October 4 – October 10
Highlights: China's labor ministry proposes to extend wage and other employment protections to platform-based gig workers who now make up more than one-tenth of the workforce; Hong Kong opens nominations for the Election Committee that chooses the city's chief executive and nearly half of its legislature; Japan's antitrust regulator raids Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo, and Suntory on suspicion of fixing beer prices; South Korea's chief justice rejects what he calls presidential interference in his nomination of a Supreme Court candidate; Taiwan's Constitutional Court strikes down pre-approval of immigration ads as a violation of free speech.
China
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released for comment draft regulations that would give gig workers basic employment protections with respect to pay, rewards and penalties, working hours and intensity, rest periods, workplace safety, severe weather, vocational training, social insurance, personal data, and collective bargaining. The draft also would require platforms to disclose information about the algorithms that underpin gig work, and to provide labor contracts to workers under their control. Platform-based flexible workers now account for more than one-tenth of China’s workforce but have not enjoyed the same legal rights as permanent employees.
Caixin Global reported that police in Dalian criminally detained a prominent science writer and food-safety commentator, Hong Guangyu, on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vaguely defined public-order offense, after he helped cherry growers press complaints over the deaths of their trees. Prosecutors approved the arrest of two of the growers on the same charge in September.
Prosecutors in Shanghai charged Nanjing Wavelength Opto-Electronic Science & Technology, its chairman, and three current or former staff with smuggling dual-use optical lenses out of the country. Customs found that the company failed to obtain a required export license and misstated the lenses’ germanium content, which lawyers said turned an administrative licensing violation into criminal smuggling.
China and the European Union reached an understanding that EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said would cut Chinese exports of hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars to the bloc by more than half over four years. China's Ministry of Commerce also agreed to keep expediting export licenses for rare earths and permanent magnets.
The UN Human Rights Council adopted by consensus a resolution called “promoting accessibility for the full enjoyment of all human rights by all,” which China proposed on behalf of forty-seven countries. The resolution, the second under that title since 2024, calls for accessible environments in aging societies and accessible technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Hong Kong
The Electoral Affairs Commission opened nominations for 982 elected seats on the 1,500-member Election Committee, which chooses the chief executive and forty of the Legislative Council's ninety members. Beijing restored the committee's power to elect legislators in its 2021 electoral overhaul, which also requires every candidate to pass political vetting.
Five trustees of the disbanded 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which paid legal and medical costs for arrested protesters in 2019, applied for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal against their convictions for failing to register it as a society. The trustees, including Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen, argue that the fund was a trust, a position the Court of Appeal rejected in September.
Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, former leaders of the group that organized annual vigils commemorating the 1989 Chinese military attack on peaceful protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, appealed their convictions for inciting subversion under the National Security Law. A court sentenced them in September to seven years and three months and seven years in prison, respectively.
The Court of Appeal upheld the 2023 acquittal of former Democratic Party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting (林卓廷) and two co-defendants accused of perverting the course of justice. Lam and the two others were accused of pressuring a man at a 2019 protest to delete photographs of protesters from his phone. The court said there was no way to confirm that the photographs ever existed. Lam, one of the so-called “Hong Kong 47” prosecuted in connection with an unofficial primary election in 2020, is serving a nearly seven-year prison term for subversion.
National security police charged a 52-year-old man with repeatedly publishing seditious posts on social media. Law Yiu-fai appeared in West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on October 7, but police said he had been arrested on July 9. It was the second time in two months that the special police unit disclosed an arrest only when the suspect first appeared in court, rather than at the time of arrest. In a separate case, national security police arrested an insurance agent and a woman on suspicion of publishing seditious material on social media.
The Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration declined to say why Digger, a Hollywood satire starring Tom Cruise, was pulled from cinemas just before its planned October 1 release. Local media attributed it to a character’s brief mention of a possible nuclear attack on China. Since a 2021 amendment added national security grounds to the Film Censorship Ordinance, censors have ordered edits to fifty films and banned thirteen.
