THE CHINA DILEMMA

For decades, American companies came to China to tap into a vast opportunity. As geopolitical tensions rise, it's getting much harder to stay-and it's just as hard to leave.

-  Geoff Colvin and Ram Charan 

The scale of the raids was modest.

Their psychological impact was huge.

Last March, Chinese authorities shut down the Beijing office of a U.S. consulting firm, Mintz Group, detaining five employees for 24 hours. A few weeks later, authorities visited the offices of another American consultant, Bain & Co., reportedly seizing phones and computers. Months later, a Beijing municipal department said Mintz had carried out "foreign-related statistical investigations" without obtaining approvals. The Bain visit remains unexplained. At least two executives of U.S. companies, one from Mintz and one from the risk and advisory firm Kroll, have been put under exit bans; they cannot leave China.

The events sent a chill through the hundreds of U.S. companies doing business in China. Before Moody's Investors Service downgraded China's credit rating in December, the Financial Times reported, it advised staff not to come to the office that week. "Everyone knows why," a China-based employee told the newspaper. "We are afraid of government inspections." Today, the CFO of a U.S. company doing business in China wonders, "If we send in auditors to audit our business there, are they in danger of being detained?" "Fear is rampant," says a high-level executive at a U.S. business services firm that operates in China. "No one wants to talk about what they're thinking or what they want to do."