CHINA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Rongliang Wu, Mei Wan, Qirong Huang and Xueqi Huang, Jin Mao Law Firm
Bank of China, and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued Green Finance Terminology (GB/T 42714-2025) and Catalogue of Projects Supported by Green Finance (2025 Edition). For the first time in the form of national standards, these documents systematically defined the terminol- ogy, functional boundaries, proportion of fund use, and environmental benefit quantification methods for 38 categories of core financial instruments, including “green credit”, “green bonds”, “green funds”, “green insurance”, “green leasing”, “transition bonds”, and “sustainability-linked loans (SLLs)”. This put an end to the fragmented situation of inconsistent standards across regions and institutions, which had led to fre- quent regulatory arbitrage during the past decade. On the basis of continuing to support traditional fields such as clean energy, green transportation, and pol- lution prevention, the new edition of the Catalogue of Projects Supported by Green Finance includes “new energy storage”, “full hydrogen chain”, “zero-carbon parks”, “marine carbon sinks”, and “climate-resilient infrastructure” in the positive list, while simultaneously removing transitional projects such as fossil natural gas and clean coal. It thus achieves a high level of alignment with the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Green Bond Standards. The two standards have been fully applicable to all green credit, green bonds, green asset-backed secu- rities (ABS), green REITs, carbon neutrality-themed wealth management products, and transition finan- cial instruments since 1 October 2025, becoming the first nationwide institutional foundation covering both green finance and transition finance. Financial institutions must conduct environmental information disclosure, carbon accounting, and climate stress testing in accordance with the new standards, which also serve as a prerequisite for accessing the Peo- ple’s Bank of China’s carbon reduction support tools, the “green channel” for green bond registration, fiscal interest subsidies, and priority subscription by sover- eign funds. With this, China’s green finance has officially com- pleted the historic leap from “voluntary disclosure and
incentive guidance” to “unified standards and man- datory compliance”, providing a replicable Chinese model for the “dual carbon” goals, the construction of a Beautiful China, and global sustainable finance governance. Work safety management and occupational health monitoring As an important part of EHS management, workplace safety and environmental protection often fall within the responsibility of the same department in an enter- prise. The key recommendations, based on the Work Safety Law as well as the enforcement practices, are as follows. • Senior managers of other management depart- ments must also undertake corresponding work safety management responsibilities. The manage- ment group, especially the main person-in-charge, is responsible for the company’s workplace safety. A safety responsibility system must be established and implemented for all employees. • The enterprise must establish the risk prevention mechanism known as risk hierarchical control. This means the enterprise must identify the danger- ous and harmful factors existing in production and operation activities, determine the risk severity, and then determine the priority of risk control and risk control measures, so as to achieve the necessary measures to improve the safety of the production environment and reduce and eliminate production accidents. • The enterprise must establish a hidden danger examination and treatment mechanism. Such a mechanism entails hazard identification and evaluation, hidden danger treatment records management (including closed-loop management of hidden danger trouble-shooting, reporting, rectification and review), as well as hidden danger rectification and evaluation. • Enterprises may need to deal with more frequent law enforcement inspections and illegal acts will lead to more severe administrative penalties. For work safety accidents or violating behaviour, the company will be fined as per the law – as will the main responsible person-in-charge, other responsi- ble persons, work safety management profession-
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