Japan
The Japan Fair Trade Commission raided Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory, which together account for nearly all beer shipments in Japan, on suspicion of coordinating prices in violation of the Act on Prohibition of Private Monopolization and Maintenance of Fair Trade. The commission used its criminal investigation powers, which permit court-authorized searches and can lead to a referral to prosecutors.
The Diet convened a sixty-nine-day extraordinary session to consider twenty-one bills, including bills that would establish rules for land acquisitions in areas important to national security, cut the number of seats in the lower house, and reduce the consumption tax on food to 1 percent from the current 8 percent for two years. The Cabinet approved the consumption tax bill on October 9.
The Supreme Court upheld an order requiring a website operator to pay about 169 million yen (US$1.1 million) to a publisher whose band scores it copied and posted for free. Although transcribed scores are not protected under the Copyright Act (著作権法), the court held for the first time that systematic copying can make the copier liable for harming the publisher's business.
Tokyo prosecutors used a defendant's exchanges with ChatGPT, which warned him that a paid package from overseas likely contained illegal items, as evidence that he knew he was smuggling drugs. The Tokyo District Court will rule November 26 in the case against the defendant, who pleaded not guilty to importing about twelve kilograms of MDMA in violation of the Narcotics and Psychotropics Control Act (麻薬及び向精神薬取締法).
The Financial Services Agency ordered Prudential Life Insurance and Gibraltar Life Insurance, Japanese units of the US-based Prudential Financial, to stop selling new policies from October 13 through January 2027 over employee fraud. It was the agency's first business suspension order against a life insurer since 2019.
Okinawa Prefecture police arrested a 20-year-old US Marine on suspicion of robbing and killing a local woman in Naha, Okinawa’s capital. It was the latest in a recent spate of crimes involving US personnel on the island, where about half of the 50,000 US troops in Japan are based. US forces ordered a forty-eight-hour pause in operations to conduct troop training, followed by a thirty-day period of period of restricted liberty and midnight curfew.
Authorities handed over to Germany a 28-year-old Russian national detained in Osaka who is suspected of being a core member of Qilin, an international ransomware group. Qilin claimed responsibility last year for a cyberattack on the beverage maker Asahi Group Holdings.
Koreas
South Korean Supreme Court Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae refused a request from President Lee Jae Myung's office to recommend a new candidate for a seat in the court that has been vacant since March. Lee rejected Cho’s previous choice because Cho skipped the customary consultation with the presidential office in advance. Cho told lawmakers that neither the president nor the National Assembly may interfere with his recommendations.
The Seoul High Court overturned former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's conviction and two-year sentence for illegally receiving free opinion polls worth about 270 million won (US$202,000) from a political broker before the 2022 election. The court found no evidence that the polls were promised free of charge. Yoon remains under a separate life sentence for insurrection, which is on appeal.
Seoul trial courts reached opposite conclusions on whether prosecutors serving on special counsel teams may still argue cases after the October 2 abolition of the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office. The office has been replaced with a new Public Prosecution Service, which only handles prosecutions, and a Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which investigates crimes. The Justice Ministry told the courts that existing secondment orders remain valid.
The Korea Exchange shelved plans to de-list eight small-cap companies after the Seoul Southern District Court held that de-listing companies solely because of their low market capitalization is unlawful. The court said the exchange’s rules gave companies no chance to object.
The US-based online retail and technology company Coupang sued the Personal Information Protection Commission in Seoul Administrative Court to challenge 624.7 billion won (US$462 million) in fines that the commission imposed as penalties for a massive data breach and unauthorized tracking of users’ online activity. The fines were the largest the commission has ever imposed on one company. The case has strained relations with Washington, where some officials question whether Coupang is being treated fairly.
Shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean held its first collective bargaining session with unions of subcontracted workers after a court refused on October 1 to block a National Labor Relations Commission ruling that it must bargain with a contractor’s staff. It is the company's first direct bargaining with subcontracted workers since the enactment in March of the so-called Yellow Envelope Law, which requires prime contractors to bargain with subcontractors’ unions over conditions that prime contractors control.
