September 13 – September 19
Highlights: China implements new exit and entry rules that provide more bases for barring travel; Hong Kong's chief executive promises new fire safety legislation in response to a 2025 apartment complex fire that killed 168 people; Japan's Cabinet approves reducing the consumption tax on food for two years in response to rising inflation; South Korea announces a plan to authorize the prescription and sale of abortion pills, seven years after the Constitutional Court struck down a criminal ban on abortion; Taiwan's Labor Ministry proposes extending paid marriage leave to fourteen days as part of President Lai Ching-te's strategy to encourage births.
China
The State Council's Provisions on Exit and Entry Administration (国务院关于出境入境管理的规定) took effect September 15. The Ministry of Commerce and other agencies may now bar citizens from leaving China if they violate export control or technology trade rules in ways that may endanger “national industrial or technological security.” Officials said the rules also allow them to bar travel by persons who want to go overseas to gamble or engage in telecom fraud operations. Foreigners who make false statements in visa applications face entry bans of one to five years, and foreigners who are subject to sanctions under other laws may be refused entry.
The Cyberspace Administration of China told online platforms to proactively remove content that infringes the rights of companies and entrepreneurs. The Notice on Strengthening Management of Information Regarding Violations Affecting Enterprises and Continuously Promoting Optimization of the Online Business Environment (关于加强涉企侵权信息管理 持续推动营商网络环境优化的通知) covers leaked personal information, insults, and impersonation, as well as recirculated old negative news and information that contradicts a company's official statements. The agency said companies find it slow and costly to seek redress for online attacks that are cheap to make and spread fast.
The National Cybersecurity Standardization Technical Committee, a standards body guided by the Cyberspace Administration of China, released the third version in three years of its non-binding Artificial Intelligence Safety Governance Framework (人工智能安全治理框架3.0). The new version adds risks from AI agents, which perform tasks autonomously and can affect the physical world.
The Supreme People's Court (SPC) released four model cases on internet law to guide lower courts. In one case, the Beijing Internet Court held a book company liable for failing to check whether an influencer it hired had consent to use a well-known speaker's image and an AI imitation of the speaker's voice in ads. In another, a Shanghai court ruled that the operator of an AI search engine was not liable for a result linking to pirated television shows because it did not upload the link and removed it the day it was notified. The SPC said providers owe a duty of care that matches their algorithmic and data advantages.
The Ministry of Public Security said police have handled more than 36,000 cybercrime cases this year through “Clean Net,” its annual enforcement campaign. These include more than 11,000 cases of spreading online rumors and more than 4,100 cases of stealing or selling personal information.
The Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress revised the Beijing Municipal Regulations on the Management of Unmanned Aircraft (北京市无人驾驶航空器管理规定) to ban the possession or storage of drones anywhere in the city beginning November 15. The original regulations, which took effect May 1, already banned drone sales and required owners to register under their real names. The revision comes after a single-engine sport aircraft struck a Beijing skyscraper in June, killing the pilot and injuring thirteen others.
The State Administration for Market Regulation reported on a campaign it launched in May against local protectionism, part of a central government drive to build a “unified national market.” In the first half of the year, regulators ordered the repeal or revision of more than 3,500 local government documents deemed anti-competitive. Model cases involve local governments that used credit ratings in public bidding to shut out firms from other regions.
Ministry of Justice officials said a campaign begun in 2025 against abusive administrative enforcement targeting businesses has corrected more than 90,000 cases and recovered nearly 31 billion yuan (US$4.6 billion) for companies. The campaign targets arbitrary inspections and penalties that disrupt business operations. Officials said it will now also target lax and selective enforcement.
The Jinan Intermediate People's Court sentenced a former head of China's food and drug regulator to fourteen years in prison for taking more than 57 million yuan (US$8.6 million) in bribes from 1995 to 2025. The court said it reduced Bi Jingquan's sentence because he pleaded guilty, disclosed most of the bribes before investigators found them, and returned all illicit gains. Bi resigned as Communist Party chief of the State Administration for Market Regulation in 2018 following a vaccine safety scandal.
Police in the southern city of Guangzhou arrested a 35-year-old man on suspicion of wounding several people with a knife outside a restaurant. They gave no motive. In May, a knife attack at a Shanghai restaurant injured three people, including two Japanese citizens.
Hong Kong
Chief Executive John Lee used his annual policy address to promise legislation this year in response to the November 2025 fire that killed 168 people at Wang Fuk Court, an apartment complex under renovation. The proposed bills will tighten fire safety regulation, increase penalties for contractors, and raise the voting thresholds for apartment owners to approve large maintenance contracts. The government is studying whether to criminalize bid-rigging in maintenance works, which the Competition Commission says is a common practice.
Lee also unveiled the city’s first-ever five-year plan setting the government’s strategic priorities. These include increasing investment in innovation and better integrating academic research with industry. The city government also plans to increase its use of China’s currency, the yuan.
Lee said the government will appoint a commissioner for artificial intelligence (AI) and study possible legislation against deepfakes and AI-generated fraud. The privacy commissioner said one recent victim lost more than HK$10 million (US$1.3 million) to scammers who cloned his father's voice.
