In late May, Zhao Hongyan was one of about two dozen in-house lawyers who spoke at a Shanghai conference. Her topic was extremely common for such confabs: dealing with corruption.
However closely her audience listened will be nothing compared to the way her views will be scrutinized going forward. Zhao, the China legal director for British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, was one of four company executives detained by China's Ministry of Public Security as part of a probe into whether the company funneled almost $500 million in bribes through 700 travel agencies to doctors and hospitals in order to get them to purchase or prescribe its products.
