June 14 – June 20
Highlights: China releases a white paper operationalizing President Xi Jinping's Global Governance Initiative, a framework to reorder the international system around the United Nations and multilateralism; Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal upholds a a law criminalizing public calls to cast blank ballots or boycott the polls; Japan’s Nagoya High Court agrees with fifteen other high courts that vote-weight disparities in the February election for the House of Representatives did not violate the constitutional principle of electoral equality; South Korean politicians discuss reforming the National Election Commission after it ran short of ballots in the June 3 local elections; Taiwan President Lai Ching-te expresses “high hopes” that US President Trump will approve US$14 billion in new arms sales to Taiwan.
China
The State Council Information Office released a white paper titled “More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China's Principles, Proposals and Actions” to operationalize China's Global Governance Initiative, the framework President Xi Jinping proposed in 2025 to reorder the international system around the UN with greater emphasis on multilateralism, sovereign equality, and a bigger role for the global South. At a news conference, Foreign Minister Wang Yi framed the initiative as an alternative to the unilateralism the document attributes to unnamed major powers, an implicit rebuke of the United States. Wang also announced that China will host an inaugural Xiong'an Global Governance Forum this autumn.
State Council implementing regulations for the revised Mineral Resources Law took effect on June 15. The regulations cover the entire production cycle from mineral exploration and extraction to sales, exports, stockpiling, and environmental restoration. The rules treat the minerals critical for electric vehicles and clean energy as national-security assets. Among other things, they impose volume controls, restrict transfers of mining rights, and call for creation of an official catalogue of strategic minerals.
The State Taxation Administration ordered gas stations to report each individual sale to its tax portal through a digital invoicing process beginning November 1 in an attempt to stop cash and off-book sales that have facilitated retail tax evasion. The rule covers every payment method, including WeChat Pay, and follows a 2025 sweep that recovered 7.5 billion yuan (US$1 billion) from over 5,000 oil businesses.
The National Development and Reform Commission and four other agencies issued a three-year plan requiring nine high-emission industries, including steel and cement, to eliminate production capacity below baseline energy-efficiency standards by 2028 to cut carbon emissions. Non-compliant producers will face a power surcharge of up to 0.1 yuan (1.5 cents) per kilowatt-hour.
The head of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, Ding Xiangqun, said China will speed up revisions to the 2004 Banking Supervision Law and the Insurance Law. Because the banking sector has since grown larger and more opaque, draft revisions include tightening shareholder oversight, allowing earlier intervention, and raising penalties.
Police in Jiangyou, Sichuan, raided a service of the Early Rain Covenant Church and placed two of its elders in administrative detention. Police also briefly detained more than thirty church members. Chinese law permits worship only at state-registered churches, making unregistered “house” churches like Early Rain unlawful and a repeat target of police raids. Early Rain’s founder, Wang Yi, has been imprisoned since 2019 after being convicted of incitement to subvert state power.
WuXi AppTec, a major Chinese drug-research firm, sued the US Defense Department in US federal court to overturn its designation as a Chinese military company, which makes it ineligible for US defense contracts. The Pentagon based the listing on WuXi's indirect state ownership and alleged ties to the Chinese military. The company denies any such links.
The US Commerce Department is holding off on adding AI startup DeepSeek, chipmaker CXMT, and more than 100 other Chinese firms to its Entity List, the export blacklist that bars American firms from supplying them without a license. An inter-agency committee approved the listings as national security risks last year, but the department has not published them.
Hong Kong
The Court of Final Appeal unanimously upheld a law that criminalizes publicly urging others to cast blank ballots or boycott elections. Jacky So Tsun-fung, a former student activist, challenged the constitutionality of Section 27A of the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance, which took effect in 2021. The court said the speech restriction is justified because mass calls for a boycott can undermine an election's legitimacy. So was given a two-month suspended prison term after sharing a social media post that urged voters to cast blank ballots during the 2021 legislative election. At least fourteen other persons have been convicted under the same law. Actually casting a blank ballot or abstaining from voting remains legal.
