CHINA Law and Practice Contributed by: Alan Zhou, Jacky Li, Weiwei Gu, Steven Zhu and Jenny Chen, Global Law Office
9. Assessment 9.1 Assessment of the Applicable Enforced Legislation Each year, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate issue a working report to the National People’s Congress, which includes a summary of the number of anti-corruption cases and the focus of their work in the previous year. According to the publicly available working reports issued throughout the past few years, the general trend of anti-corruption law enforcement has been to maintain an assertive attitude in order to punish corruption and accurately reflect the criminal policy of combining punishment with leniency. In general, importance will be attached to the mechanism for the connection between national supervision and criminal justice, and insistence on the principle of investigat - ing both bribe-paying and bribe-taking as a whole. In addition, attention will be paid to cases in key sectors, such as finance, energy, pharmaceutical and infra - structure, as well as cases involving people’s liveli - hoods, such as embezzlement and land requisition compensation, subsidies for dilapidated houses and subsidies for agricultural supplies and campus dining services. The enforcement authorities aim to intensify the investigation and punishment of offences related to bribing. In particular, those who offer multiple bribes or huge amounts, or who intend to target governmen - tal cadres in the long term, will be punished much more severely.
• improvement of the organisation structure and definition of the roles and responsibilities; • establishment of sound compliance management systems, including a fundamental policy for the overall management and specific guidance for key areas and businesses, and inspection of the imple - mentation; • establishment of an operating mechanism with multiple functions regarding compliance and risk management, including identification, evaluation, early warning, review, reporting, whistle-blowing, rectification, accountability of violations, etc; • development of compliance culture and aware - ness; and • enhancement of information technology. The failure to prevent bribery is not a standalone offence distinct from the act of bribery; rather, it may result in the entities involved losing the ability to defend against allegations of having a subjective intent to commit bribery. 8.2 Compliance Guidelines and Best Practices Multiple regulatory bodies have issued directives on establishing compliance programmes across differ - ent sectors. For instance, within the healthcare sec - tor, the SAMR issued the Compliance Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Enterprises to Prevent Commercial Bribery Risks on 14 January 2025, providing guid - ance for pharmaceutical enterprises on preventing commercial bribery risks from the perspectives of the establishment of compliance management systems, risk identification and prevention, and risk disposal. 8.3 Compliance Monitorships This is not applicable in China.
9.2 Likely Changes to the Applicable Legislation of the Enforcement Body
According to the legislation plan released by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Con - gress, an Anti-Cross-Border Corruption Law is also in the draft stage.
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