December 21 - December 27
China
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress held its final meeting of 2025 to discuss a full agenda of legislation. At the end of the six-day session, it released drafts of eight laws or legislative revisions for public comment. Unusually, one of the bills released for comment had just been been discussed for the first time by the Standing Committee, the Law on State-owned Assets (国有资产法). The 62-article draft addresses the planning, allocation, use, disposal, risk management, and assessment and evaluation systems for various types of state-owned assets.
Other drafts released for comment are: the Ecological and Environmental Code (生态环境法典), Law on National Development Plans (国家发展规划法), Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress (民族团结进步促进法), Childcare Service Law (托育服务法), Antarctic Activities and Environmental Protection Law (南极活动与环境保护法), revisions to the Banking Supervision and Administration Law (银行业监督管理法), and revisions to the Trademark Law (商标法).
The Standing Committee also gave final approval to a Hazardous Chemicals Safety Law (化学品安全法) and revisions to the Foreign Trade Law (对外贸易法), Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (国家通用语言文字法), Fisheries Law (渔业法), and Civil Aviation Law (民用航空法).
The revisions to the Foreign Trade Law include strengthening intellectual property protection in order to qualify for membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and providing new countermeasures for use in ongoing trade battles with other countries.
The revised Civil Aviation Law for the first time formally regulates drones. It requires all entities involved in the design, production, import, maintenance and operation of drones to obtain airworthiness certifications as of July 1, 2026. Drone manufacturers must assign a unique product identification code to each unit.
The Foreign Ministry announced sanctions against twenty US defense-related companies and ten executives a week after Washington announced more than $10 billion arms sale to Taiwan. The sanctions entail freezing the companies’ assets in China and banning Chinese individuals and organizations from doing business with them. The ministry urged the US to stop “the dangerous moves of arming Taiwan.”
The Foreign Ministry said that the United State’s interception and seizure of a China-bound oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast was a serious violation of international law. The US Coast Guard intercepted the tanker Centuries on Dec. 20 carrying about 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan Merey crude oil. A White House spokesperson said the vessel carried sanctioned oil and was part of Venezuela’s shadow fleet. China is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude.
The Ministry of Commerce announced temporary duties ranging from 21.9 percent to 42.7 percent on a list of specific dairy products from the European Union. It said that preliminary findings from an investigation opened in 2024 at the request of the Dairy Association of China showed a link between EU subsidies and “substantial damage” to the domestic Chinese dairy industry. The announcement came a week after the ministry announced anti-dumping duties on EU pork.
Hong Kong
The General Assembly of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law, known as UNIDROIT, will establish an Asia-Pacific Liaison Office in Hong Kong in the second half of 2026. It will be UNIDROIT's first regional office outside Rome since it was founded a century ago. The city is already home to the Hague Conference on Private International Law Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and the Department of Justice Project Office for Collaboration with the UN Commission on International Trade Law.
Japan
Japan’s Cabinet approved a record defense budget plan exceeding 9 trillion yen (US$58 billion) for the coming year, aiming to fortify its strike-back capability and coastal defense with cruise missiles and unmanned arsenals as tensions with China rise. The draft budget for fiscal 2026, beginning April, is up 9.4 percent from 2025.
China lodged a diplomatic complaint with Japan regarding the visit by a high-ranking official of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to Taiwan. Taiwan President Lai Ching-te received the LDP’s executive acting secretary general Koichi Hagiuda in the presidential office in Taipei and urged closer cooperation between Taipei and Tokyo to help maintain regional stability and advance a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Koreas
The National Assembly passed a bill requiring the Seoul Central District Court and Seoul High Court to create specialized panels for future cases involving rebellion, treason, and foreign subversion. Each panel must consist of a three-judge bench selected by the judges’ council at each court. The ruling Democratic Party withdrew a provision that would have given non-judicial officials a say in selecting judges to the panels but the conservative opposition still deemed the bill an unconstitutional threat to judicial independence. The bill was born out of frustration over alleged delays in former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s rebellion trial and refusal by judges to approve arrest warrants against some key figures close to Yoon. The new panels would not handle trials already underway, however.
The trial for People Power Party (PPP) Rep. Choo Kyung-ho began on charges that he helped former President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly impose martial law. When Yoon declared martial law on the night of Dec. 3, 2024, Choo called an emergency party meeting but changed the venue three times, allegedly obstructing lawmakers' participation in a parliamentary vote to lift the decree.
Ten descendants of Koreans forcibly conscripted by Japan during World War II filed a lawsuit in Seoul Central District Court seeking the removal of the names of their deceased from the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where Japan honors its war dead. About 20,000 Koreans are believed to have been enshrined at Yasukuni without their families’ consent. Since the enshrinement of Koreans became publicly known in the 1990s, bereaved family members have filed two lawsuits in Japanese courts seeking cancellation of enshrinement, but both were dismissed as time-barred.
An inter-agency task force met to begin investigating the recent data breach at e-commerce giant Coupang that affected 33.7 million users. The task force will seek to establish accountability for the breach, determine if any laws were violated, discuss ways to protect users in future, and revamp data protection policies. Coupang announced in November that the names, phone numbers, email addresses, and delivery details of nearly all members had been compromised. Coupang is South Korea’s largest online retailer and also offers food delivery and video streaming services.
Taiwan
Taiwan’s constitutional crisis deepened. On Dec. 26, the opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan approved a motion to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Lai Ching-te, saying he had undermined Taiwan’s constitutional order and democracy. The move came after Lai failed to promulgate an amendment passed by the legislature to give local governments a larger share of public revenues. The legislature scheduled public hearings for Jan. 14 and 15 to hear opinions from civil society about the impeachment and said the president would have an opportunity to explain his position to the body.
The Kuomintang (Nationalist or KMT) Party proposed to revise the Referendum Act (公民投法) to allow public referendums to overturn Constitutional Court judgments. It was responding to a Dec. 19 decision by five of the court’s sitting eight justices holding unconstitutional amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act that have paralyzed the court for more than eleven months. The effect of the five justices’ action is hotly debated. More than 20 civic groups, 160 academics and 130 lawyers issued a joint statement supporting their decision.
The Legislative Yuan passed an Artificial Intelligence Basic Act (人工智慧基本法) that lays out principles on how artificial intelligence (AI) is to be governed in Taiwan and designates the National Science and Technology Council as the governing authority for AI. The seven core principles set for AI development are sustainability and well-being, human autonomy, privacy and data governance, cybersecurity and safety, transparency and explainability, fairness and non-discrimination, and accountability. AI applications must not harm people’s lives, freedom or property, nor undermine social order, national security or the environment, or involve bias, discrimination, false advertising, misinformation or fabrication.
The Executive Yuan approved draft amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) that would require legislators to obtain approval before traveling to China. In addition, elected officials would be required to publicly disclose all contact with the Chinese government, Communist Party, military, administrative or other politically affiliated agencies during their trips. The draft amendments require legislative approval.
Prosecutors charged four persons with violating the National Security Act (國家安全法) and the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) by allegedly giving China classified information about then-President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) visit to South and Central America in 2023 and other secrets. The same four persons were found guilty in July of developing an underground spy organization for China.