On 28 August 2026, the Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law of the People’s Republic of China (Draft) (“Draft Law”) was officially released for public consultation, with comments due by 26 September. This comprehensive legislation, comprising six chapters and forty-seven articles, is China’s dedicated law addressing cross-border corruption governance. The Draft Law establishes a “two-way” jurisdictional framework—covering both bribery and duty-related crimes committed by domestic actors “going abroad” and bribery committed by foreign actors “coming into” China. It imposes systematic integrity and compliance obligations on enterprises engaged in cross-border operations, opens institutional channels for asset recovery and sharing in international fugitive repatriation and asset recovery efforts, and erects a legal “firewall” against unilateral enforcement by foreign entities within China’s territory. For enterprises operating across borders, the Draft Law portends increased compliance costs and a reassessment of operational risks; for foreign institutions doing business in China, it demarcates forbidden zones for evidence gathering; and for all actors involved in cross-border fund flows, it closes the regulatory loop between anti-money laundering and anti-corruption enforcement.
China’s Current Anti-Corruption Legal Framework and Its Limitations in Cross-Border Enforcement
Although China’s current anti-corruption legal framework already encompasses multiple statutes, including the Criminal Law, the Supervision Law, and the Anti-Money Laundering Law, its regulation of cross-border corruption remains “fragmented”, with significant institutional gaps and jurisdictional blind spots. The Criminal Law provides only a single cross-border corruption offense—bribery of foreign public officials—and offers little operational guidance for the exercise of active personal jurisdiction, making it difficult to address complex scenarios where the conduct or its effects cross national borders. Although the 2024 amendment to the Supervision Law added provisions on international cooperation, including repatriation and joint investigations, these remain principled and framework-level, lacking detailed implementing rules. The Anti-Money Laundering Law, which is oriented toward identifying money laundering risks, is functionally misaligned with the proactive investigation and asset recovery efforts required for anti-corruption purposes; moreover, the mechanisms for referral of leads and information sharing between anti-corruption and anti-money laundering authorities await systematic design.
In the area of fugitive repatriation and asset recovery, current law relies on ad hoc international cooperation rather than institutionalized arrangements. Mechanisms such as asset forfeiture proceedings and asset sharing are constrained in their effectiveness by the absence of bilateral agreements or incomplete implementing rules. Corporate integrity and compliance overseas currently rest solely on policy guidance documents that lack legally binding force, and there is no clear basis for holding accountable enterprises that fail to establish compliance systems. Furthermore, the territorial jurisdiction principle under existing law has ambiguous spatial effect boundaries, rendering it inadequate to resolve jurisdictional conflicts in cross-border corruption cases. These deficiencies collectively constitute the practical need for dedicated legislation.
The promulgation of the Draft Law is a systematic response to this institutional gap. It is not a mere reiteration of existing law, but rather an institutional consolidation and upgrade built upon the existing framework—integrating relevant provisions scattered across multiple statutes into a single specialized law, elevating guiding compliance requirements to statutory obligations, and transforming ad hoc international cooperation into institutionalized mechanisms—thereby achieving a transition from “fragmented” governance to “systematic” governance of cross-border corruption.
Overview of the Draft Law
The Draft Law adheres to the anti-corruption principles of “no exceptions, full coverage, and zero tolerance”, expanding China’s institutional depth in overseas interest protection and global anti-corruption governance. Article 3 defines the legal boundaries of cross-border corruption, encompassing five categories of conduct: two-way commercial bribery and acceptance of bribes by domestic and foreign actors; other duty-related crimes committed by domestic actors overseas; and the flight of suspected offenders abroad and cross-border transfer of corruption proceeds.
Chapter 4 sets forth explicit integrity and compliance requirements for enterprises engaged in cross-border operations (including domestic enterprises with branches/subsidiaries abroad and foreign enterprises with branches/subsidiaries in China), including: compliance with Chinese laws, regulations, regulatory requirements, and relevant international treaties, as well as commercial ethics, professional ethics, and industry standards and codes of conduct; establishment of integrity and compliance management departments or personnel based on enterprise size, business nature, and corruption risk, with internal compliance review, risk prevention, reporting, and supervisory operating mechanisms; risk identification and assessment for cross-border business integrity, and improvement of internal reporting mechanisms; establishment of sound financial and accounting systems ensuring the authenticity and completeness of accounting documents, ledgers, and financial reports, with a prohibition on using financial means to implement or conceal cross-border corruption; and due diligence and supervision of engaged third-party institutions or individuals, establishing integrity risk prevention mechanisms and requiring compliance with the enterprise’s code of conduct, with a prohibition on using third parties to implement cross-border corruption. Whether for Chinese domestic enterprises expanding overseas and their foreign branches and subsidiaries, or foreign enterprises operating in China, all must establish sound integrity and compliance management systems, set up compliance departments, and even dispatch integrity and compliance officers overseas—failure to do so will expose them to stringent legal liabilities, including criminal penalties, administrative sanctions, and credit record sanctions.