The address extended for three years a HK$20,000 (US$2,600) cash bonus for each newborn. It raised the bonus to HK$30,000 (US$3,800) for second and later children. Fewer than 30,000 babies were born in the year ended June 30, less than half the number ten years earlier.
The Security Bureau said it will add an offense of continuous sexual abuse of a child to a pending overhaul of sexual offense laws. Advocacy groups had said current law fails victims of prolonged abuse because it requires them to specify the date and place of each assault. The bureau also plans to criminalize sending images of genitals without the recipient's consent. It hopes to submit a bill to the Legislative Council this year.
The head of the police National Security Department, Andrew Kan, told graduating recruits to guard against “soft resistance” and to “nip national security risks in the bud.” Officials have used the term “soft resistance” (軟對抗) since 2021 to refer to behaviors or ideas critical of government and to suggest that security risks are ubiquitous, but have declined to provide a clear definition; the term does not appear in any law.
Japan
The Cabinet approved a tax package that would cut the consumption tax on food to 1 percent from 8 percent for two years beginning April 2027 to offset rising prices. It would be the first cut in the tax since its introduction in 1989. The government has not said how it will cover the estimated ¥10 trillion (US$65 billion) cost. It plans to submit bills to the Diet in October. The ruling coalition lacks a majority in the upper house.
Chubu Electric Power Co. decided to withdraw its application to restart two reactors at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in central Japan. The utility had falsified earthquake-risk data that it submitted to the Nuclear Regulation Authority. The president and chairman said they will resign September 30 to take responsibility.
The Supreme Court upheld the convictions of construction companies Taisei Corp. and Kajima Corp. and two former executives for rigging bids on the maglev train line under construction between Tokyo and Nagoya. A ¥250 million (US$1.6 million) fine for each company and suspended eighteen-month prison terms for the executives are now final. The court said senior officials of four contractors undermined competition by exchanging information. Prosecutors charged the other two contractors, Obayashi Corp. and Shimizu Corp., but not their officials because the companies reported the bid-rigging voluntarily.
The Tokyo District Court sentenced the former president of event company Same Two to a suspended eighteen-month prison term for rigging bids for contracts to run the 2021 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. It fined the company ¥150 million (US$965,000). The court has now convicted all six companies charged in the case, including advertising agency Dentsu Group.
The Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a Ghanaian man with kidney failure who was denied public assistance by the city of Chiba because he is a foreign national. The Public Assistance Act limits eligibility to Japanese nationals. An administrative measure extends benefits to permanent residents and refugees but not to holders of his medical-treatment residence status, who may not work. The majority did not rule on his constitutional claim. In dissent, Presiding Justice Mamoru Miura said that excluding foreign nationals who are undergoing medical treatment and cannot work is unconstitutional.
The National Police Agency asked authorities in Curacao, a Dutch territory in the Caribbean, to make the online casino operators they license stop serving Japan. A 2025 revision to the Basic Act on Countermeasures against Gambling Addiction explicitly bars operating casino websites that target Japan. An agency survey found that Curacao licensed sixteen of the thirty casino websites available in Japanese.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism reported that foreign buyers made sixty-eight of the 9,573 large land purchases in the second half of 2025, or less than 1 percent. The data are the first collected under a July 2025 revision to regulations under the National Land Use Planning Act that requires buyers of large parcels to declare their nationality. The government adopted the rule amid concerns that foreign purchases of forest land could compromise water sources. Chinese buyers made twenty-eight of the purchases.
Fifty relatives of Chinese wartime forced laborers sued six Japanese companies, including Taisei Corp. and IHI Corp., for about 370,000 yuan (US$55,000) each in a court in Shijiazhuang in China. The court has not said whether it will accept the case. Japan's Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that China waived its citizens’ wartime claims when the two countries normalized relations in 1972. The Chinese government rejects that interpretation.
Koreas
The South Korean government announced a plan to authorize the prescription and sale of abortion pills for use in pregnancies of nine weeks or less by the end of March 2027, if regulators approve the medication. Hospital doctors would both prescribe and dispense the pills for the first two years. The Constitutional Court struck down a criminal ban on abortion in 2019, leaving a regulatory vacuum that the National Assembly has not filled. Prime Minister Han Seong-sook said this vacuum has pushed women toward using illegally distributed drugs.
The Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the South Korean National Assembly adopted a confirmation report on the nominee for justice minister, Kim Seung-won, after opposition members walked out. The opposition accuses Kim of improperly relaying a lobbyist's request to drug regulators in 2021, which he denies. President Lee Jae Myung may now appoint Kim without a floor vote.
Lee ordered a further review of his choice to head the new Serious Crimes Investigation Agency after ruling-party legislators said the nominee, a former prosecutor, had opposed stripping prosecutors of investigative powers. The agency launches October 2, when a revised Criminal Procedure Act transfers investigative powers to the new agency and the ordinary police.
