Mr. Cao is a partner resident at the firm’s Beijing office. Mr. Cao’s practice focuses on entertainment and media industry matters. He is extensively involved in transactions including development of film and television projects, Sino-foreign co-productions, production financing (including debt financing and slate financing matters), establishment of production and financing vehicles, large theme park projects, music industry contracts, personal management, as well as advertising and new media. Mr. Cao is also richly experienced in general corporate and finance transactions, such as IPO and M&A matters, which helps him structure complicated transactions in the entertainment and media industries.

Mr. Cao first joined Haiwen in 1996. Mr. Cao worked at a top tier U.S.-headquartered law firm at its Century City office from 2001 to 2002 and as an in-house counsel at Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. from 2005 to 2006. From 2008 to 2011, Mr. Cao was a senior counsel at the Beijing office of another top tier U.S.-headquartered law firm. From 2011 to 2014, Mr. Cao served in the capacity of Managing Director of the Office of the Board of Directors and Executive Assistant to the President at China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign wealth fund. Mr. Cao returned to Haiwen in the beginning of January 2015.

Mr. Cao’s recent experience includes advising major Hollywood studios, top-tier international and Chinese entertainment companies, investment institutions, as well as superstars, A-list directors and producers in many high-profile deals in the film, television and music industries.

Representative film projects that Mr. Cao has advised on include MEG, Kungfu Yoga, Cloud Atlas, The Karate Kid, Love in Space, Hot Summer Days, The Butcher, The Chef and The Swordsman, The Forbidden Kingdom, The Painted Veil and the 15th season of the reality show Survivor.

Mr. Cao is a member of the Columbia Law School Chinese Law Steering Committee. He was a key researcher and drafter for the WIPO Study on the Transfer of Rights by Performers to Audiovisual Producers, which was distributed to all the WTO governments. Mr. Cao recently co- authored a chapter in the book Doing Business in China published by Juris Publishing, Inc.

Mr. Cao received his LLB and LLM from the University of International Business and Economics in 1994 and 1997, respectively. He received his LLM and JD from Columbia University School of Law in 2001 and 2005, respectively. Mr. Cao also studied at the Law School of Waseda University in Tokyo as an exchange student from Columbia Law School in 2003. Mr. Cao is a native speaker of Mandarin. 

He is proficient in English and fluent in Japanese.