Hai Yong is a partner in the Shanghai office of Jingtian & Gongcheng LLP, a leading PRC law firm. His cross-border practice spans real estate, hospitality, foreign direct investment and M&A, and projects work for energy and infrastructure clients. Before joining the firm as a partner, he practised at Baker & McKenzie for over 10 years.
His real estate work spans land acquisition and project development; leasing across office, retail, and industrial portfolios; and the sale and acquisition of completed assets through both onshore and offshore structures. He has acted for US, Hong Kong, and Singapore-based real estate funds and multi-national corporate clients on joint ventures and acquisitions across mainland China, including some of the earlier NBWD financings using PRC real property as collateral.
In hospitality, he has advised multiple leading luxury hotel groups on its hotel and branded-residence portfolio across mainland China, and counselled major Chinese hotel groups on master-franchise and management-licence agreements with international brands — arrangements covering hundreds of properties over multi-decade terms. He also acts regularly for hotel owners on the negotiation and ongoing management of HMAs with international operators.
On the FDI and M&A side, the practice covers both directions of cross-border capital. Inbound, he advises international investors entering China through wholly foreign-owned enterprises, joint ventures, and platform vehicles — across advanced manufacturing, medical devices, renewable energy, and consumer brands — and the platform exits that follow, typically through the sale of offshore holding companies in Hong Kong, Singapore, or the BVI. Outbound, he counsels PRC institutional investors on real-estate and operating-business investments in the US, Hong Kong, Middle East structured around ODI clearance, tax efficiency, and the unwind that arrives a decade later.
In energy & infrastructure, he has advised foreign sponsors and domestic operators on the development and financing of energy and industrial assets in and outside China — including the structuring of a 1,000-megawatt solar-power platform combining international technology with a state-owned partner. The work runs from PPA negotiation, financing documents and EPC contracting through grid-interconnection regimes to the cross-border project-finance layer beneath each asset. More recent matters have extended into transport and logistics infrastructure — territory where his real-estate experience meets the regulated-utility discipline of energy work.
Hai Yong's practice is also marked by constant innovation in how legal services are designed and delivered. He has developed AI-assisted workflows for bilingual contract review, due diligence, negotiation tracking, portfolio management, and project risk management, applying technology not as a substitute for legal judgment but as a discipline for improving speed, consistency, and precision. In transactions involving layered ownership structures, long-term hotel arrangements, and portfolios of multiple projects, he uses these tools to help clients identify legal risks earlier, compare positions more clearly, track critical action items, prepare for potential disputes with greater efficiency, and make decisions with a fuller understanding of both commercial and legal consequences.
Hai Yong has been named Next Generation Partner for Real Estate and Construction by The Legal 500 multiple times and has also been recognized by LegalBand for tourism and hospitality multiple times.
Hai Yong lectures at several universities and regularly speaks on cross-border investment and hospitality-related topics.