The National Assembly confirmed Kim Sung-soo as a South Korean Supreme Court justice by a vote of 227-28, with 13 abstentions. He is the first justice to join the court since Lee took office in June 2025.
The Seoul Central District Court ordered the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) to pay the South Korean government 44.6 billion won (US$32.5 million) for blowing up a joint liaison office that South Korea built in the North Korean border city of Kaesong. North Korea destroyed the office in 2020 after South Korea failed to stop North Korean defectors on its side of the border from flying propaganda leaflets into the North. The suit was the South Korean government's first against North Korea, and it has no means of enforcing the judgment.
The same court gave suspended prison terms to three persons who repeatedly flew drones toward North Korea in violation of South Korean air safety laws.
The eleven-nation Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) reported that North Korea had between 36,000 and 101,000 workers abroad in 2025, most of them in China and Russia. The report estimated that they collectively earn up to US$800 million a year. Their activities violate UN Security Council resolutions that required member states to send all North Korean workers home by December 2019. The United States and other countries formed the MSMT in 2024 to monitor and report violations and evasions of UN sanctions against North Korea.
The Seoul High Court upheld the acquittal of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on a perjury charge. A special counsel had alleged that Yoon lied when he testified that he always planned to convene the Cabinet, as the law requires, before declaring martial law in December 2024. The court found insufficient proof that the testimony was false.
The Seoul Administrative Court said the Ministry of Justice may not refuse to tell migrant-rights lawyers who sits on the Immigration Detention Review Committee. The government created the committee in 2025 to review detentions longer than two months, after the Constitutional Court ruled against potentially indefinite immigration detention. The court found that an enforcement decree keeping the members' identities secret exceeded the authority delegated by the Immigration Act. The ministry is considering an appeal.
The Korea Herald took a close look at a South Korean rule that bars customers from dancing in restaurants. The government adopted the rule in 2015 to stop nightclubs from registering as restaurants to avoid higher taxes. The rule also reaches small live music clubs, which register as restaurants so that they can sell drinks. A Busan district office suspended one venue for two months in August after patrons danced at a concert. Music groups are asking the National Assembly to create a separate license category for small venues.
Lawyers for more than 300 South Korean workers detained in a September 2025 US immigration raid at a Hyundai-LG battery plant in the US state of Georgia began filing administrative claims with nine US federal agencies, CNN reported. The claims are a required step before suing the US government.
Taiwan
The Ministry of Labor proposed extending paid marriage leave to fourteen days from eight by amending the Regulations of Leave-Taking of Workers (勞工請假規則). The change is part of a population strategy that President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) announced in May. Taiwan's fertility rate fell to 0.7 children per woman in 2025. Employers would pay for the six extra days and could then claim a government subsidy. The ministry expects the change to take effect October 1.
In another pro-natal action, President Lai promulgated Income Tax Act (所得稅法) amendments that raise the tax exemption for dependent children by 50 percent.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a Stockholm-based intergovernmental organization, lowered its rating of Taiwan's judicial independence from the top tier to the middle tier in its annual democracy report. The drop appeared to be a response to actions by Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature to paralyze the Constitutional Court. However, the report ranked Taiwan seventh among 173 countries in citizen participation.
The Ministry of Sports has barred Taiwanese athletes from representing China in international competitions. Its revised Cross-Strait Sports Exchange Regulations (兩岸體育交流處理規範) do not explicitly say Taiwanese nationals cannot become members of a Chinese national sports team, but prohibit joining any group in China that “involves national identity or fundamental loyalty.”
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) denied entry to a Shanghai official who planned to attend the annual Taipei-Shanghai Twin City Forum in Taiwan in December. The official is deputy director of Shanghai's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), part of the Chinese bureaucracy that manages policy toward Taiwan. The MAC began barring TAO officials last year in response to China’s unfriendly measures toward Taiwan. Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) said Taiwan’s central government has no reason to limit city-level exchanges.
Police offered a reward of NT$1 million (US$31,400) for the capture of a former legislative aide who cut off his electronic monitor and fled while on bail September 6. Chang Chun-chieh (張俊傑) ran the office of independent legislator Kao Chin Su-mei (高金素梅). Prosecutors indicted both Chang and Kao in June on charges of corruption and fraud involving false claims for assistants’ salaries. Authorities have arrested eight persons suspected of helping Chang flee.
The Changhua District Prosecutors Office indicted eight persons on charges of labor exploitation under the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (人口販運防制法) and abducting minors. According to the National Immigration Agency, the lead defendant claimed to be a reincarnated Buddha and told followers in Vietnam that working for her would bring salvation. The agency said she had them bring their children to Taiwan on tourist visas, took their passports, and put them to work without pay at farms and restaurants.
Thirty-five Indonesian hotel workers arrived as the first recruits under a program that since January has let hospitality businesses hire foreign skilled workers. The Tourism Administration estimates that the sector is short about 6,000 workers a year. The program ties foreign hiring to local pay: a hotel earns permission to hire one foreigner for each of its lowest-paid Taiwanese employees who receives a raise of at least NT$2,000 (US$63).