Linklaters' China alliance firm has launched a new office in Beijing.

Shanghai-based Zhao Sheng Law Firm received approval from local authorities in Beijing earlier this month to open the office, which will be located in the same building and on the same floor as Linklaters' Beijing office. Zhao Sheng will send three lawyers from Shanghai to the new Beijing branch; the office currently does not have a resident partner, though firm managing partner Eric Liu will split time between Shanghai and Beijing.*

Linklaters said the new office will initially focus on competition work before expanding into other practice areas. Zhao Sheng added that the Beijing office will grow gradually with lateral hires.*

The Beijing outpost allows Zhao Sheng to be closer to key commercial regulators, strengthen relationships and gain insight into the regulatory landscape, the Magic Circle firm said in a statement. Beijing partner Fay Zhou is a competition lawyer and specializes in merger control.

Zhao Sheng is led by former Linklaters senior consultant Liu, who joined the firm in 2017 as part of a spinoff from Linklaters' China offices. Liu was with the Magic Circle firm for a decade and specialises in corporate, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and China-related regulatory issues.

Linklaters formed a joint operation with Zhao Sheng in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in April 2018. That move allowed the Magic Circle firm to include Chinese law capability in a one-stop-shop offering. The FTZ program is one of the few approved ways foreign firms are permitted to offer Chinese law advice through an association with a domestic firm.

Since the Shanghai FTZ scheme was launched in 2013, Baker McKenzie, HFW, Hogan Lovells and Ashurst have launched similar operations. But unlike the other joint operations, which are all with established Chinese firms, the Linklaters-Zhao Sheng alliance is unique—a modified spinoff structure under the FTZ programme with a lesser-known boutique staffed with former Linklaters lawyers.

Meanwhile, several other global firms, mostly those based in the U.S., have struggled in China in recent years. In March, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton closed its Beijing office to consolidate its China practice in Shanghai; and last year, Am Law 100 firms Troutman Sanders and Davis Wright Tremaine shuttered their China offices and pulled out of Asia entirely.

*Updated May 31: This story has been updated with Zhao Sheng managing partner Eric Liu splitting time between Shanghai and the new Beijing office and that Zhao Sheng plans to grow the Beijing office with lateral hires.

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