Akira Moriwaki's legal practice in China first began in 1998, back when doing so was still a relatively rarity amongst Japanese lawyers. He continued to practice in Beijing until 2007, during which time, he dealt with a large variety of legal issues encountered by Japanese companies then entering into the Chinese market. Although the main focus of his work continues to remain in China related business matters, since returning to Japan he has used his unique experiences to widen his areas of interest to include other Asian jurisdictions, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, Singapore and Myanmar. Akira is highly experienced in a wide range of fields, such as green-field direct investment into Asian jurisdictions, M&A, private equity and Competition law. Through over a decade of experience, he has come to be recognized as one of the foremost and most experienced Japanese lawyers in international trade issues, such as anti-dumping and countervailing duty. For over 3 years, Akira has provided invaluable support to Japan's ODA project relating to the promulgation of Chinese Company law, Competition law and other distribution regulations, and he was also involved in the promulgation of Tort Law of China. Since 2009, he has been conducting lectures in Mandarin Chinese as a visiting professor at Renmin University of China (RUC) Law School. In December 2012, he was ranked first in the "overall ranking" and second in the "companies choice ranking" under the Foreign Law division of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun "Most active lawyer of the year" awards.