This Week in Asian Law

July 26 – August 1

Highlights: China threatens to retaliate after the US Federal Communications Commission restricts imports of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots; yet another Hong Kong bookstore says it will shut down after authorities accuse it of selling seditious books; a panel of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party proposes allowing government agencies to intercept private communications for national security purposes without a court warrant; South Korea’s legislature strips prosecutors of the power to investigate crimes; Taiwan says it is working with US authorities to halt smuggling of advanced AI chips to China.

China

In the first systematic revision of the criminal insider trading rules since 2012, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate quadrupled the monetary threshold for prosecution in most cases to trades of 2 million yuan (US$296,000), effective July 27, 2026. The revised joint interpretation also says that the “sensitive period,” during which insiders may not trade or tip others, begins when controlling shareholders or corporate decision-makers reveal preliminary deal intentions to close contacts. The earlier trigger aims to settle disputes over when information becomes inside information. Lower thresholds remain in place for repeat offenders and statutory insiders.

The Ministry of Commerce threatened to “resolutely retaliate” after the US Federal Communications Commission restricted imports of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots and networked power inverters. The commission said the robots’ sensors could collect data for foreign intelligence services and the devices could be remotely commandeered. The ban falls most heavily on China, whose manufacturers hold an estimated 85 percent of the global humanoid robot market. The US ban does not affect existing models previously authorized for sale or import into the country.

The Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and Ministry of Public Security jointly issued rules for determining when to prosecute juveniles between the ages of twelve and fourteen who are suspected of violent crimes. The National People’s Congress revised the Criminal Law in 2021 to lower the age of criminal responsibility for certain crimes such as homicide, but left open many implementation details, such as how to determine if circumstances are sufficiently egregious. These are now clarified in the Regulations Regarding Certain Issues When Authorizing Prosecution of Extremely Violent Crimes Involving Juveniles Between the Ages of Twelve and Fourteen (关于办理已满十二周岁不满十四周岁未成年人严重暴力犯罪核准追诉案件若干问题的规定).

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology conducted on-site safety inspections at the electric vehicle makers GAC Aion and XPeng after reports of defects in their products. XPeng had just recalled about 33,000 minivans over faulty air suspension. The inspections reflect official concern that fierce competition and compressed development cycles are undermining vehicle quality. The ministry said inspections will become regular practice.

The State Administration for Market Regulation imposed a 5.18 billion yuan (US$765 million) fine on the online travel giant Trip.com, formerly known as Ctrip, for abusing its dominance of the online hotel-booking market. The regulator found that since 2020 the Shanghai-founded company had forced hotels into exclusive arrangements and required them to give it the lowest online price. The fine equals 7.5 percent of Trip.com’s 2025 sales in China, near the 10 percent maximum under the Anti-Monopoly Law.

The Cyberspace Administration of China released a draft law to curb cyber-bullying, including AI-generated abuse, and is accepting public comments through August 28, 2026. Under the draft, platforms would have to verify users' real identities before allowing them to post and would have to remove and report AI-generated bullying content. The requirements would extend to posts made overseas that target China. Violators would face fines of up to 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) or the loss of their websites or business licenses.

In a recently publicized decision, the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court ruled that a man committed domestic violence by repeatedly posting derogatory messages about his estranged wife in his son's school and neighborhood chat groups. The court issued a personal protection order barring the man from harassing his son and other close relatives by phone, message, or online post. The court preserved his visitation rights, however. The Anti-Domestic Violence Law recognizes psychological harm among family members as a form of domestic violence.

The Ministry of Natural Resources issued regulations for managing a nature reserve that the State Council established in 2025 at the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. China calls the uninhabited coral reef Huangyan Island, and seized control of it from the Philippines in 2012. The new regulations ban fishing, mining, and harvesting or excavating corals, coral reefs, giant clams, and other marine resources without Chinese permission. An international arbitral tribunal ruled in 2016 that the shoal is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

Hong Kong

The District Court sentenced Xiao Rui, the son of a former mainland anti-corruption official, to six years and nine months in prison for laundering more than HK$64 million (US$8.16 million) and using forged documents to obtain Hong Kong residency. Xiao, 37, submitted fabricated bank certificates to qualify for the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme, which grants residency to persons investing at least HK$10 million in the city. Witnesses testified that the funds included bribes paid at the direction of Xiao's father, then the head of an anti-corruption bureau in the Wuhan city prosecutor's office.

Greenfield Bookstore, an independent bookseller that opened in 1976, announced it will close when its lease expires. National security police raided Greenfield and another independent bookstore, Have a Nice Stay, on July 15, 2026. They arrested five booksellers, including two Greenfield staff, on suspicion of selling seditious books, defined as books that could incite hatred of the government and the courts. Greenfield is the third independent bookstore to announce plans to close in recent weeks.

A former head of the University of Hong Kong's student union left prison after serving four years and nine months for rioting during the July 1, 2019 storming of the Legislative Council. Protesters occupied the legislature at the height of protests against a bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. Althea Suen pleaded guilty in 2023. She was among twelve persons jailed for up to seven years in the case.

