China is working actively on the enforcement of its rules

It looks like China is gone hunting lately. What I mean that it is strengthening its enforcement efficiency. Two recent sets of examples brought me to this statement.

First, the release of the “Opinions on Some Issues concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of Illegal Fund-raising Criminal Cases” by a joint effort from the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security. These opinions provide that any payment of interest, dividends and other rewards arisen from funds illegally raised from the public shall be recovered by law. The same treatment applies to the payment of agency fees, favor fees, rebate fees and other fees paid to persons who helped to illegally raise the funds.
If these funds have been raised across different regions, the case can be separately handled by the authorities in the different regions, as long as a uniformly developed scheme can be identified.

Second, the authorities are working on a draft amendment to the workplace safety law that is intended to impose heavy penalties and prevent offenders from constituting new projects. Let me explain : some years ago, the Chinese databases were not really connected. Someone not complying with workplace safety rules or not paying its taxes could get along with it by going somewhere else. But things have changed now, and China is very computerized.

Today, this draft amendment intends to prevent this escape scheme by creating a blacklist of offenders and make their offenses public. The companies that would find themselves blacklisted will have imposed restrictions from obtaining land-use permit, project approvals, bank loans and insurance. In other words, today if you mess up with your company, you cannot run and hide anymore. You cannot just re-open a new company elsewhere: there are both legal and reputational sanctions available today.

China does not want to be the place where you can “just get away with it” anymore, and is working actively on the enforcement of its rules.