China's legal practices, combined with the growing pains of its fledgling legal institutions and evolving political norms, create problems for MNEs. A flashpoint is the theft of intellectual property-the product of someone's intellect that has commercial value such as patents, trademarks, or copyrights. MNEs complain that the relentless, widespread, and sophisticated theft of their intellectual property fuels China’s economic surge. Aggressive estimates attribute nearly a third of the Chinese economy to piracy. In the united states, the FBI estimates that American companies lose up to $250 billion annually to counterfeiting, half of it