On March 12, 2026, the National People’s Congress formulated and passed the Ecological and Environmental Code (hereinafter referred to as “the Code”), which will come into effect on August 15, 2026. The main contents are as follows:
- Clarifying the Statutory Duties of Governments at All Levels. The Code stipulates that local governments at all levels assume overall responsibility for the environmental quality of the atmosphere, water, and soil within their administrative regions. They are also specifically responsible for organizing and implementing key projects such as clean heating renovations, sewage treatment facility construction, and soil pollution remediation. Accordingly, governments at all levels should coordinate the advancement of pollution prevention, ecological protection, and green, low-carbon development, and establish and improve cross-regional collaborative governance mechanisms.
- Clarifying the Compliance Baseline for Relevant Enterprises. The Code makes it clear that enterprises, institutions, and other business operators must take effective measures, including obtaining pollutant discharge permits legally and supporting the construction of pollution prevention facilities and monitoring equipment, to effectively prevent and reduce environmental pollution and ecological damage. Relevant enterprises, especially those with high pollution and high emissions, must strictly abide by various environmental protection control requirements and fulfill their obligations for green and low-carbon development.
- Clarifying Citizens’ Environmental Obligations and Rights. While guiding citizens to practice a simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon lifestyle, the Code emphasizes the protection of the public’s right to know and supervise the environment. Citizens should fulfill their environmental protection obligations according to law. When discovering environmental violations, they can safeguard their legitimate rights and interests through statutory procedures such as complaints, reports, and environmental public interest litigation.
- The State Administration for Market Regulation Formulates the Provisions on the Protection of Trade Secrets
On February 24, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation formulated and issued the Provisions on the Protection of Trade Secrets (hereinafter referred to as “the Provisions”), which will come into effect on June 1, 2026. The main contents are as follows:
- Refining the Criteria for Determining Trade Secrets. The Provisions clarify that a trade secret refers to technical information, operational information, or other commercial information that is unknown to the public, has commercial value, and for which the rights holder has taken corresponding confidentiality measures. Among these, technical information includes new forms in the digital economy field such as data, algorithms, computer programs, and code; operational information covers ideas, management, sales, finance, customer information, etc., related to business activities. In this regard, relevant enterprises should actively carry out self-inspection work, sort out core technologies and operational information, and improve their trade secret protection systems.
- Specifying the Types of Acts that Infringe Trade Secrets. The Provisions systematically enumerate acts such as acquiring a rights holder’s trade secrets by theft, bribery, fraud, coercion, electronic intrusion, or other improper means, as well as specific infringing acts such as disclosing, using, or allowing others to use the trade secrets they possess in violation of confidentiality obligations or the rights holder’s requirements. In this regard, relevant enterprises should strengthen compliance management in the employee on-boarding and off-boarding process, avoid becoming involved in trade secret disputes between former employees and their previous employers, and simultaneously improve internal confidentiality systems to prevent the risk of core technology leakage.
- Improving Administrative Law Enforcement and Legal Liability Mechanisms. The Provisions clarify the preliminary evidence and specific clues that rights holders need to provide when reporting, and stipulate specific procedural rules such as case filing and identification, providing a stronger enforcement basis for market supervision departments to investigate and handle trade secret cases. In this regard, relevant enterprises should establish and improve response mechanisms for trade secret infringement. Upon discovering infringing acts, they should promptly gather evidence and report to the market supervision department to protect their legitimate rights and interests according to law.
Originally Published by PW & Partners Law Firm