> Wu retains control of the Chinese unit via his possession of the company stamp which is necessary in China to authorize important bureaucratic procedures.
Something I find weird is that modern seals are mass-produced. There is no identification value, because anyone can trivially buy a seal that will make the exact impression of your seal.
(For personal seals. I don't know what company seals involve.)
The base is mass produced; and you are conflating 'vanity' stamps available as souvenirs with the registered official seals for banking and formal business. Anyone can trivially buy a stamp matching all the other toy stamps for that name, but are not official.
Official seals use uncommon font styles and are hand carved natural materials, such that each one has a unique microfeatures inherent to the wood, stone, or horn used, which develop unique wear and ink absorption characteristics.
These official seals are registered and become official for specific scopes of use; some are solely for banking and separate from the other uses like contracts and official filings: which prevents corporate partners and official channels from potentially exposing the banking seals.
The vanity type seals can be used for informal things like putting your name on homework or stamping a package delivery receipt for items of trivial value such as Amazon basics, but it is illegal to use mass produced stamps for official legal or banking.
At least in the Japanese context that I'm more familiar with, there's also levels to seals: you have (possibly mass produced) lower-value seals for low-value signatures, but you also have high value seals where an exact imprint is recorded with the government for high value signature verification, and physical possession of which is very carefully guarded.
I mean it's basically identical to a signature in terms of identification value, and, by the sounds of it, usage.
The only difference is that demonstrated in the described case, that the stamp is expected to be passed on to whomever is in authority, whereas we would never say "This CEO can't be ousted as he refused to relinquish his signature."
> I mean it's basically identical to a signature in terms of identification value, and, by the sounds of it, usage.I mean it's basically identical to a signature in terms of identification value, and, by the sounds of it, usage.
Usage, sure. It's a lot worse in terms of identification value; signatures can be forged, but signing seals look identical to each other by design. Nobody is going to produce an exact replica of your signature by accident, but with seals that's routine.
Or, in the words of my friend, 橡皮章的大小，字体都一样的 [rubber seals' size and font are all the same].
(I had asked her whether she had a seal herself. She confirmed that she has one, and sent me an image very similar to this: https://img1.baidu.com/it/u=3145542370,421755251&fm=253&fmt=... . But she noted that Chinese personal seals are more likely to be square than round.)
Probably better than a signature for the high end fancy ones given that mine never looks the same from one to the next, a stamp made of natural material is going to be more self-similar across impressions than my signature or most peoples I'd imagine.
Not to mention the god awful "sign here" on delivery tablets, I just make a random squiggle because it never works properly.
