Regulation has develop into an more and more necessary area for worldwide competitors. Over the previous six years, China has launched a sequence of foreign-related legal guidelines and rules to counter international sanctions, intervention, and long-arm jurisdiction, collectively constituting what Chinese language coverage discourse calls the “three-anti” authorized framework (“三反”法治体系). Whereas Beijing’s sanctions and export controls have attracted a lot of the worldwide consideration over the previous few years, the blocking and judicial treatment mechanisms beneath this framework are actually additionally being put into observe.
The newest case got here on August 19, when China’s Ministry of Justice (MOJ) invoked the newly enacted Laws on Countering Improper Extraterritorial Jurisdiction by International States (RCIEJ) in opposition to the EU’s investigation into Chinese language e-commerce large JD.com. Beijing mentioned the EU probe sought broad and pointless info positioned in China, decided that the associated cross-border investigation constituted improper extraterritorial jurisdiction, and prohibited organizations and people from implementing or helping in implementing the measures involved.
The JD.com case is just one manifestation of the authorized framework’s broader software. Since Could, Beijing has issued the primary prohibition order beneath its Guidelines on Counteracting Unjustified Extraterritorial Software of International Laws and Different Measures (the Blocking Guidelines) and twice invoked the RCIEJ in opposition to the EU’s cross-border investigations. In the meantime, Chinese language corporations have begun invoking Article 12 of the Anti-International Sanctions Regulation (AFSL) to hunt judicial treatments, with two circumstances already illustrating its software and a 3rd now pending.
After six years of growth, China’s three-anti authorized framework is getting into a brand new part of broader software, giving tangible type to its as soon as largely hypothetical implications for cross-border enterprise and geopolitical competitors. Multinational corporations more and more discover themselves caught between conflicting authorized necessities, dealing with increased compliance prices and higher regulatory uncertainty. Sustained authorized warfare may additional fragment the worldwide regulatory panorama and create new sources of friction in already strained interstate relations.
Constructing China’s Three-Anti International-Associated Rule of Regulation
Beijing’s three-anti authorized framework is rooted in its broader efforts to strengthen “foreign-related rule of legislation,” an agenda that may be traced again to 2014. Amid intensifying China-U.S. rivalry, the three antis – countering international sanctions, interference, and long-arm jurisdiction – have been explicitly recognized as a key element of China’s foreign-related rule of legislation work in 2021.
In 2024, Beijing additional integrated the three antis into China’s foreign-related nationwide safety framework and laid out plans for his or her implementation. The formulation was up to date in 2025, with “counter-interference” changed by “counter-intervention.”
The authorized framework started to take form round 2020. That 12 months, China launched the Provisions on the Unreliable Entity Listing, which established a mechanism for imposing measures on designated international entities, and enacted its first Export Management Regulation to control the outflow of strategic assets and superior applied sciences. In January 2021, Beijing adopted with the Blocking Guidelines, designed to counter what it deemed the unjustified extraterritorial software of international laws and different measures.
5 months later, Beijing additional expanded this authorized structure with the AFSL, which offered a broader authorized foundation for imposing countermeasures in opposition to international actors concerned in discriminatory restrictive measures focusing on Chinese language residents or organizations, or in actions deemed to intervene in China’s inner affairs. Notably, Article 12 of the AFSL prohibits organizations and people from imposing or helping within the enforcement of such measures. Affected Chinese language residents and organizations might also provoke litigation within the Individuals’s Courts, in search of an finish to the infringement and compensation for losses. In March 2025, the State Council issued the Provisions on the Implementation of the AFSL, additional specifying the authorities answerable for implementing countermeasures and the procedures for doing so.
The authorized structure expanded additional in early 2026 with the introduction of two extra rules. On March 31, China’s State Council issued the Laws on Industrial and Provide Chain Safety, which empower Chinese language authorities to analyze and impose countermeasures in opposition to international actors deemed to undermine China’s industrial and provide chain safety. Per week later, it issued the RCIEJ, which established an built-in authorized course of overlaying the identification, announcement, blocking, and exemption of international measures deemed to represent improper extraterritorial jurisdiction.
