I have heard A LOT of cases of foreigners building up a business with a Chinese friend and getting screwed over. I do UI/UX Design and with my few tries of getting Chinese clients, most have been a total waste of time or a nightmare... so now I strongly refuse Chinese clients. They are just too painful to work with...  But I try to be positive and look for that one opportunity to prove my experiences wrong.

And I thought I found it. An American guy told me the company he was working with needed a UI/UX designer. He then told me they were Chinese and needed to build a mobile app for the UAV/Drone they were making and going to sell. It sounded cool... but the Chinese part made me worry. "No don't worry, he said... these guys are the real deal"... I told him my experiences and he went on to tell me that one of the head guys was his long-term friend. He even organized/planned the Chinese guy's wedding in San Francisco and they seemed close when I met them both. So I agreed and they brought me in. Big mistake...

I get a phone called at 11pm (cause Chinese like to call late) and this other Chinese guy on the project told me that the American guy left the company because of visa issues... I asked the American guy and he told me they axed him for giving too much of his opinion (yup, that will do it in China). He told me he was shocked because one of the guys that agreed to axe him was his long-term friend. They replaced him with a Chinese guy that has never even made an application before and had some experience with photography.

They wanted to keep me on and I sort of reluctantly agreed. Then the American guy informed me they not only axed him but refused to pay him for his last month (thus not honoring their contract, hey this is China after-all). His Chinese buddy never even gave him the impression they were going to give him the boot.

Anyway, the point of it is that basically his Chinese buddy totally screwed him over. This seems so typical to me.

Just saying if you have a TRUE Chinese friend... consider yourself extremely lucky because you got a better chance of being abducted and probed by aliens.