December 1-7
China
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said he would appeal to the US Supreme Court after a lower US federal court upheld a law requiring parent company ByteDance to divest its app in the US by January 19, 2025 or face a ban.
The National Health Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the National Administration of Disease Prevention and Control jointly issued detailed guidelines for a pilot program to expand foreign investment in the health care industry. The guidelines restrict foreign-owned hospitals operating in China from accessing patients’ genetic data, treating psychiatric and infectious diseases, and providing traditional Chinese medicine treatments. The pilot plan was announced in September for nine locations including Beijing and Shanghai.
The Supreme People’s Court released its first set of so-called typical cases on resolving inheritance disputes. The cases address the application of the estate administrator system, inheritance by subrogation, estate donation, and the non-inheritability of land management contract rights.
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, one of the earliest US law firms to open an office in China (in 1981), said it will close its Beijing office by the end of the year. It will still have an office in Hong Kong. More than a dozen US law firms have closed offices or reduced their footprint in China over the past year, including WilmerHale; Kirkland & Ellis; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Perkins Coie; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Sidley Austin; Dechert; and Winston & Strawn. The sluggish Chinese economy, decline in US-Chinese mutual trust and goodwill, and competition from Chinese law firms are top factors driving the closures.
Hong Kong
A new trial began for a social worker who was previously acquitted of a 2019 rioting charge. Midway through Jackie Chen’s 2020 trial, the judge halted proceedings against her and said her conduct did not amount to unlawful assembly, let alone rioting. However, the Court of Appeals allowed the government to appeal the verdict as “plainly wrong.” Chen was a member of the Battlefield Social Worker group, which sought to liaise between protesters and police during the 2019 protests. She was frequently at the front lines, urging police restraint.
A High Court judge refused a request for judicial review by Ma Chun-man, the first prisoner made ineligible for early release by the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance. Ma is serving a five-year sentence for chanting slogans and making speeches calling for Hong Kong’s independence between August and November 2020.
Japan
The Chiba District Court convicted an Australian woman of smuggling drugs into Japan and sentenced her to six years in prison and a ¥1 million ($6,650) fine. Donna Nelson, 58, was caught at Narita Airport in January 2023 with a suitcase containing 1.9 kilograms of methamphetamine. She said she did not know about the drugs and was the victim of an online romance scam artist.
The Japanese Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission recommended that the Financial Service Agency fine general contractor Yamaura ¥18 million ($120,000) for releasing false financial statements. The company’s former accountant is being tried on embezzlement charges. In 2023 the company’s auditor found a billion yen (about $6.7 million) difference between the actual and book balances of bank deposits held by the company’s Tokyo subsidiary.
The Supreme Court finalized a lower court ruling ordering a publisher to delete from its website lists of areas where feudal-era outcasts currently or formerly lived. The ruling responded to a lawsuit by residents of such areas and the anti-discrimination group Buraku Liberation League.
Residents of an unauthorized encampment in Osaka clashed with police and court officials who attempted to enforce a court order of eviction. Homeless persons had set up makeshift shelters after a welfare center that supported day laborers was closed in 2019 for reconstruction. The Osaka Prefecture government, which owns the site of the encampment, won a lawsuit to evict the residents, and the Supreme Court upheld the verdict in May.
Koreas
Tens of thousands of South Koreans gathered outside the National Assembly building demanding the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol after he attempted to impose martial law to resolve a power struggle with the opposition. An initial impeachment vote failed when most legislators of Yeol’s own People Power Party boycotted the vote. Yoon, a former prosecutor and political neophyte, declared martial law in the middle of the night Tuesday. The National Assembly voted hours later to end it. Yoon apologized on Saturday but did not agree to step down. Prosecutors announced an investigation into whether Yoon and his supporters had committed an insurrection. Divided government and a breakdown of cooperation between the two leading parties has hampered governance in recent years, not only under Yoon.
Negotiations on an international treaty to end plastic pollution ended in Busan, South Korea without success. More than 170 countries participated in the negotiations, convened by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. Participants agreed to reconvene next year. Most contentious were proposals to go beyond plastic waste disposal to limit plastic production.
Taiwan
A meeting of the Legislative Yuan broke down in scuffles between members of the Nationalist (KMT) and Democratic Progressive (DPP) parties as they argued over the agenda. The KMT is trying to amend the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) to shift more government revenues from the central to local governments; and the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) to raise the threshold for recall elections and require persons who sign recall petitions to submit copies of their ID cards. DPP legislators reportedly rushed the podium and tried to drown out the KMT speakers.
Taipei prosecutors indicted four former military personnel, including three who were responsible for security at the Presidential Office Building, on charges of selling state secrets to China. The fourth served in the Ministry of National Defense’s Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command.
The Mainland Affairs Council said it and the Straits Exchange Foundation have opened new hotlines for travelers seeking information about safety risks while visiting mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. The council raised its travel warning for China to the second-highest or “orange” level in June after Beijing published sentencing guidelines for persons convicted under China’s Anti-Secession Law that included the possibility of the death penalty. The council said the number of people who using its Online Registration System for Taiwanese Citizens Visiting Mainland China this year through Oct. 31 had increased 14-fold from the same period last year.