I hesitate to 'recommend' them, but only because whenever I do, either on an author website or Facebook group, I get attacked for daring to assert that it's okay to trust a Chinese company with manuscripts and it's okay to publish in China. I have seriously been accused of 'promoting piracy'. This is all from authors whose books are being published by Amazon in India.
I understand people having concerns about publishing in China, and even being upset with those doing business there, but I don't see how not publishing in China would help Hong Kong. On the contrary, sharing books across borders seems to be a positive step towards bringing people together long term.
I wish writers would stop attacking each other in FB groups.
Yeah, it's okay to disagree with someone's opinion. It's not okay to make personal attacks. This is one of the things that is gradually turning me off on social media.
Publishing in certain countries is a risk because of differing attitudes toward copyright. Authors need to be aware that, in the event of infringement, there probably isn't any legal recourse. On the other hand, a company that genuinely wants to do business with American authors has an interest in protecting the works of those authors from piracy. Some American things are very popular there, so I could imagine an audience for American novels (though they'd do better in Chinese translation, for sure).
Groups that want American participation (for whatever reason) can be somewhat responsive. I have an odd, non-publishing example from some years ago. The school where I was teaching at the time time was one of those invited to send a group to some event involving singing groups from various countries. We had received assurances that the event was strictly non-political. However, someone connected with our group translated one of the songs they were learning from Chinese to English and discovered that the lyrics included, "We love the red star, the red star of Communism." (I think it lost something in translation.) Anyway, the school board president called her Chinese contact and said our group would withdraw because the non-political pledge was not being observed. The next day the Chinese announced that that particular song would not be included in the program because it was too difficult to learn.
In other words, whoever was organizing the event tried to pull a fast one but valued our participation enough to back down when the truth came out. How much more would a publisher with potentially lucrative American business want to avoid losing it all?
The Chinese government shows little respect for copyrights or patents, and it does favor its own businesses even more than many other countries favor their own. However, there is some consciousness that doing business with other countries may require a little give-and-take.
None of us is anything close to a guarantee that material won't be pirated, of course. But I can see why someone might want to take the gamble.