Furthermore, the Draft Law establishes a systematic legal framework for international law enforcement judicial assistance and overseas fugitive repatriation and asset recovery, expressly supporting, on principles of equality and reciprocity, the capture of fugitives abroad through extradition, repatriation, transfer of sentenced persons, and overseas prosecution, and pioneering cross-border “asset recovery and sharing” cooperation. Notably, the Draft Law incorporates blocking mechanisms to safeguard national judicial sovereignty, strictly prohibiting any foreign institution from conducting unilateral enforcement or evidence gathering without authorization within China’s territory, and establishing blocking and legal accountability rules for domestic actors who unauthorizedly cooperate with investigations or provide evidence.
Multidimensional Definition of Cross-Border Corruption and “Two-Way” Jurisdictional Enforcement
Article 3 of the Draft Law constructs a cross-border corruption enforcement system covering both domestic and foreign directions along three dimensions—“actor + target + place of conduct” — and explicitly categorizes cross-border corruption into the following five types of conduct:
1. Domestic actors bribing foreign public officials: bribery of foreign public officials or officials of international public organizations by domestic citizens, enterprises, and their branches and subsidiaries.
2. Foreign actors bribing domestic public officials and related bribe-taking: bribery of domestic public officials, state organs, state-owned enterprises, etc., by foreign actors, and related bribe-taking conduct.
3. Duty-related crimes committed by domestic actors overseas: duty-related illegal or criminal acts other than bribery committed overseas, including embezzlement, bribery, abuse of power, dereliction of duty, power rent-seeking, interest transfers, graft, and waste of state assets.
4. Other corrupt conduct with cross-border separation of act and result: other corrupt conduct of a similar nature to the preceding three categories where the act is committed in whole or in part overseas and the result occurs in whole or in part within China.
5. Flight of suspected corrupt persons overseas and cross-border transfer of corruption proceeds.
“Two-way” jurisdiction comprises jurisdiction over domestic actors “going abroad” and jurisdiction over foreign actors “coming into” China. The former means that bribery and other duty-related illegal and criminal acts committed overseas by domestic citizens and enterprises fall within the ambit of this Law—meaning that Chinese enterprises’ practice of channeling benefits through intermediaries, consultants, or affiliated companies in overseas operations will face direct legal accountability under domestic law. The latter means that foreign actors bribing domestic public officials are likewise subject to this Law’s sanctions. This breaks the previous one-way focus on “domestic persons fleeing abroad” and achieves a “two-way encirclement” of cross-border corruption.
Regulatory Synergy Between Anti-Corruption and Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
The Draft Law constructs a regulatory network synergizing anti-corruption and anti-money laundering efforts through three mechanisms: multi-agency responsibility allocation, cross-border fund monitoring, and rapid referral of leads. The national cross-border anti-corruption working mechanism is led by the National Supervisory Commission, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce, the anti-money laundering administrative authority, National Audit Office, financial regulatory authorities, securities regulatory authorities, Cyberspace Administration, and other relevant organs jointly participating according to their respective functions and task allocations. Provincial, autonomous region, and municipal supervisory commissions lead cross-border anti-corruption work within their respective administrative regions.
In terms of cross-border fund monitoring, the Draft Law establishes three lines of defense. The first is the anti-money laundering administrative authority’s guidance to financial institutions and designated non-financial institutions to strengthen monitoring of cross-border funds. The second is the authority of the State Council’s anti-money laundering administrative department or its sub-provincial offices to proactively investigate suspicious transaction activities related to cross-border corruption. The third is the referral of information from multi-agency supervision and inspection—audit, finance, taxation, and financial regulatory authorities must promptly refer to the supervisory and public security authorities any leads concerning fund inflows/outflows and asset transfers suspected of cross-border corruption discovered during supervision and inspection; where information reported by Customs to the anti-money laundering administrative authority concerning cash and bearer negotiable instruments carried by cross-border travelers is suspected of cross-border corruption, the anti-money laundering administrative authority must likewise promptly refer such leads.