The Asian Migrants' Coordinating Body, a coalition of domestic worker NGOs, marked International Domestic Workers Day by calling on the government to raise the minimum wage for domestic workers, stop requiring them to live with their employers (who often do not give them a private bedroom), and relax visa rules that force them to leave the city within two weeks of their contract ending. The coalition said these restrictions trap workers with abusive employers.
The Labor Department tightened restrictions on importing foreign workers in the food and beverage industry. Employers had been required to employ at least two full-time local employees for every foreign worker, but as of June 16, the minimum ratio of local to foreign workers rose to 3:1. The ratio remains 2:1 in other sectors that are permitted to import workers. Food and beverage uses the most imported workers and has drawn the most complaints.
The District Court ordered Studiodanz Company to pay a dancer, Li Kai-yin, the maximum amount provided under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance, HK$6.29 million (US$806,000), after a screen fell on him at a 2022 concert. The accident left Li permanently and totally incapacitated, needing round-the-clock care for life.
Japan
The Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court agreed with fifteen other high courts that vote-weight disparities in the February election for the House of Representatives did not violate the constitutional principle of electoral equality. Plaintiffs across the country filed lawsuits in sixteen courts after an election in which votes in some districts had up to 2.1 times the weight of votes in other districts. The Nagoya High Court and the other courts attributed the gap to natural population shifts rather than improper drawing of districts.
Authorities in Shiga Prefecture are preparing to hold a retrial for a man who died in prison after being convicted of a 1984 robbery-murder. Prosecutors said they will not seek to prove guilt in the retrial of Hiromu Sakahara, making it likely that he will be acquitted this time. Sakahara confessed during police interrogation but pleaded not guilty at trial; he said police had beaten him and threatened people around him. Sakahara died of illness at the age of 75 in 2011. In 2018, a court ruled that his confession lacked credibility and ordered a retrial; the Supreme Court finalized the retrial order this year.
The mother of a 16-year-old girl who died after being held in criminal detention for eighteen days has sued authorities. The mother claims that the girl was traumatized by a threatening interrogation - a staple of what Japanese call “hostage justice,” in which detained suspects are not allowed to see family or friends and are subjected to intense pressure to confess during interrogations without any lawyer present. The girl was accused of assaulting a patient at a care facility where she worked - a charge that authorities eventually dropped, releasing her. She died several months later.
The Fair Trade Commission raided the offices of six ice cream makers, including Meiji and Lotte, to investigate allegations that they formed a price-fixing cartel. The companies allegedly raised the suggested retail prices of ice cream and other products in increments of ¥10.
Police arrested a 38-year-old Japanese man who was deported from Thailand on suspicion of leading one of the many telecom fraud operations based in neighboring Cambodia. The Aichi Prefectural Police estimated financial losses from fraud perpetrated by the group allegedly led by Yusuke Sasaki total about ¥1.4 billion.
The Diet revised Japan’s adult guardianship system to make it more flexible and responsive to individual needs. The previous rules did not allow persons to exit guardianship unless they regained their decision-making capabilities; under the new rules, persons may opt out of guardianship based on their needs.
Koreas
South Korea’s National Assembly created a special committee to lead an investigation into the National Election Commission following widespread ballot shortages during the June 3 local elections. The probe will run in parallel with a criminal investigation that is already underway. The commission has acknowledged that ballot papers ran short at ninety-one polling stations, of which twenty-six temporarily suspended voting while they sought additional ballots.
Meanwhile, the ruling Democratic Party and opposition People Power Party each set up their own task force to study structural reforms to strengthen the commission’s administrative capacity and increase oversight. Because the commission is an independent body created in the constitution, major reform could require a constitutional amendment.
The National Court Administration called for legislation that would impose fines or otherwise discipline attorneys who cite nonexistent precedents - a growing problem as attorneys increasingly rely on AI to help prepare legal arguments. Judges say they are having to spend time checking case citations that turn out to be fake. The NCA is also seeking to amend procedure rules to require parties to disclose whether they used AI in preparing their submissions. Meanwhile, the NCA is in the process of installing its own internal AI system.
