China

China's 14th National People's Congress Standing Committee enacted a unified 56-article healthcare security law on August 28, 2026, effective January 1, 2027, covering funds, services, supervision, and legal liability including fines up to five times the amount of fraudulent claims. The law explicitly integrates maternity insurance into a single statutory framework and mandates establishment of a long-term care system, though detailed rules for the latter are delegated to future State Council rulemaking. Existing laws including the 2010 Social Insurance Law remain in force where the new statute is silent, preserving a layered regulatory structure rather than replacing prior law outright.

China's National People's Congress Standing Committee adopted an eight-chapter, 72-article law on August 28, 2026, consolidating cultivated land protection and quality improvement into a single statute effective January 1, 2027. The law ties provincial officials' career audits to farmland protection performance, mandates satellite remote sensing and AI for monitoring, and requires that permanent basic farmland account for at least 80 percent of each province's cultivated land total. Notably, the statute does not set a national numerical floor for cultivated land acreage and does not establish fixed compensation payments to individual farmers whose land-use options are restricted.

China's National People's Congress approved its extradition treaty with Hungary on August 28, 2026, completing both countries' domestic ratification processes after Hungary enacted its approval in December 2025. The treaty cannot take effect until both sides exchange diplomatic notifications under Article 24, and as of August 30, 2026, no official record of those notifications or a resulting entry-into-force date has been publicly confirmed. The treaty's text includes mandatory refusal grounds covering torture risk and discriminatory prosecution, but contains no express death-penalty bar or standalone fair-trial clause.