September 20 – September 26
Highlights: China and the United States agree to extend their trade truce for two months and reduce tariffs on selected goods; Hong Kong signs an investment protocol with Southeast Asian nations, and a fifteen-nation Asia-Pacific trade pact sets up a working group on the city’s bid to join; a Japanese court rules that a decades-old ban on election campaigning by minors is unconstitutional; South Korea's Cabinet approves staffing for its new prosecution service that begins operations next week, shorn of all powers to conduct investigations; Taiwan moves to raise the minimum wage by nearly five percent.
China
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump held a three-day summit heavy on pomp and symbolism. The two governments agreed to extend for just two months, until Jan. 10, 2027, the October 2025 truce under which the US suspends enforcement of a rule that significantly expands the reach of its sanctions against Chinese companies, while China suspends enforcement of some of its export controls on critical minerals and related technologies. China and the US also agreed to reduce tariffs on US$30 billion worth of non-critical goods that each country imports from the other.
The White House said the two governments are setting up a communication channel to share information about artificial intelligence “incidents,” and that a US-China Super Intelligence Dialogue will convene by November to exchange views on AI risks and benefits.
No agreement seems to have been reached on critical minerals. The White House said the two sides “continue to work” on supply chain shortages “with the goal of ensuring shipment levels return to appropriate levels.”
During their private discussions, Xi urged Trump to oppose Taiwan independence and to handle the issue prudently. Trump did not comment publicly on Taiwan.
Ahead of the visit, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the Opinions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases Involving Fentanyl-Related Substances (关于办理涉芬太尼类物质刑事案件适用法律等若干问题的意见), effective September 23. With exceptions for four specific substances approved for medical use, the document puts fentanyl-related substances in the same class as heroin. The Ministry of Commerce and four other agencies also added two more precursor chemicals to the list requiring export licenses for shipments to North America.
The Cyberspace Administration of China released for public comment draft State Council regulations that would bar online services from offering minors virtual relatives, partners, and other virtual intimate relationships. The draft Provisions on Ensuring Minors' Healthy and Safe Use of the Internet (国务院关于保障未成年人健康安全使用网络的规定) would also ban algorithms that foster emotional dependence, addiction, or excessive spending among minors. Children under 16 could not host livestreams. The CAC implemented regulations on AI companion services in July.
The Supreme People's Court released a model case in which a Wuxi court found that a software company engaged in unfair competition by using AI to mass-produce tens of thousands of fake reviews of a rival’s inventory management software. The reviews, keyed to searches for the rival's products, steered readers to the defendant's own software. The court ordered the company to pay 3,000 yuan (US$450) in damages for diverting the rival's customers and polluting online information.
Caixin took a close look at plans by the National People's Congress Standing Committee to study a dedicated law on “filing and review” (备案审查), the process for checking whether regulations, local laws, and judicial interpretations comply with the constitution and national law. The law would consolidate review systems now run separately by the legislature, the government, the courts, and other state bodies. The process has led to changes in local rules that, for example, restricted the schooling, jobs, and welfare benefits of relatives of people accused or convicted of crimes.
The Supreme People's Court issued a judicial interpretation barring courts from halting a civil lawsuit merely because a related criminal complaint has been filed. The Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Civil Disputes Involving Criminal Offenses (关于审理涉及刑事犯罪的民事纠纷案件若干问题的规定) took effect September 22. A court may pause a civil case only if its outcome depends on facts that will be decided in the criminal case. The court said the rules aim to stop the use of criminal proceedings to stall civil claims or interfere in business disputes.
The State Administration for Market Regulation released for public comment, through September 29, a revision of its non-binding Guidelines on Overseas Antitrust Compliance for Enterprises (企业境外反垄断合规指引). Among other things, the draft updates merger notification thresholds in the European Union, the United States, and Germany, and adds guidance on foreign investment security reviews, foreign subsidy rules, and private antitrust lawsuits. The agency said overseas antitrust investigations and litigation involving Chinese companies are rising.
The Communist Party expelled Zhang Youxia, formerly second in command of the Central Military Commission, and former CMC member Liu Zhenli from the party and the military. The announcement accused them of being disloyal and taking large sums of money to help others win promotions. Their cases have been referred to military prosecutors.
The Beijing municipal market regulator opened investigations into four online hotel and travel booking platforms, including units of Alibaba and the food delivery company Meituan, for suspected violations of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the E-Commerce Law. The cases are part of a city campaign against “involution-style” competition, meaning price wars that erode profits across an industry. In July, the State Administration for Market Regulation fined the market leader, Trip.com, 5.2 billion yuan (US$770 million) for abusing its dominant position.
The Jilin Provincial High People's Court upheld a life sentence for the former chair of Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology, according to Caixin. The vaccine maker went bankrupt after a 2018 scandal over falsified rabies-vaccine production records. Gao Junfang was convicted of producing and selling substandard products, among other charges. However, the court found no evidence that the vaccines had substantive quality defects or harmed anyone's health, contrary to public claims at the time.
