Dan Harris writes:
A few weeks ago, a China risk consultancy contacted us regarding their own China legal matter. During our conversation, the caller went off and said that he really liked our posts on how to avoid getting kidnapped in China. He then told me that so far this year, not a single week had passed without his company having been called in to deal with a “hostage or hostage-like situation.” He told me that such incidents are way up this year from 2012 and that 2012 had double the incidents of 2011. He said that nobody seems to believe how prevelant this incidents are but that we should keep writing about them because they are “happening like crazy and with China’s economy continuing to soften, they will only increase.”
I forget about that phone call until today, when I received my second “hostage” call in two days. Both are very similar to each other and both are very similar to those we have handled in the past.