After a joint investigation with the UN Command, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that North Korea planted antipersonnel mines that injured three South Korean soldiers on September 21 about ten meters south of the military demarcation line. Planting the mines would constitute a violation of the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. The Defense Ministry said it will seek to formally establish the armistice violation, and South Korea’s foreign minister said Seoul may raise the matter with the UN Security Council.
Taiwan
The Constitutional Court struck down provisions of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) that required immigration service firms to have advertisements reviewed before publication and imposed fines on those that did not. The court held that prior review of commercial speech must pass strict scrutiny and that consumer protection and fair trade laws already allow false advertising to be punished afterward.
The Hsinchu County Election Commission disqualified former legislator Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀), a China-born naturalized citizen of Taiwan, from running for mayor of Zhubei in the November 28 local elections. 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) bars former residents of mainland China from holding office in Taiwan until they have held Taiwan household registration for ten years, which the Mainland Affairs Council counts only from the date when they provided proof of giving up Chinese household registration. Li took that step in 2025.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested California real estate agent Wanying Zhang on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of China by filming the Seattle-area home of President Lai Ching-te's (賴清德) son in 2025 for a Chinese official. A federal magistrate judge ordered Zhang, a naturalized American citizen, be detained pending trial. China's Foreign Ministry said it was not familiar with the case.
The Mainland Affairs Council said the government may propose amendments to the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) or National Security Act (國家安全法) that would make transnational repression a crime. Taiwan has seen a rise in cases of suspected transnational repression but neither law currently addresses surveillance, assaults and vandalism directed by overseas hostile forces. The council says at least 126 Taiwanese have been the targets of transnational repression.
In one such case, Taipei prosecutors indicted four private investigators on charges of illegally collecting personal data for allegedly surveilling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator and Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen (沈伯洋) in 2024. Prosecutors issued warrants for the arrest of two Hong Kong residents whom they alleed paid for the surveillance. China designated Shen a supporter of Taiwan independence in 2024 and put him on a wanted list.
In another suspected case of transnational repression, Taichung prosecutors indicted a member of the Hong Kong triad Wo Shing Wo (和勝和) on charges of assault and violating the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例) for punching political commentator Akio Yaita, a Japanese-born journalist who became a Taiwan citizen in 2024, in July. Prosecutors are still investigating who ordered the attack and have put four suspects who fled Taiwan on a wanted list.
The Supreme Administrative Court upheld the designation of the China Youth Corps (中國青年救國團) as an affiliate of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) in a final ruling that keeps NT$5.61 billion (US$175 million) of its assets frozen by the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee (不當黨產處理委員會). The court said amendments the Legislative Yuan passed in January to exempt organizations that once belonged to the state have no effect because the president has not promulgated them. Premier Cho Jung-tai declined to countersign them.
New Taipei prosecutors indicted ten people on fraud, forgery and money laundering charges for buying restricted US chips under the forged name of the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, a government defense research institute. Prosecutors said the defendants resold the chips to buyers in Hong Kong for delivery to China's military industry and earned more than NT$300 million (US$9.4 million).
Taoyuan prosecutors indicted a 77-year-old retired air force captain under the National Intelligence Work Act (國家情報工作法) and the National Security Act for collecting the addresses, vehicles, and workplaces of two Taiwanese intelligence officers for a contact in China. Kaohsiung prosecutors separately indicted an army private first class on the outlying island of Dongyin under the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) for photographing classified material for a man sent by a Chinese public security bureau in exchange for more than NT$790,000 (US$24,700).
The Hualien District Court handed down a death sentence to a deaf-mute man who was convicted of raping and murdering a junior high school teacher in 2025. The court declined to apply a reduced penalty under the Criminal Code even though the defendant was eligible for one. New Taipei prosecutors separately said they will appeal a life sentence for a man who killed his wife and sister-in-law, after the trial court read the Constitutional Court's 2024 judgment limiting capital punishment to the “most serious” crimes as requiring at least three victims.