The Supreme People's Procuratorate released a model case in which its challenge led the Supreme People's Court to recognize a worker's death as work-related. The Regulations on Work-Related Injury Insurance (工伤保险条例) cover workers who fall ill suddenly on the job and die within forty-eight hours despite emergency treatment. Lower courts had started the clock at a COVID-19 screening and stopped it at the formal declaration of death. The procuratorate argued that the clock should start with actual emergency treatment and should not be extended by the family's refusal to give up treatment.
The Ministry of Public Security said police in China, Laos, Singapore, and Cambodia arrested 257 suspects in a 6 billion yuan (US$890 million) investment fraud scheme that allegedly targeted elderly people. The 156 suspects arrested abroad have been escorted to China. Cross-border police cooperation has led to the arrest and repatriation of more than 20,000 fraud suspects from Southeast Asia and elsewhere so far in 2026.
Chen Wenqing, head of the Communist Party's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees China's courts, prosecutors, and police, spoke at the opening of the China Forum on International Rule of Law (中国法治国际论坛) in Shenzhen. Legal representatives from thirty-eight countries and seven international organizations attended. The theme was international legal cooperation in support of “a community with a shared future for mankind.”
Hong Kong
The government said it will not appeal a court ruling that blocked its plan to build 12,000 public rental flats on land it took back from a private golf club. Applicants wait an average of nearly five years for such flats. In August, the Court of Appeal agreed with the club that the government should have consulted the public on material information it added to the project's environmental assessment.
Chief Executive John Lee appointed Kelvin Kong Hok-lai to succeed Andrew Kan Kai-yan as head of the police unit that enforces the 2020 National Security Law. In a farewell interview, Kan said that questioning the government's refusal to publish a list of banned books is itself “soft resistance,” a term officials use for covert threats to national security but have not clearly defined. He said a list would invite challenges whenever police arrest someone over a title not on it.
The Court of Appeal heard an appeal by Patrick Lam, former acting editor-in-chief of Stand News, against his 2024 conviction for conspiring to publish seditious articles. The three-judge panel questioned the defense's argument that prosecutors must prove Lam's seditious intent. Stand News was a non-profit online news site that operated from 2014 to 2021, when police arrested senior editorial staff and froze its assets, forcing it to close.
The government signed a protocol with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that will give Hong Kong investors treatment no less favorable than that given to local or other foreign investors in most non-services sectors of the ten member states covered by their investment agreement. The next day, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a trade pact whose fifteen members include mainland China and the ten ASEAN states, set up a working group to negotiate the accession of Hong Kong and three other applicants.
The District Court sentenced a former China Construction Bank (Asia) relationship manager to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to accept more than US$470,000 in cryptocurrency bribes to vouch for forged letters of credit worth more than US$1.6 billion. The letters backed reinsurance deals of Vesttoo, an Israeli insurance-technology startup that went bankrupt in 2023 after the fraud surfaced.
Japan
The Tokyo District Court ruled that the Public Offices Election Act (公職選挙法) violates the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression by making it a crime for persons under age 18 to take part in election campaigning. The court said that other provisions of the act already address the mobilization of minors as campaign workers, the problem the ban was adopted in 1952 to prevent. However, the court rejected the plaintiffs' claims for damages because the Diet had not acted unlawfully in failing to repeal the ban.
An expert panel advising the National Police Agency proposed allowing police who obtain a court warrant to remotely access smartphones used by the leaders of tokuryu, anonymous crime rings that recruit perpetrators online for fraud and robberies. The leaders give instructions through encrypted apps that automatically delete messages and cannot be wiretapped. The agency plans to submit a bill amending the Police Duties Execution Act (警察官職務執行法) to an extraordinary Diet session expected in October.
Thai police said a scam ring they raided in Bangkok may have used face-altering AI software to pose as Japanese police officers on video calls with victims in Japan. Police detained fourteen persons, including four Japanese citizens. Separately, Malaysian police arrested six Japanese men and a Malaysian on suspicion of running a call-center scam targeting people in Japan.
A project team of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party drafted a proposal calling for all buyers, regardless of nationality, to obtain government permits in order to buy land near facilities critical to national security, including facilities vulnerable to drone attacks. The Act on the Review and Regulation of the Use of Real Estate Surrounding Important Facilities and on Remote Territorial Islands (重要施設周辺及び国境離島等における土地等の利用状況の調査及び利用の規制等に関する法律), enacted in 2021, regulates only how such land is used, and not who buys it. The draft also calls for barring sale to anyone obliged by contract or foreign law to cooperate with a foreign government.
The central Japan utility Chubu Electric Power withdrew its applications for the Nuclear Regulation Authority safety screening needed to restart two reactors at its Hamaoka nuclear plant. The company had selectively chosen the earthquake data used to set the reactors' quake-resistance standards. According to the authority, it was the first withdrawal of a screening application because of misconduct.
