On April 29, 2024, the People's Bank of China and the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly issued the Measures for the Administration of Beneficial Ownership Information (the Measures), which will take effect on November 1, 2024. According to the Measures, beneficial ownership is statutory record information and must be filed with the registration authority. The People's Bank of China also concurrently released the Beneficial Ownership Information Filing Guidelines (First Edition) to provide further regulatory requirements on the disclosure (filing) of beneficial ownership information. The concept of beneficial ownership is primarily focused in the financial sector. To improve the anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing, and anti-tax evasion regulatory systems, the People's Bank of China requires financial institutions to strengthen customer identity verification. For example, before the implementation of the Measures, a company was primarily required to disclose beneficial ownership information when applying to open an account or change shareholders with a bank. After the implementation of the Measures, the company is required to file beneficial ownership information with the market regulatory authority when registering or updating its establishment or changes. The beneficial ownership must be traced down to the ultimate natural person shareholder, and the specific information to be disclosed includes name, gender, nationality, date of birth, habitual residence or work unit, identity document, and the type of beneficial ownership relationship as well as related dates, etc.

Among the cross-border contracts between Chinese and foreign enterprises, the most common are purchase and sale contracts for goods, service contracts, royalty contracts and so on. In this article, we take the royalty contracts as an example to provide some tips on how to formulate tax clauses therefore.

In February 2025, the Shanghai High People’s Court issued the Compilation of Controversial Issues in the Application of Labor Dispute Laws, providing clear guidance on a long-debated question: “How should employers handle situations where, after consecutively signing two or more fixed-term labor contracts with an employee, the employee demands an open-ended labor contract upon expiration of the last contract?” This marked a significant shift in Shanghai’s judicial practice.