The Draft Law explicitly requires relevant authorities to employ information technology tools such as big data and artificial intelligence in accordance with law, integrating various supervisory information resources and strengthening comprehensive data analysis and assessment to facilitate timely risk warning and precise problem identification. This means cross-border fund supervision will upgrade from “manual screening” to “intelligent monitoring”.
Institutionalized Mechanisms for International Fugitive Repatriation and Asset Recovery, and the Asset Sharing System
The Draft Law elevates fugitive repatriation and asset recovery from “case-by-case operations” to “institutional arrangements”, systematically prescribing multiple means of pursuing fugitives and recovering assets. Article 24 specifies four forms of cooperation for pursuing fugitives: extradition, transfer of sentenced persons, repatriation, and overseas prosecution. Article 25 provides multiple legal avenues for asset recovery, including law enforcement judicial cooperation and judicial assistance (locating, freezing, and seizing overseas stolen assets through international collaborative channels), asset forfeiture proceedings (initiating independent asset forfeiture procedures under domestic law), and orders for restitution and acceptance of voluntary surrender (requiring offenders to return illegal gains or accepting their voluntary surrender).
The Draft Law expressly provides that the supervisory authorities, public security authorities, and other relevant organs may, in accordance with Chinese law, international treaties, or on principles of equality, reciprocity, and consensus, engage in asset recovery and sharing cooperation with relevant foreign institutions. This means asset recovery becomes a legally grounded standing mechanism rather than an ad hoc case-by-case arrangement; the introduction of asset sharing as an incentive mechanism for international cooperation will help increase the willingness of foreign institutions to cooperate in asset recovery; and asset recovery efforts will transition from “going it alone” to “win-win cooperation”.
Legal Defenses Against Unilateral Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and “Blocking Mechanisms”
While actively participating in international anti-corruption cooperation, the Draft Law constructs a legal “firewall” to safeguard national sovereignty. First, Article 26 explicitly provides that without the consent of competent Chinese authorities, no foreign institution, organization, or individual may, by itself or through others, conduct anti-cross-border corruption investigation or other law enforcement activities within China’s territory, and no institution, organization, or individual within China’s territory may provide evidentiary materials or other related assistance to foreign institutions, organizations, or individuals. This sets a legal red line against unauthorized evidentiary activities by foreign parties.
Second, Article 27 specifies circumstances under which assistance to foreign parties may be refused, including: where China is conducting investigation, inquiry, prosecution, or trial; where a final judgment has been rendered; where criminal proceedings have been terminated; where the statute of limitations for the offense has expired; and other circumstances in which judicial assistance may lawfully be refused.
Third, Article 6 explicitly provides that where a foreign state, in violation of international law and the basic norms of international relations, uses anti-corruption as a pretext or improperly applies its domestic laws extraterritorially to contain or suppress China, or adopts discriminatory restrictions or other improper measures against Chinese citizens, enterprises, or other organizations, thereby jeopardizing China’s sovereignty, security, or development interests, China has the right to take countermeasures, blocking measures, and other corresponding measures in accordance with the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law of the People’s Republic of China [ https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/2025/issue_11966/202504/content_7017464.html ] and other relevant state provisions. This means China has established a “prevention—punishment—countermeasure” trinitarian system in the anti-corruption field, embracing both open cooperation and firm defense of national sovereignty and development interests.
Fourth, for enterprises and individuals operating in China—whether domestic or foreign—unauthorized provision of evidentiary materials to foreign institutions; assistance to foreign institutions in conducting unauthorized investigative activities within China; or disclosure to foreign institutions of information concerning China’s anti-cross-border corruption investigations will all expose them to administrative sanctions and even criminal liability.
Conclusion
The Draft Law is not legislation enacted in a vacuum; rather, it is a precise response to the shortcomings of China’s existing anti‑corruption legal framework in cross‑border governance. The Criminal Law provides scattered criminal offenses, the Supervision Law offers a principled framework for international cooperation, the Anti‑Money Laundering Law contributes a perspective on fund monitoring, and departmental rules supply reference‑oriented compliance guidance—yet the systematic governance of cross‑border corruption requires a dedicated, comprehensive law to achieve institutional integration and upgrade. The promulgation of the Draft Law signifies that China’s anti-corruption enforcement priorities will extend from domestic investigation to overseas assets, cross-border transactions, and enterprises’ overseas operations. Together with the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Countering Improper Extraterritorial Jurisdiction by Foreign States promulgated in 2026, China is shaping a “prevention—punishment—countermeasure” trinitarian system of foreign-related law. For multinational enterprises, compliance is no longer merely a “cost center” but a core competency determining their ability to sustain operations in cross-border markets.
