In 2024, the Resolution of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization （《中共中央关于进一步全面深化改革推进中国式现代化的决定》） expressly called for advancing national anti-corruption legislation, amending the Supervision Law, and enacting Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law. In March this year, the annual work report of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress further placed the formulation of such a law on its legislative agenda. At the same time, the work report of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection emphasized the need to intensify the investigation of cross-border corruption cases and to support the National People’s Congress in formulating the Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law（《反跨境腐败法》）.

Taken together, these signals do more than indicate a clear policy direction. They suggest that China’s proposed Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law is moving from conceptual design toward actual legislation. For multinational companies whose business operations have meaningful touchpoints with China, as well as Chinese companies accelerating their overseas expansion, this means that corruption risks arising from cross-border commercial activity may increasingly come within the scope of Chinese law and its enforcement scrutiny.

From the standpoint of the current legal framework, China is not beginning its legislative work on cross-border anti-corruption from a blank slate. By way of example, Article 164 of the PRC Criminal Law （《刑法》） has long criminalized the giving of money or property to foreign public officials or officials of international public organizations for the purpose of securing improper commercial benefits. The amended Supervision Law（《监察法》）, meanwhile, contains a dedicated chapter on international anti-corruption cooperation, making clear that the National Supervisory Commission is to coordinate relevant international cooperation and, together with the relevant authorities, conduct law enforcement and judicial cooperation and mutual legal assistance in matters such as extradition, transfer of sentenced persons, repatriation, joint investigations, evidence gathering, asset recovery, and information exchange.

In other words, a number of key legal interfaces for addressing cross-border corruption already exist within China’s current legal system. The proposed Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law is therefore more likely to consolidate those rules, elevate their formal status, and bring greater clarity to China’s enforcement logic in this area.

In many discussions, the proposed Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law is described as China’s version of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or the FCPA. That comparison is not without some basis, but it does not adequately capture the law’s broader significance. More accurately, the proposed law should be understood not merely as another anti-bribery tool, but as part of a broader institutional upgrade in China’s anti-corruption regime—from one focused primarily on domestic depth to one extending into cross-border commercial activity.

It forms part not only of China’s national anti-corruption legislation, but also of its broader effort to strengthen the rule of law in foreign-related matters and to enhance legal governance capacity in a higher-level opening-up environment. For companies, the real question is not whether the law looks like the FCPA in concept, but whether it will change how businesses identify, investigate, and respond to cross-border corruption risks connected to China-related operations.

The FCPA’s profound influence on corporate conduct around the world stems not only from its anti-bribery provisions, but also from the broader enforcement architecture that links anti-bribery liability with books-and-records requirements, internal accounting controls, third-party management, successor liability in M&A, internal investigations, cooperation credit, and remediation assessments. For years, the FCPA Resource Guide issued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has provided continuing public guidance on enforcement priorities, interpretive boundaries, and core compliance elements. In addition, DOJ’s unified Corporate Enforcement Policy, issued in March 2026, further underscores that voluntary self-disclosure, full cooperation, and timely and appropriate remediation are among the central pathways by which companies may seek favorable treatment. The key lesson for China’s legislative development is not FCPA’s high enforcement pressure on target companies, but the extent to which publicly available policy and evaluative frameworks can reduce information asymmetry among in-house legal teams, external counsel, and enforcement authorities.

For companies, the key question is not simply whether China will introduce a new anti-corruption law, but whether the resulting framework will provide enough clarity to support difficult decisions in practice. Companies will want to know, from Chinese perspective, what facts are most likely to trigger enforcement scrutiny, what kinds of connections to China may be treated as jurisdictionally significant, whether voluntary reporting may be possible or beneficial, what forms of cooperation and remediation may affect outcomes, how quickly and how thoroughly an internal investigation may need to move, and how authorities may assess third-party oversight, compliance culture, and remediation. Greater clarity on these points would help companies identify risk earlier, respond more consistently, and make more confident decisions under pressure. Absent that clarity, companies may face not only increased legal risk, but also material uncertainty in how to investigate, escalate, and respond.

From practical perspective, the article will not attempt to address how the proposed law may ultimately apply to overseas asset tracing involving Chinese officials, fugitive repatriation, illicit asset recovery, or related issues. Those questions are undoubtedly important part of the law, and the current Supervision Law together with relevant policy initiatives of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection already provide a legislative foundation for international anti-corruption cooperation in those areas. For Chinese companies expanding abroad, and for multinational companies whose operations have meaningful touchpoints with China, the more immediate question is this: once enacted, how might this law change the way companies identify and respond to their own legal and compliance risk? At a minimum, four categories of risk merit close attention now.

First, the risk of parallel enforcement and regulatory scrutiny across jurisdictions is likely to rise materially. In practice, the outcome of an anti-corruption enforcement matter in relation but outside China—for example, an FCPA settlement arising out of a multinational company’s China operations —has not automatically led Chinese authorities to open a joint investigation directly based on the same facts. For a range of reasons, including geopolitics, judicial sovereignty, enforcement priorities, resource allocation, and differences in legal frameworks, overseas enforcement outcomes have historically resulted only infrequently in concurrent or follow-on action in China. That working assumption may now need to be revisited. As the proposed Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law moves onto a defined legislative track, it is reasonable to expect that Chinese authorities will become more attentive to, better equipped to identify, and more willing to intervene in cross-border corruption matters connected to China. For multinational companies with meaningful China-related business touchpoints, the prospect of Chinese review or enforcement should no longer be treated as a variable to be considered later or afterwards. It should increasingly be treated as a core variable that must be assessed at the outset in any China-related cross-border corruption matter. The real difficulty is not simply knowing that such risk exists, but whether the company can align internal stakeholders across functions, jurisdictions, and international regulators earlier than before, and maintain consistency in fact finding, legal analysis, messaging, and overall response timing and efficiency. For multinational companies, that will present a materially new challenge.