High Court Judge Wilson Chan was asked to retire July 31, 2026, almost six years early, at the request of Chief Justice Andrew Cheung. The Court of Appeal had found that Chan copied 95 percent of a judgment from one party’s submissions in a shares dispute; it ordered a retrial of the case. The Judiciary then reprimanded Chan for at least his fifth established instance of judicial copying since 2023. Cheung said judicial copying “strikes at the very core” of the requirement that judges decide cases independently.

New rules allowing patients to refuse life-sustaining treatment took effect on July 31, 2026. The Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Ordinance (維持生命治療的預作決定條例), which the Legislative Council passed in November 2024, gives statutory force to advance medical directives. Public hospitals have accepted the directives under common law since 2010. A directive allows a mentally capable adult to refuse specified treatments. The ordinance protects health care workers and rescuers from legal liability when they comply with a valid directive.

Japan

A panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party proposed allowing government agencies to intercept private communications for national security purposes without a court warrant. Current law allows interception only for criminal investigations and only with a court warrant. To address concerns under Article 21 of the constitution, which guarantees the secrecy of communications, the proposal includes strict approval requirements and independent after-the-fact review. The party panel also called for passage of a foreign interference prevention law.

The National Intelligence Bureau began operating on July 31 as the new hub of government intelligence activities. It is the successor to the Cabinet Secretariat's Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, and will serve as secretariat for the National Intelligence Council, which held its first meeting on the same day. The bureau, with about 730 personnel, will pool information collected by other government agencies. The government plans to set up a foreign intelligence agency similar to the US Central Intelligence Agency next year.

The government is considering amending the Anti-Stalking Control Law to require stalkers deemed high risk to wear GPS tracking devices. Victims would receive an automatic alert when an offender enters a designated area. The measures respond to the March 2026 killing of a 21-year-old woman in Tokyo by a former boyfriend who was under a restraining order.

An advisory panel at the Children and Families Agency said the government should consider penalizing social media operators whose child-safety measures are insufficient. The panel cited a rise in children being recruited into illegal part-time jobs and falling victim to sexual offenses and scams through social media and online games. The current law, the 2009 Law on Establishment of Enhanced Environment for Youth's Safe and Secure Internet Use, focuses on restricting children's access to harmful content. The agency plans to submit revisions to the Diet next year.

The Fukuoka High Court ordered Kumamoto Prefecture and the national government to jointly pay about ¥23.8 million (US$146,000) to the family of Koki Miyata, who was wrongfully convicted of a 1985 murder, acquitted in a 2019 retrial, and died in 2020. A lower court had held only the national government liable. The high court found that the prefectural police investigation was unlawful and that the conviction rested essentially only on a confession made during the investigation.

Koreas

South Korea's Defense Ministry released for public comment a draft special act on nuclear-powered submarines that would write into domestic law South Korea's commitment not to develop or possess nuclear weapons. The pledge responds to concerns, particularly in the United States, that the program could open a path to a South Korean bomb. South Korea plans to build three 8,000-ton attack submarines fueled by low-enriched uranium, a project the United States approved in October 2025. The two governments must still agree on how the fuel will be supplied and monitored.

The National Assembly voted to revise the Criminal Procedure Act to strip prosecutors of the authority to investigate crimes under any circumstances. The vote follows weeks of public debate over whether the move would harm crime victims, with the opposition Peoples Power Party and some voices in the judiciary and civil society advocating carve-outs. The ruling Democratic Party said the revision was necessary because prosecutors were too powerful and had become politicized.

The National Assembly passed a bill to launch a special counsel investigation into ballot shortages, alleged manipulation of real-time voter turnout information, and other problems during the June 3 local elections. The ruling Democratic Party and opposition People’s Power Party agreed after weeks of negotiation that the investigation will include the National Election Commission’s alleged attempts to cover up officials’ overseas junkets and unfair hiring, as well as allegations of errors in the NEC's computerized data and vote-counting manipulation.

The Seoul Central District Court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to eighteen months in prison, suspended for three years, for violating the Public Official Election Act by falsely denying his ties to a tax official and a shaman during his 2022 campaign. If the conviction becomes final, the opposition People Power Party, which nominated Yoon, must return 39.7 billion won (US$27 million) in state-reimbursed campaign expenses. Yoon plans to appeal.

  • The Korean Bar Association revoked Yoon's law license, as required once an attorney's prison sentence becomes final. That occurred earlier in July when the Supreme Court upheld Yoon’s seven-year sentence for obstructing investigators who tried to detain him following his December 2024 martial law declaration. Yoon was prosecutor general before entering politics.

Lawmakers from South Korea's ruling Democratic Party and opposition People Power Party have introduced at least three bills to deny an exemption from prosecution for police, prosecutors, and judges if they shield relatives who hide an offender or destroy evidence on the offender's behalf. The bills respond to a Gwangju case in which a police officer allegedly destroyed key evidence against his son, who is accused of murdering a teenage girl. Because of the existing exemption in the Criminal Act, the father could not be charged.