China’s Current Anti-Corruption Legal Framework and Its Limitations in Cross-Border Enforcement
Although China’s current anti-corruption legal framework already encompasses multiple statutes, including the Criminal Law, the Supervision Law, and the Anti-Money Laundering Law, its regulation of cross-border corruption remains “fragmented”, with significant institutional gaps and jurisdictional blind spots. The Criminal Law provides only a single cross-border corruption offense—bribery of foreign public officials—and offers little operational guidance for the exercise of active personal jurisdiction, making it difficult to address complex scenarios where the conduct or its effects cross national borders. Although the 2024 amendment to the Supervision Law added provisions on international cooperation, including repatriation and joint investigations, these remain principled and framework-level, lacking detailed implementing rules. The Anti-Money Laundering Law, which is oriented toward identifying money laundering risks, is functionally misaligned with the proactive investigation and asset recovery efforts required for anti-corruption purposes; moreover, the mechanisms for referral of leads and information sharing between anti-corruption and anti-money laundering authorities await systematic design.
In the area of fugitive repatriation and asset recovery, current law relies on ad hoc international cooperation rather than institutionalized arrangements. Mechanisms such as asset forfeiture proceedings and asset sharing are constrained in their effectiveness by the absence of bilateral agreements or incomplete implementing rules. Corporate integrity and compliance overseas currently rest solely on policy guidance documents that lack legally binding force, and there is no clear basis for holding accountable enterprises that fail to establish compliance systems. Furthermore, the territorial jurisdiction principle under existing law has ambiguous spatial effect boundaries, rendering it inadequate to resolve jurisdictional conflicts in cross-border corruption cases. These deficiencies collectively constitute the practical need for dedicated legislation.
The promulgation of the Draft Law is a systematic response to this institutional gap. It is not a mere reiteration of existing law, but rather an institutional consolidation and upgrade built upon the existing framework—integrating relevant provisions scattered across multiple statutes into a single specialized law, elevating guiding compliance requirements to statutory obligations, and transforming ad hoc international cooperation into institutionalized mechanisms—thereby achieving a transition from “fragmented” governance to “systematic” governance of cross-border corruption.
Overview of the Draft Law
The Draft Law adheres to the anti-corruption principles of “no exceptions, full coverage, and zero tolerance”, expanding China’s institutional depth in overseas interest protection and global anti-corruption governance. Article 3 defines the legal boundaries of cross-border corruption, encompassing five categories of conduct: two-way commercial bribery and acceptance of bribes by domestic and foreign actors; other duty-related crimes committed by domestic actors overseas; and the flight of suspected offenders abroad and cross-border transfer of corruption proceeds.
Chapter 4 sets forth explicit integrity and compliance requirements for enterprises engaged in cross-border operations (including domestic enterprises with branches/subsidiaries abroad and foreign enterprises with branches/subsidiaries in China), including: compliance with Chinese laws, regulations, regulatory requirements, and relevant international treaties, as well as commercial ethics, professional ethics, and industry standards and codes of conduct; establishment of integrity and compliance management departments or personnel based on enterprise size, business nature, and corruption risk, with internal compliance review, risk prevention, reporting, and supervisory operating mechanisms; risk identification and assessment for cross-border business integrity, and improvement of internal reporting mechanisms; establishment of sound financial and accounting systems ensuring the authenticity and completeness of accounting documents, ledgers, and financial reports, with a prohibition on using financial means to implement or conceal cross-border corruption; and due diligence and supervision of engaged third-party institutions or individuals, establishing integrity risk prevention mechanisms and requiring compliance with the enterprise’s code of conduct, with a prohibition on using third parties to implement cross-border corruption. Whether for Chinese domestic enterprises expanding overseas and their foreign branches and subsidiaries, or foreign enterprises operating in China, all must establish sound integrity and compliance management systems, set up compliance departments, and even dispatch integrity and compliance officers overseas—failure to do so will expose them to stringent legal liabilities, including criminal penalties, administrative sanctions, and credit record sanctions.
