Features & Analyses

Loke-Khoon Tan and James Lau of Baker McKenzie highlight the changes to the Guidelines for the Review and Examination of Trademarks, which promise to offer more protection to brand owners in terms of clarifying what a bad faith trademark application is and inclusion of non-traditional marks, as well as other changes to the examination standards

Throughout 2021, China's legislative and enforcement authorities accelerated their all-encompassing regulation of the country's TMT sector, from anti-monopoly enforcement against internet platform giants to further crackdowns on cryptocurrencies, as well as tightening controls on the Internet content industry and online games. Casper Sek of Jingtian & Gongcheng discusses these challenges and the broader context of the regulators' continuing positive attitude towards new technology and overarching goal of safeguarding national security.

Fay Zhou and Arthur Peng of Linklaters review major developments in China's anti-trust regulations that aim to offer clearer guidance and more efficient enforcement actions that can impact on this area of law for the next decade. These developments include stronger deterrence, expanded substantive prohibitions, public interest litigation and a firmer stance against consolidation.

With the entrenchment of reciprocal US-China sanctions and export controls in the past year, counsel have helped clients enact fundamental changes to their approach to making deals, from contractual terms to due diligence

Aggie Liu, Binxin Li, Yun Chen and Muzi Xuan of FenXun Partners, highlight China's 2021 legislative and enforcement developments in the intellectual property sector including how they respond to challenges posed by emerging technologies and stimulate innovative vitality, significant cases that strengthen IP protection mechanisms and standards, and what the future holds for IP in 2022

Kevin Yuan, Lucca Li and Jocelyn Chen of FenXun Partners discuss China's efforts to support continuous financial innovation in 2021 based on steady development including taking steps to protect the security of personal data in the midst of rapid developments in finance and technology, implementing detailed rules and new initiatives related to fintech innovation, and taking clear steps to open up the financial market to the outside world.

Chinese IPOs in the United States have slowed for several years now, but a raft of regulatory developments in the past year mainly driven by cybersecurity and national security concerns have likely rung the closing bell

Ting Wu of Haiwen & Partners reviews the regulatory reforms taking place in China's life science and healthcare sector including legislation that has been released to encourage innovation and broaden market access to drugs, implementation of the patent linkage system, increasing antitrust enforcement pressure in the pharma sector, regulating medical devices, cosmetics and online hospitals.

Guo Yongmao of Haiwen & Partners discusses the various types of taxes under the PRC tax regime that new companies must consider when setting up a business in mainland China and highlights how tax impacts investors of a PRC company if they are foreign entities when considering dividends distribution, interest payment and transfer pricing