Rights groups and former detainees said undocumented migrants still face prolonged confinement and poor treatment even after the Constitutional Court found indefinite immigration detention unconstitutional in 2023 and South Korea amended related laws in 2025. The public interest law organization Duroo told a press conference that the committee created to review detention has yet to approve any requests for review. The number of people held at immigration facilities has not fallen.
The Minimum Wage Commission opened talks on allowing service sectors such as restaurants to pay less than the nationwide minimum wage. Employers say these sectors cannot bear the same labor costs as manufacturing. Unions oppose the proposal.
Taiwan
President Lai Ching-te expressed “high hopes” that US President Trump will approve US$14 billion in new arms sales to Taiwan, and described Trump as a strong supporter of Taiwan. He also said Taiwan’s refusal to accept unification with China and safeguarding of its own democratic way of life should not be seen as a provocation against China. Lai spoke to the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club in Taipei the week after the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang or KMT, visited Washington and argued that dialogue with China is the only path to peace and security.
The Foreign Ministry and Ocean Affairs Council withdrew Taiwan's delegation from an ocean conference in Kenya after organizers refused to accredit two delegates and immigration officers detained them for twenty hours. Both government departments attributed the treatment to China, which routinely pressures other governments to exclude Taiwan’s representatives from international forums. The Our Ocean Conference is a gathering of scientists, NGOs, and businesses to discuss ocean conservation, sustainability, and climate action.
The Cabinet proposed a NT$210 billion (US$6.6 billion) special budget for domestically made drones, central to Taiwan's strategy against a potential Chinese invasion, after opposition lawmakers cut drone funding from a larger special defense bill in May. The standalone budget would lock in sustained multiyear funding, but it must clear the same opposition-controlled Legislature that stripped the money from the earlier bill.
Parties from across Taiwan's political spectrum signaled support for abolishing the Control Yuan after one of President Lai Ching-te's nominees to the government watchdog body declined the appointment. Hsieh Cheng-ta, a senior attorney and former New Taipei deputy mayor from the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT), said he was declining the appointment because he supports amending the Constitution to abolish the body. Hsieh was among twenty-seven nominees for the Control Yuan announced by the Presidential Office on June 11. The current members' six-year terms expire on July 31.
The Taipei District Court sentenced Lu Chi-hsien, a diabolo instructor, to a total of twelve years and eight months in prison for leaking a military training plan and former President Tsai Ing-wen's 2023 international travel itineraries to Beijing. The prosecution said Lu was recruited by Chinese intelligence on a 2020 trip to China. Lu is already appealing a separate conviction for running a China-funded spy network, for which he was sentenced to ten years and six months.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs proposed amendments to Taiwan's online-retail contract rules that would bar shopping platforms from using pre-checked boxes to enroll customers in paid memberships without their explicit consent. The ministry said the change responds to complaints that sites such as Shopee and Coupang charged users who never knowingly subscribed and made memberships hard to cancel.
The Legislative Yuan amended the Waste Disposal Act to curb illegal industrial waste dumping, raising the maximum prison term from five to seven years and authorizing electronic-fencing surveillance to track waste flows. The amendments also make company directors and major shareholders jointly liable for cleanup costs.
The National Security Bureau, Taiwan's intelligence agency, launched a secure webpage for Chinese nationals to submit tips. It said it modeled the channel on US, British, and Israeli intelligence services. However, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office condemned the move and warned it would pursue criminal liability against anyone who supplies intelligence to Taiwan.
Chinese officials announced agreements to buy atemoya, pomelo, tea, and grouper from three Taiwanese counties governed by the opposition Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT). A Taiwanese official accused Beijing of trying to deepen farmers' dependence on China in order to establish policy leverage. China abruptly banned its imports of Taiwanese pineapples, grouper, and citrus in 2021 and 2022 in a policy dispute.