Furthermore, the Draft Law establishes a systematic legal framework for international law enforcement judicial assistance and overseas fugitive repatriation and asset recovery, expressly supporting, on principles of equality and reciprocity, the capture of fugitives abroad through extradition, repatriation, transfer of sentenced persons, and overseas prosecution, and pioneering cross-border “asset recovery and sharing” cooperation. Notably, the Draft Law incorporates blocking mechanisms to safeguard national judicial sovereignty, strictly prohibiting any foreign institution from conducting unilateral enforcement or evidence gathering without authorization within China’s territory, and establishing blocking and legal accountability rules for domestic actors who unauthorizedly cooperate with investigations or provide evidence.
Multidimensional Definition of Cross-Border Corruption and “Two-Way” Jurisdictional Enforcement
Article 3 of the Draft Law constructs a cross-border corruption enforcement system covering both domestic and foreign directions along three dimensions—“actor + target + place of conduct” — and explicitly categorizes cross-border corruption into the following five types of conduct:
1. Domestic actors bribing foreign public officials: bribery of foreign public officials or officials of international public organizations by domestic citizens, enterprises, and their branches and subsidiaries.
2. Foreign actors bribing domestic public officials and related bribe-taking: bribery of domestic public officials, state organs, state-owned enterprises, etc., by foreign actors, and related bribe-taking conduct.
3. Duty-related crimes committed by domestic actors overseas: duty-related illegal or criminal acts other than bribery committed overseas, including embezzlement, bribery, abuse of power, dereliction of duty, power rent-seeking, interest transfers, graft, and waste of state assets.
4. Other corrupt conduct with cross-border separation of act and result: other corrupt conduct of a similar nature to the preceding three categories where the act is committed in whole or in part overseas and the result occurs in whole or in part within China.
5. Flight of suspected corrupt persons overseas and cross-border transfer of corruption proceeds.
“Two-way” jurisdiction comprises jurisdiction over domestic actors “going abroad” and jurisdiction over foreign actors “coming into” China. The former means that bribery and other duty-related illegal and criminal acts committed overseas by domestic citizens and enterprises fall within the ambit of this Law—meaning that Chinese enterprises’ practice of channeling benefits through intermediaries, consultants, or affiliated companies in overseas operations will face direct legal accountability under domestic law. The latter means that foreign actors bribing domestic public officials are likewise subject to this Law’s sanctions. This breaks the previous one-way focus on “domestic persons fleeing abroad” and achieves a “two-way encirclement” of cross-border corruption.
Regulatory Synergy Between Anti-Corruption and Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
The Draft Law constructs a regulatory network synergizing anti-corruption and anti-money laundering efforts through three mechanisms: multi-agency responsibility allocation, cross-border fund monitoring, and rapid referral of leads. The national cross-border anti-corruption working mechanism is led by the National Supervisory Commission, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce, the anti-money laundering administrative authority, National Audit Office, financial regulatory authorities, securities regulatory authorities, Cyberspace Administration, and other relevant organs jointly participating according to their respective functions and task allocations. Provincial, autonomous region, and municipal supervisory commissions lead cross-border anti-corruption work within their respective administrative regions.
In terms of cross-border fund monitoring, the Draft Law establishes three lines of defense. The first is the anti-money laundering administrative authority’s guidance to financial institutions and designated non-financial institutions to strengthen monitoring of cross-border funds. The second is the authority of the State Council’s anti-money laundering administrative department or its sub-provincial offices to proactively investigate suspicious transaction activities related to cross-border corruption. The third is the referral of information from multi-agency supervision and inspection—audit, finance, taxation, and financial regulatory authorities must promptly refer to the supervisory and public security authorities any leads concerning fund inflows/outflows and asset transfers suspected of cross-border corruption discovered during supervision and inspection; where information reported by Customs to the anti-money laundering administrative authority concerning cash and bearer negotiable instruments carried by cross-border travelers is suspected of cross-border corruption, the anti-money laundering administrative authority must likewise promptly refer such leads.
The Draft Law explicitly requires relevant authorities to employ information technology tools such as big data and artificial intelligence in accordance with law, integrating various supervisory information resources and strengthening comprehensive data analysis and assessment to facilitate timely risk warning and precise problem identification. This means cross-border fund supervision will upgrade from “manual screening” to “intelligent monitoring”.