After six years of growth, China’s three-anti authorized framework has advanced into an more and more complete and built-in authorized structure that permits Beijing to counter international actions it deems to represent sanctions, intervention, or long-arm jurisdiction.
Whereas Beijing’s rising use of sanctions and export controls has attracted most worldwide consideration over the previous few years, current blocking measures issued by Chinese language authorities and personal litigation initiated by Chinese language corporations illustrate the rising breadth and variety of the authorized framework’s software.
Blocking the Extraterritorial Software of International Laws and Measures
Beijing has begun placing its counter-extraterritorial mechanisms into observe. On Could 2, 2026, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) issued its first prohibition order beneath the Blocking Guidelines in response to U.S. sanctions imposed on 5 Chinese language corporations over their alleged involvement in Iranian oil transactions. After figuring out that the U.S. sanctions constituted unjustified extraterritorial software, the MOFCOM ordered that they shouldn’t be acknowledged, enforced, or complied with. The state-run Individuals’s Every day described it as a key step in shifting China’s foreign-related authorized toolkit from institutional growth to sensible software.
Lower than two weeks later, Beijing invoked the newly launched RCIEJ for the primary time in response to the EU’s investigation of Nuctech, a Chinese language safety gear agency, beneath the International Subsidies Regulation (FSR). A MOFCOM spokesperson mentioned EU regulators had compelled Chinese language banking establishments to cooperate with the investigation and demanded giant quantities of unrelated info positioned in China. The MOJ decided that sure cross-border investigative practices constituted improper extraterritorial jurisdiction and prohibited organizations and people from complying with or helping in implementing them.
Extra lately, the RCIEJ was invoked once more in response to the EU’s FSR investigation into JD.com. As within the Nuctech case, Chinese language authorities objected to cross-border requests for info and cooperation. Based on Beijing, the investigation demanded broad and pointless info positioned in China, together with financial institution accounts, possession constructions, and financing information, and sought cooperation from Chinese language entities and banks. The MOJ once more decided the investigation constituted illegal extraterritorial jurisdiction and prohibited organizations or people from implementing or helping in its implementation.
These three circumstances reveal that Beijing has begun making use of blocking mechanisms beneath the three-anti authorized framework to counter the extraterritorial software of international laws. Whereas these mechanisms could scale back Chinese language people’ and entities’ publicity to such measures, in addition they impose countervailing authorized obligations on these working throughout jurisdictions, as compliance with Chinese language necessities could create authorized dangers beneath international legislation.
Searching for Treatments By Litigation in Chinese language Courts
Judicial treatment provisions beneath the three-anti authorized framework are additionally being utilized in cross-border industrial disputes. Chinese language corporations are more and more turning to the AFSL to problem actions taken in compliance with international sanctions or different restrictive measures focusing on them and to hunt treatments by Chinese language courts, together with an finish to the infringement and compensation for losses.
The first such lawsuit beneath Article 12 of the AFSL arose from a dispute between a Chinese language maritime engineering firm and a Swiss marine gear agency. In June 2024, the Chinese language firm accomplished its obligations beneath a 2023 contract, solely to be added to the U.S. Specifically Designated Nationals Listing days later. Citing sanctions compliance, the Swiss agency suspended an excellent $11.86 million cost. The Chinese language firm subsequently secured the vessel’s arrest and filed a lawsuit earlier than the Nanjing Maritime Courtroom later that 12 months. The dispute resulted in a court-mediated settlement, with the Chinese language agency receiving full cost.
A second case went additional, marking the primary time a Chinese language court docket explicitly affirmed the obligatory and overriding software of the AFSL by a judicial ruling. A Singaporean service refused to ship digital merchandise from Shanghai to Panama for a Hong Kong firm after the corporate was positioned on a international sanctions checklist. The Shanghai Maritime Courtroom held that the service couldn’t depend on international sanctions to justify its non-performance beneath Article 12 of the AFSL and ordered it to pay greater than 4.99 million yuan ($739,600) in damages, plus curiosity.
