Chinese，English