A transgender man sought legal recognition as the father of a child conceived with an egg retrieved from him while he was still legally female, in a suit brought in the child's name at the Tokyo Family Court. A Tokyo ward office had rejected his acknowledgement of paternity, saying the law provides for a father-child relationship only when the father's sperm fertilized the egg. In June 2024, the Supreme Court allowed a child to seek acknowledgment from a transgender woman whose sperm was used to conceive the child.
Koreas
The South Korean Cabinet approved staffing for the new Public Prosecution Service, which will replace the Prosecutors' Office on October 2. While the Prosecutors’ Office conducted both criminal investigations and prosecutions, the new service will only prosecute. It will start with about 1,900 prosecutors, 80 to 85 percent of the number authorized by law. The Justice Ministry will also eliminate nearly 70 percent of the current office's investigator positions.
The ruling Democratic Party launched a task force that aims to put the first revision of the constitution since 1987 to a referendum by mid-2027. A key proposal would allow presidents serve two four-year terms instead of a single five-year term. The opposition People Power Party has vowed to resist any revision during President Lee Jae Myung's term, even after Lee said he will not seek a second term. The ruling party lacks the two-thirds majority in the National Assembly needed to send an amendment to a referendum.
Kim Seung-won withdrew as President Lee Jae Myung's nominee for justice minister amid opposition allegations that he improperly relayed a lobbyist's request to drug regulators. (See last week's item.)
South Korean Supreme Court Chief Justice Jo Hee-de refused President Lee Jae Myung's request to recommend a new candidate for a seat on the bench that has been vacant since March. Under the constitution, the chief justice recommends justices and the president appoints them with the consent of the National Assembly. In August, Lee refused to forward one of Jo's nominees because Jo had skipped the customary prior consultation. Each side says the other's position has no basis in the constitution.
The Ukrainian government handed over to South Korea two North Korean soldiers captured in January 2025 while fighting for Russia. Both had asked to go to South Korea. The South Korean constitution treats North Koreans as citizens. President Lee Jae Myung said Ukraine breached an agreement to keep the transfer secret.
The Seoul High Court cut the prison sentence of former first lady Kim Keon Hee to five years from seven. The court upheld most of her conviction for accepting luxury gifts from people seeking government posts and other favors through her influence as the wife of then-President Yoon Suk Yeol. But it acquitted her of accepting a watch worth nearly 40 million won (US$29,000) because prosecutors did not prove that she knew it was given in return for her influence. Both sides plan to appeal.
The South Korean Supreme Court ruled that not every harmful act between students counts as school violence, and upheld the cancellation of a written-apology order given to a 7-year-old who pushed a classmate off a podium. The court said judges must consider students' ages and the seriousness of the conduct, not just the statutory definition of school violence, to avoid needlessly labeling children as perpetrators.
The South Korean government selected a gas-fired power plant in Texas worth more than US$22 billion as the first project under the US$200 billion investment it pledged in exchange for lower US tariffs. A special law lets the government invest without parliamentary consent if a project is commercially viable. Opposition legislators questioned whether this one is.
Taiwan
A Ministry of Labor committee approved raising the monthly minimum wage by 4.7 percent to NT$30,900 (about US$970), effective January 1, 2027. Worker representatives had sought nearly 8 percent so that workers could share in economic growth projected at 11 percent this year. Employer representatives said the growth has been concentrated in AI-related industries. The Cabinet must still approve the increase.
President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) launched the World Alliance for Disaster Management (世界災害管理聯盟), an intergovernmental organization for disaster training and mutual assistance. The founding members are Taiwan, eleven countries that recognize it, and Somaliland, a self-declared state. Twenty-one other countries, including the United States and Japan, joined as observers or partners. Taiwan has been excluded from the United Nations system since 1971.
The Shilin District Prosecutors Office indicted two Chinese nationals on charges of entering Taiwan without permission by crossing the Taiwan Strait in a rubber dinghy in July. The Coast Guard Administration arrested the men a week after they landed near Taipei Port without being intercepted. Prosecutors sought two-year prison terms under the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) and 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). The men say they got lost at sea.
The Taichung District Prosecutors Office indicted three persons on charges of violating the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) by brokering eggs and sperm for profit. Surrogacy is not legal in Taiwan. Prosecutors said the defendants' business arranged for Thai surrogate mothers to give birth in Taiwan to twenty-five babies for Taiwanese men, including single men and men in same-sex marriages. The fathers then acknowledged paternity to register the babies as their children.
The Ministry of Labor said it will appeal a court ruling that voided its dismissal of Hsieh Yi-jung (謝宜容), a former branch chief accused of workplace bullying after a subordinate's suicide in 2024. The Taipei High Administrative Court ruled September 3 that the dismissal violated due process because the labor minister at the time announced the punishment in the legislature before a review committee met. Hsieh remains suspended while a corruption case and a disciplinary case against her are pending.