Just finished an interview with a reporter doing a story on Chinese drywall. I gave my usual speech on how there are three main aspects to protecting oneself from bad Chinese product: good relationships, good contracts, and good quality control monitoring. I then focused on the mistakes American companies typically make in their contracts with Chinese companies and why I thought that in most cases, the American companies would probably lose if they were to sue the drywall manufacturers in a Chinese court. For more on what it takes to protect yourself from poor quality Chinese product, check out "Chinese Takeaway -- Protection From Bad Product," "How To Protect Your Company From Bad China Product," "China Products: Forget Trust, Just Verify," "Defective Product Recalls In China. What's That?" "China Product Outsourcing Done Right: A Sort Of Guide," "China Products: Ya Want Quality? I Got Quality," "The Six (Not Five) Keys To China Quality," "Six More Keys To Quality Product Made In China," "Learning From China Product Recalls," "What Every Buyer Of China Product Must Do BEFORE Buying.""China Product Problems: What's Morality Got To Do With It? and "China Products: Quality Costs Extra."

Bottom Line: Doing business in China is not like doing business in Kansas and that means if you are buying product from China you must 1) know with whom you are dealing, 2) have a contract in Chinese that clearly spells out in painstaking detail the specifications of the product you are buying and, 3) have some sort of quality control.

Right after I got off the phone with this reporter, I opened a fascinating email from a reader asking me about a death sentence recently handed down by a Chinese court against against a British citizen. Here's the email:

This caught my attention and it seems like something you might blog about: "British man facing death for a drug trafficking conviction in China."

I know criminal law is not your specialty, so perhaps you know a good criminal attorney who might be interested in writing on the subject.

There is, of course, little information on the case, and there are a lot of open questions. Namely, I am wondering what sort of evidence is admissible in a Chinese court to prove mental illness, ie: can the defense actually submit British medical records (obviously with an official translation)? Do Chinese courts normally execute someone considered mentally ill? My understanding of Chinese criminal law is that the death penalty is basically on the table for all "heinous" crimes committed by a person over the age of 18 and a non-pregnant female. So, even if the court were to accept that the defendant is mentally ill, it would have no bearing on the applicability of the death penalty.

If the defendant is genuinely ill, I would find it morally reprehensible to execute the man. However, it seems to me that the death penalty in China takes no account of mental illness, and the law is the law. I suspect that a mentally ill Chinese citizen might also receive the death penalty for this crime, regardless of mental state. All in all, this seems like one more case of foreigners (namely the politicians involved, lawyers, and the Telegraph) misunderstanding Chinese law and expecting special treatment for a British citizen.

Do you have any thoughts on the matter?

I do not know Chinese criminal law well enough to have any thoughts on this from a legal perspective, but I am running the email for two reasons. One, because it starkly highlights how China is not the West and also because I too would love to get some answers to this reader's questions.