Second, the risk of missteps in internal investigations and reporting decisions is likely to rise sharply. Against the backdrop of a proposed law that is now firmly on the legislative horizon, companies should no longer view internal investigations merely as remedial exercises triggered after a problem comes to light. They should increasingly be treated as front-end control mechanisms designed for potential scrutiny across multiple jurisdictions. Once there is a third-party complaint, a whistleblower allegation, an audit irregularity, or an inquiry from an enforcement authority, the company’s task is not simply to decide whether there is a problem. It must simultaneously identify China-related nexus points, preserve key evidence, map relevant approval chains, assess whether systemic control failures may be involved, and build a factual record capable of supporting later risk triage, management decision-making, and external explanations. In many cases, the real difficulty lies not in whether to investigate, but in whether the investigation has been deviated from the very begining: focusing too narrowly on a particular employee or incident while failing to assess management knowledge or historical tolerance; prematurely characterizing the issue as isolated while overlooking the possibility of recurrence; or allowing multiple teams across jurisdictions to act at the same time without a unified legal and investigation strategy, resulting in inconsistent fact finding result, disjointed remediation measures, which ultimately result in a narrower range of procedural and substantive options with the authorities later on.

Third, the risk that China-related business nexus points may trigger enforcement attention is likely to increase materially. For multinational companies with meaningful China-related business touchpoints, nexus risk itself warrants fresh assessment. Even if the proposed Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law does not replicate the FCPA’s jurisdictional architecture in full, it is unlikely to focus only on a narrow category of persons or conduct. As a practical matter, if a cross-border matter has sufficiently substantial ties to China—for example, if the China management participated in designing or approving certain business arrangement, payment or reimbursement processes were handled in China, relevant data or accounting records were retained in China, the third party involved was managed by personnel in China, or key compliance controls proven to be failed within China—the matter may well be identified under Chinese law. For many multinational companies, the more significant concern is therefore not whether a transaction formally took place in China, but how many China-related nexus points may already exist across global operations without having been fully identified or assessed.

Fourth, risk associated with third-party management and transaction structures is likely to rise significantly. FCPA practice shows that the highest-risk matters are often not the most direct or crudest cash transfers. More often, they involve arrangements that appear commercially ordinary on the surface but become problematic in substance—for example, agents, consultants, distributors, business partners, market development fees, consulting fees, travel and hospitality, sponsorships, donations, and even legacy arrangements inherited through acquisitions. In many cases, the greatest danger is not the complete absence of documentation. It is the opposite: processes and paperwork may appear facially defensible, while the underlying commercial substance does not hold together and the business rationale or value exchange cannot withstand serious scrutiny. This is especially important for Chinese companies going global and for multinational companies, because China-related operations often combine sales pressure, reliance on local third parties, complex payment channels, and fragmented approval structures, making them natural concentrations of risk in a global investigation.

At a broader level, the significance of the proposed Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law lies not merely in the enactment of a new statute. There is good reason to expect that, with this law as a catalyst, China may gradually develop a cross-border anti-corruption framework with its own legislative characteristics and with practical influence in international commerce. Such a framework should serve not only as an important tool for regulating corporate conduct and strengthening governance, but also as a source of clearer and more credible legal support for Chinese companies operating overseas in compliance with law.

For a Chinese lawyer who has spent years working in compliance, investigations, and government-facing matters, that expectation is far from abstract. Every coordination of a cross-border investigation, every response to parallel proceedings across multiple jurisdictions, and every round of engagement with overseas enforcement authorities ultimately depends on the support of a more mature legal system and a more stable enforcement framework. The influence of the rule of law is, in the end, part of a country’s broader influence. In that sense, “into deeper waters” serves as a metaphor for Chinese law entering the next level of global anti-corruption governance with a more mature institutional language. That journey will not happen overnight, but it is one worth expecting. It speaks not only to the refinement of the legal regime itself, but also to the role and weight of Chinese law in the evolving architecture of global commerce. The road is long, but the momentum is worth anticipating—and if that momentum continues to build, one might borrow an old line of Chinese verse: “With the tide grown level, the banks stretch wide; with the wind set fair, a single sail hangs poised.”

Note

This article is a forward-looking analysis based on currently public policy signals, legislative planning, and the existing legal framework. Because the Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law has not yet been enacted, uncertainty remains as to its final text, scope, implementing rules, and enforcement approach. As a result, some of the trends, risk scenarios, and corporate response considerations discussed above may not unfold in practice exactly as described here. This article is intended to help companies identify and think ahead about possible developments and their potential implications; it should not be read as a definitive statement of future legislative content or enforcement practice. We will continue to monitor developments relating to the proposed law and any related implementing rules and will update our observations and analysis as the public picture evolves.

Source: Chance Bridge Law Firm

Authors: 

• Will WU, Partner, Business Areas: Compliance, Internal Investigations & Government Enforcement; Tel：+86 21 68590516, Email: will.wu@chancebridge.com
• LI Shiyan, Paralegal, Business Areas: Compliance, Internal Investigations & Government Enforcement, Dispute Resolution; Tel：+86 21 68590516, Email: shiyan.li@chancebridge.com