The Supreme Court confirmed a five-year prison sentence for a Chinese national convicted of violating South Korea's Military Secret Protection Act by attempting to procure military secrets for a Chinese intelligence agent. The defendant met active-duty soldiers in social media chat rooms and paid them to photograph military documents, including plans for South Korea–US joint exercises. The courts said no secrets were actually leaked.

South Korea's Justice Ministry announced it will use virtual reality therapy at eleven correctional facilities to allow inmates to virtually experience their crimes from the victim's perspective and reduce re-offending. In a pilot involving nearly 400 inmates, participants improved more on measures of distorted thinking, aggression, and empathy than inmates who received conventional group therapy.

South Korea's Cabinet approved an increase in penalties for overcharging tourists, effective August 4, 2026, by revising the Tourism Promotion Act's enforcement decree. Accommodations that fail to post or honor price lists will face suspension for a first violation instead of a warning. Taxi drivers who overcharge will lose their licenses for thirty days, and a third violation will result in permanent loss.

Taiwan

Prosecutors in the port city of Keelung detained a man reported to be an employee of the US chip designer Nvidia in connection with the smuggling of servers containing advanced Nvidia AI chips to China, Hong Kong, and Macau. The United States bars exports of the most advanced AI chips to China. Seven persons are in custody on suspicion of falsifying business documents to ship about fifty servers made by the US company Super Micro Computer to China. Prosecutors said it is too early to know whether the case is linked to US and Singapore investigations of Super Micro employees for allegedly diverting Nvidia chips.

The Criminal Investigation Bureau is investigating a video that used artificial intelligence to imitate the voice of President Lai Ching-te (賴清德). Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the opposition Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) commissioned the video and Wei Chun-yu (韋淳祐), the KMT’s former new media director, created it to protest the government response to a contaminated cooking oil scandal. In the absence of a deepfake-specific law, legal experts say fabricating a recording of a statement that a person did not actually make may constitute forgery under the Criminal Code. The KMT accused the government of using police to intimidate critics.

The Ministry of the Interior said it plans to petition the Constitutional Court to dissolve the pro-China Chinese Unification Promotion Party (CUPP). The ministry accused the tiny party, which is led by a former organized crime boss, of conducting influence operations and recruiting spies for Beijing, interfering in elections, attacking Hong Kong democracy activists in Taiwan, and operating as a criminal organization. Under the Political Parties Act, the Constitutional Court may dissolve a party that endangers the existence of the Republic of China (Taiwan's formal name) or its free democratic constitutional order. CUPP founder Chang An-le (張安樂), former head of the Bamboo Union, founded the party in 2005 to advocate unification with China.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Labor established a mechanism to block imports of goods made with forced labor, as required by the February 2026 Taiwan-US Agreement on Reciprocal Trade. A twelve-member committee will decide whether to bar goods that a partner country (currently only the United States) has identified as involving forced labor. The Ministry of Labor said the committee will review each case against the International Labor Organization's eleven indicators of forced labor rather than rely on a partner country's determination.

  • The Ministry of Labor rejected a public petition urging it to drop plans to ban forcing migrant workers to pay their own recruitment fees in the manufacturing and fishing sectors. The ministry said the Taiwan-US trade agreement requires Taiwan to ban the practice in those sectors within three years. The US government and labor rights groups say making migrant workers pay their own agency fees and travel costs leaves them vulnerable to debt bondage.

The Cabinet officially recognized the Siraya as Taiwan's seventeenth indigenous people and the first Plains indigenous group to gain legal recognition. The decision implements the Plains Indigenous Peoples Status Act (平埔原住民族群身分法), passed in October 2025 to carry out a 2022 Constitutional Court judgment requiring a legal path for recognizing communities that historically lived in Taiwan’s lowlands even though they are heavily integrated with Han Chinese society. Eight other Plains groups’ applications are pending.

The Legislative Yuan amended the Civil Code to abolish the compulsory inheritance share for siblings. Siblings excluded from a will previously could claim one-third of what they would have inherited in the absence of a will. The compulsory shares of spouses, children, parents, and grandparents are unchanged.

The Supreme Court finalized a former army sergeant's twelve-year prison sentence for selling classified military information. While serving on Taiwan's Matsu Islands from 2021 to 2022, Sun Chu-chuan (孫楚荃) photographed classified documents and transmitted them to three people he had met on the Telegram messaging app. Lower courts convicted Sun of accepting NT$67,770 (US$2,096) in bribes and disclosing confidential military documents.

The Taiwan High Court ruled that former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) can replace his electronic ankle monitor with a lighter electronic bracelet beginning August 5, 2026. Ko, the founder and former presidential candidate of the opposition Taiwan People's Party, had asked the court to end electronic monitoring while he appeals his seventeen-year prison sentence for corruption. The court said continued monitoring remains necessary.