The legislation is now being examined in a a lot bigger and extra advanced cross-border company dispute. The case arose after the Dutch authorities intervened in Nexperia, a Dutch semiconductor firm owned by Chinese language tech agency Wingtech, in late 2025. On Could 22, 2026, Wingtech and its subsidiary Yuching filed a lawsuit in opposition to Nexperia and 5 different defendants. Invoking the AFSL, they alleged that the Dutch ministerial order and associated Enterprise Chamber rulings constituted discriminatory restrictive measures and sought an finish to the alleged infringement and eight billion yuan ($1.2 billion) in damages. The Dongguan Intermediate Individuals’s Courtroom has accepted the case, but it surely stays pending, probably testing the AFSL’s software past sanctions-compliance disputes.
These three AFSL lawsuits reveal the rising use of the AFSL by Chinese language corporations to problem actions taken in compliance with international sanctions or different restrictive measures that have an effect on their industrial pursuits. Though international restrictive measures range in scope and within the obligations they impose on completely different events, compliance with such measures could not essentially justify a refusal to carry out contractual obligations. It could even be considered as discriminatory remedy of Chinese language counterparties, growing litigation dangers beneath the three-anti authorized framework.
Implications for Cross-Border Enterprise and Geopolitical Competitors
China’s three-anti authorized framework has moved from speedy institutional building to broader sensible software, evolving into an more and more complete and built-in authorized structure. Its constituent legal guidelines and rules ought to due to this fact not be considered as creating or making use of in isolation. They’re embedded in China’s broader authorized structure, with the identical conduct probably implicating a number of elements of the framework and different areas of Chinese language legislation.
Within the JD.com and Nuctech circumstances, for instance, compliance with sure EU cross-border investigative measures was restricted beneath the RCIEJ, whereas offering info positioned in China to EU regulators may additionally implicate China’s information legal guidelines, together with the Knowledge Safety Regulation and Private Data Safety Regulation.
The increasing software of the anti-three authorized framework creates a number of layers of publicity for multinational corporations. Beijing has used sanctions and export controls in opposition to international actors whose conduct it considers dangerous to China’s nationwide pursuits, together with protection corporations concerned in U.S. arms gross sales to Taiwan. Such measures can prohibit focused entities’ entry to Chinese language-controlled gadgets and generate industrial and broader provide chain results.
Beijing’s current blocking orders and AFSL lawsuits introduced by Chinese language corporations illustrate a unique kind of danger. The place Chinese language authorities have blocked international restrictive measures, actors that nonetheless adjust to or help in implementing these restrictions could face penalties beneath Chinese language legislation. Attainable penalties may embrace asset freezes, restrictions on funding or transactions, fines, and different measures. International corporations might also face litigation in Chinese language courts if their compliance with international restrictive measures causes losses to focused Chinese language corporations, which can search judicial treatments to halt such conduct and acquire compensation beneath the three-anti authorized framework.
Towards this backdrop, cross-border enterprise faces a broader problem: commerce could stay international, however the guidelines governing it are more and more nationally outlined and geopolitically pushed. Compliance with the necessities of 1 jurisdiction could create authorized publicity in one other. For multinational corporations, cross-border compliance is thus changing into much less a matter of satisfying a number of units of guidelines than of navigating conflicts amongst them. In a deeply built-in international economic system, such conflicts can reverberate by monetary, industrial, and provide chain linkages, exposing banks, enterprise companions, and different market members properly past the quick targets to higher authorized and regulatory uncertainty.
China is just not alone in utilizing home legislation to pursue nationwide pursuits and safety goals. Beijing, for its half, portrays its three-anti authorized framework as defensive, geared toward defending the pursuits of the nation and its folks and upholding a world order primarily based on worldwide legislation by authorized means. But the rising resort to home legislation by main powers additionally raises broader questions concerning the function of worldwide legislation and the soundness of the worldwide order.
These tensions develop into significantly seen as geopolitical competitors takes more and more authorized and regulatory types. The competition is now not solely about which measures or countermeasures states can impose, but additionally about how far their guidelines lengthen and whose guidelines finally form the conduct of people and entities working throughout jurisdictions. Such competitors dangers deepening the structural stress between an interconnected international economic system and more and more nationally outlined, security-driven regulatory regimes. Tit-for-tat actions may additional fragment the worldwide regulatory panorama, complicate international financial governance, and introduce extra sources of friction into already strained interstate relations.
