Lantian Stock was China's first state-owned agricultural enterprise to have gone through the corporatization reform in mid 90's. Since its listing in 1996, Lantian Stock had recorded a dazzling performance in its financial statements. However, in October 2001, its resplendent image was smashed by an academic researcher, Liu Shuwei with her powerful 600-word article that pointed out the liquidity crisis of Lantian Stock. Consequently, all banks in China refused to extend loans to the company. Meanwhile, Liu faced defamation prosecution brought up by the company who initially denied the allegation. The defamation charge was dropped eventually as the Chinese regulators began to unveil the hidden truth that Lantian Stock had indeed involved in misreporting and perpetrating accounting fraud. Chinese media also dug up the controversial background, mythical tales and the previous fraud record of Lantian Stock. Since Liu could uncover the misstatement based on some basic financial ratio analysis, she remained skeptical about why such wrongdoings had not been discovered by related parties earlier. Alternately, the auditing or CPA firm of Lantian Stock commented that the fraud was undetectable as it had gone far beyond what CPAs could discover from its required procedure, and blamed it on the Chinese environment that was conducive to accounting fraud. Was the circumstance of Lantian Stock scandal as what the CPA had claimed?

KingJewels, one of the leading jewelry manufacturing and trading companies in Hong Kong, was having another profitable year. With its operations director essentially running the company in Hong Kong while the owner and CEO focused his energies on expanding the business into international markets, an opportunity had arisen for foul play. Accounting records had been manipulated and some senior staff were found to have forged shipping documents and accepted bribes from suppliers in exchange for awarding contracts. To complicate matters further, the professional and personal relationships between some key players in the company were blurred, making it even more difficult for the eventual whistle blower to decide her course of action. Illustrates the importance of corporate governance and internal control, even for SMEs, and especially when senior management members of the company concerned had ties that extended beyond professional relationships.

AccuForm, a German-Hong Kong joint venture specializing in the production of chemical coatings for application to garments, is confronted with a situation where an unauthorized Chinese manufacturer had stolen one of AccuForm's experimental coatings, applied it to their own brand of clothing, and sold it to the public as an AccuForm product. The product had caused allergic reactions in some children, and the media had widely reported the incident. It was later discovered there was more to the situation than stolen coating, as some staff were found to have engaged in money laundering, misappropriation of company assets, acceptance of illegitimate rebates, and bribes. The general manager of AccuForm, in addition to having to deal with the media, also had to find a way to resolve the differences in business practices between the company's German and Hong Kong parents, which are thought to have been partially responsible for the incident, as well as rebuild staff morale and customers' confidence in AccuForm's products. Illustrates how differences in company cultures can create difficulty for management, and what are formulas for success in one country may be guarantees of failure in another.