Institutionalized Mechanisms for International Fugitive Repatriation and Asset Recovery, and the Asset Sharing System
The Draft Law elevates fugitive repatriation and asset recovery from “case-by-case operations” to “institutional arrangements”, systematically prescribing multiple means of pursuing fugitives and recovering assets. Article 24 specifies four forms of cooperation for pursuing fugitives: extradition, transfer of sentenced persons, repatriation, and overseas prosecution. Article 25 provides multiple legal avenues for asset recovery, including law enforcement judicial cooperation and judicial assistance (locating, freezing, and seizing overseas stolen assets through international collaborative channels), asset forfeiture proceedings (initiating independent asset forfeiture procedures under domestic law), and orders for restitution and acceptance of voluntary surrender (requiring offenders to return illegal gains or accepting their voluntary surrender).
The Draft Law expressly provides that the supervisory authorities, public security authorities, and other relevant organs may, in accordance with Chinese law, international treaties, or on principles of equality, reciprocity, and consensus, engage in asset recovery and sharing cooperation with relevant foreign institutions. This means asset recovery becomes a legally grounded standing mechanism rather than an ad hoc case-by-case arrangement; the introduction of asset sharing as an incentive mechanism for international cooperation will help increase the willingness of foreign institutions to cooperate in asset recovery; and asset recovery efforts will transition from “going it alone” to “win-win cooperation”.
Legal Defenses Against Unilateral Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and “Blocking Mechanisms”
While actively participating in international anti-corruption cooperation, the Draft Law constructs a legal “firewall” to safeguard national sovereignty. First, Article 26 explicitly provides that without the consent of competent Chinese authorities, no foreign institution, organization, or individual may, by itself or through others, conduct anti-cross-border corruption investigation or other law enforcement activities within China’s territory, and no institution, organization, or individual within China’s territory may provide evidentiary materials or other related assistance to foreign institutions, organizations, or individuals. This sets a legal red line against unauthorized evidentiary activities by foreign parties.
Second, Article 27 specifies circumstances under which assistance to foreign parties may be refused, including: where China is conducting investigation, inquiry, prosecution, or trial; where a final judgment has been rendered; where criminal proceedings have been terminated; where the statute of limitations for the offense has expired; and other circumstances in which judicial assistance may lawfully be refused.
Third, Article 6 explicitly provides that where a foreign state, in violation of international law and the basic norms of international relations, uses anti-corruption as a pretext or improperly applies its domestic laws extraterritorially to contain or suppress China, or adopts discriminatory restrictions or other improper measures against Chinese citizens, enterprises, or other organizations, thereby jeopardizing China’s sovereignty, security, or development interests, China has the right to take countermeasures, blocking measures, and other corresponding measures in accordance with the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law of the People’s Republic of China [ https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/2025/issue_11966/202504/content_7017464.html ] and other relevant state provisions. This means China has established a “prevention—punishment—countermeasure” trinitarian system in the anti-corruption field, embracing both open cooperation and firm defense of national sovereignty and development interests.
Fourth, for enterprises and individuals operating in China—whether domestic or foreign—unauthorized provision of evidentiary materials to foreign institutions; assistance to foreign institutions in conducting unauthorized investigative activities within China; or disclosure to foreign institutions of information concerning China’s anti-cross-border corruption investigations will all expose them to administrative sanctions and even criminal liability.
Conclusion
The Draft Law is not legislation enacted in a vacuum; rather, it is a precise response to the shortcomings of China’s existing anti‑corruption legal framework in cross‑border governance. The Criminal Law provides scattered criminal offenses, the Supervision Law offers a principled framework for international cooperation, the Anti‑Money Laundering Law contributes a perspective on fund monitoring, and departmental rules supply reference‑oriented compliance guidance—yet the systematic governance of cross‑border corruption requires a dedicated, comprehensive law to achieve institutional integration and upgrade. The promulgation of the Draft Law signifies that China’s anti-corruption enforcement priorities will extend from domestic investigation to overseas assets, cross-border transactions, and enterprises’ overseas operations. Together with the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Countering Improper Extraterritorial Jurisdiction by Foreign States promulgated in 2026, China is shaping a “prevention—punishment—countermeasure” trinitarian system of foreign-related law. For multinational enterprises, compliance is no longer merely a “cost center” but a core competency determining their ability to sustain operations in cross-border markets.