Comment être en pourparlers un contrat d'achat avec le fournisseur chinois correctement ? Partie 1
Par Steven Chow
J'ai été approché fréquemment par des acheteurs déchirés au loin par les fournisseurs chinois. Est-ce que souvent quand je leur demande de m'envoyer le contrat d'achat qu'ils ont signé avec les fournisseurs, certains d'entre eux m'enverront la facture pro forma (pi), et les autres diront, aucun n'ai-je pas un contrat ou un pi, je garde le reçu qu'I leur envoyant l'argent ou vous veulent pour voir les email et/ou le disque instantané de conversation de messager ?
Pratiquement, pi est considéré comme contrat, mais pi est trop simple pour protéger vos droites, vous devez noter les modalités et les conditions suivantes sur des écritures - contrat. Selon la loi de contrat de la République populaire de Chine, un contrat contiendra les clauses suivantes :
(1) titre ou nom et domicile des parties ;
(2) objet de contrat ;
(3) quantité ;
(4) qualité ;
(5) prix ou rémunération ;
(6) délai, endroit et méthode d'exécution ;
(7) responsabilité pour l'infraction du contrat ; et
(8) méthodes pour régler des conflits.
Ce qui suit sont des bouts de bonification pour signer un contrat de ventes avec le fournisseur chinois (des bouts seront donnés dans l'ordre des clauses de contrat) :
(1) title or name and domicile of the parties;
Make sure the company name, domicile, contact information mentioned on contract are correct. It will be safe if you use the company name, domicile disclosed on their business license and registration form of foreign trade dealers (对外贸易经营者登记表). Only Chinese name and address are listed on the business license, but both English and Chinese name and address will be listed on the registration form of foreign trade dealers.
(2) contract object, quantity and quality clauses
This clause is the definition of what you bought from the suppliers. A certain quantity of product with the quality specification as blah blah. My advices are: a) use full product description so the supplier won’t be confused and could not make any excuses in case of wrong delivery; b) It is important to add a Quality Clause, use the detailed specification to define the product clearly. I was surprised many fellow companies only put a brief products description and no quality clause or standard on the contract, especially those who use PI as a contract.
Steven Chow, Managing Director for the China Inspection Company Chinawhy.net
This is the first part of “How to negotiate a purchase contract with Chinese supplier properly?”, here you can find part 2 and part 3.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Dear Mr. Chow
Thank you for an informative article. It gave me some feedback that is very useful even after 5 years in China.
I do however have one concern and experiences with the legal side of this. Most companies will have a purchase contract most of the time of an amount too small for legal action to be feasible. Or even worse, the supplier is an a rural town in China with poor legal support. The dilemma here is: Do you state in the contract that you should have arbitration in Shanghai, HK or Stockholm? In which case, contracts of less than around US300,000 are too small to go to arbitration for, or do you use the local legal system. If you use the local legal system, then chances are that you will come short as local courts almost always err on the side or local businesses. This gets more likely as the company you are purchasing from is further away from a big city.
As such, in my experience, the best insurance for a bad lot of products has been to keep a good relationship with the factory, spend enough time to clearly, I mean fed spoon by spoon, explain your quality requirements and procedures to check the quality. Then follow up new suppliers closely even during production. I almost lost a contract with a big customer because the factory argued over how to weight a product! Off course this was only their excuse, but it goes to show how trouble can arise out of the blue once you have problems.
Another item that quickly can become a point of argument is the payment term. This is one point I find it pays off to be very detailed. I have learned the hard way that it pays dividend to specify that the payment day is the day you pay the bank, and that when you have issued instructions to your bank for payment, the goods shall be released. If not, and the factory wants to argue, they will insist that the money is in their bank account before they release the goods, and oops, you need to tell your customer you are a week late.
Conclusion, from my experiences, practical follow up is a better insurance than a good contract with many suppliers.
July 26th, 2008 at 5:17 am
I agree that good follow-up and communication is extremely important in China.
Lawsuit is always the last option. But it never harm if you sign a contract properly, which first is a threat to those suppliers so they won’t push the limit too much, secondly, many buyers don’t have office/personnel here in china to follow up/communicate closely, timely and effectively. also what if the follow-up failed if you don’t have a contract.
Regards,
Steven Chow