China Human Rights Defenders: Interpretation of China’s Policies, Laws and Regulations (October 2026) (Issue 26)

By Weiquan Information CenterPublished Oct 31, 2026

Editor’s note: Autumn is deepening, and new regulations are appearing in quick succession. This issue compiles eleven recent policy documents covering four major areas: online governance, people’s livelihood, industrial development, and public safety. Their provisions differ, yet they all pose the same central question: Where should the boundaries of public power lie? Ultimately, the purpose of all governance is to protect people’s rights.

From the “Clear and Bright” campaign to address fabricated personas in short videos, to online safety protections for minors, and then the special campaign to address military-related information, the reins on governing cyberspace continue to tighten. Bringing disorder under control is a legitimate aim; fabricated personas and traffic fraud trample the public’s right to know. But what demands even greater vigilance is that boundaries can most easily expand unnoticed in the name of security. If the pursuit of “absolute clarity” blurs the boundaries of expression, or the pursuit of “absolute safety” shrinks the space for innovation, governance itself will cease to be a shield for rights and become a barrier to them.

The Action Plan for Disability Prevention, protections for workers in new forms of employment, the grading of eldercare institutions, and revisions to the Teachers Law directly address several of the most pressing rights gaps today. The social insurance gap for food delivery riders, the lack of prevention for people with disabilities, and disorder in eldercare service standards are each concrete manifestations of the rights to life and development. Rights on paper are no guarantee; safeguards put into practice are what make human rights real. In examining policy, we look not only at how comprehensive its provisions are, but also at whether implementation will distort them or turn safeguards into new approvals and barriers.

Renovating old neighborhoods, preventing groundwater pollution, and regulating drone safety all test the balance between development and security. Urban renewal cannot focus only on the city’s interests while disregarding residents’ right to a decent life; environmental governance cannot focus only on evaluations while overlooking the environmental rights of people along the affected areas; and drone controls cannot take away ordinary people’s freedom to fly in pursuit of zero risk. “Your rights end at the tip of my nose”—this is the most basic human rights principle: freedom that does not cross boundaries should not be taken away arbitrarily.

As the ancients said, “The constant principle of governing a country is to put the people’s welfare first.” All policies are ultimately tools to serve people, not ropes to bind them. Controls are necessary, but must not be excessive; governance has boundaries, and must also be humane. Only when human rights are the measure can governance truly fulfill its benevolent purpose.

Contents of this issue

I. The Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission launches the “Clear and Bright: Campaign to Address the Chaos of Fabricated Personas in Short Videos”

II. The State Taxation Administration issues the National Benchmarks for Discretion in Tax Administrative Penalties (2026 Edition)

III. The Cyberspace Administration of China issues the Provisions of the State Council on Ensuring Minors’ Healthy and Safe Use of the Internet (Draft for Public Comment)

IV. The State Council approves the National Action Plan for Disability Prevention (2026–2030)

V. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security releases the Measures for Protecting the Rights and Interests of Workers in New Forms of Employment (Draft for Public Comment)

VI. Four departments jointly launch a special campaign to address improper marketing and hype involving military-related content online

VII. The State Council Executive Meeting approves in principle a draft revision of the Teachers Law

VIII. Six departments jointly issue the Guiding Opinions on Advancing the Renovation and Upgrading of Old Neighborhoods and Factory Areas

IX. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment seeks public comment on an environmental management document for key areas for groundwater pollution prevention and control

X. The Ministry of Civil Affairs seeks public comment on the national standard for grading eldercare institutions

XI. The Ministry of Public Security establishes a bureau for drone safety and prevention to coordinate low-altitude safety governance

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I. The Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission launches the “Clear and Bright: Campaign to Address the Chaos of Fabricated Personas in Short Videos”

On September 30, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission issued a notice launching a two-month nationwide special campaign, “Clear and Bright: Campaign to Address the Chaos of Fabricated Personas in Short Videos,” to further promote the healthy and orderly development of the short-video industry and foster a clean and upright online environment. The campaign will focus on four prominent types of misconduct: pretending to be workers in new forms of employment and staging scenes such as “delivering food while caring for a child” or “delivering food despite having an advanced degree” to elicit public sympathy; pretending to be farmers, people in hardship in mountainous areas, or rural grassroots officials and selling goods under the guise of helping farmers; pretending to be people with disabilities or serious illnesses and creating personas of extreme hardship and tragic life stories; and pretending to be people disappointed in love or marriage to attract traffic and make a profit. The campaign will strengthen credential reviews and oversight in key sections, focus on key stages such as content creation, traffic distribution, and review management, and strengthen protections for the rights and interests of specific groups. (For details, see: https://www.cac.gov.cn/2026-09/30/c_1792520301987752.htm)

Analysis: The special campaign launched by the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission to address the chaos of fabricated personas in short videos received considerable public applause as soon as it was announced. Staged displays of hardship, pretending to be poor to sell goods, feigning disability to solicit donations, and fabricating identities to harvest traffic have long roiled the short-video ecosystem. The public’s goodwill has been repeatedly exploited, while people genuinely in vulnerable situations have been left without help. A forceful crackdown is a necessary measure in line with public sentiment. But before the applause had even faded, deeper risks were already close at hand: when “fabricated personas” lack clear legal boundaries and firm criteria for determination, and governance continues along the habitual path of “campaign-style promotion and platform-based implementation,” this well-intentioned campaign could easily plunge into excessive control as demands escalate at each level. It may ultimately harm citizens’ freedom of expression and the space for public discussion, making ordinary people’s voices casualties of the governance storm.

The inherent ambiguity of the concept of “fabricated personas” is the campaign’s greatest institutional risk and the most concerning opening for an expansion of power. Although the official document lists five areas for special attention, it never sets out measurable and verifiable legal elements defining what constitutes a “fabricated persona.” Phrases such as “playing up hardship,” “creating an image of hardship,” and “fabricating personal experiences” leave ample room for subjective discretion. When a migrant worker complains about the hardships of a job, is that a genuine expression of lived experience or “pretending to be from the working class and playing up hardship for attention”? When an ordinary person shares an experience of illness, is that an expression of personal emotion or “pretending to be seriously ill to elicit sympathy”? When a commentator criticizes current affairs, is that legitimate public oversight or “creating a persona to attract traffic and profit”? Without a clear standard, the answer depends entirely on the whim of enforcement officials and platform reviewers.

Throughout history, governance provisions built around vague concepts have tended to become catch-all clauses that keep expanding, able to encompass anything and label anyone. Those most likely to be swept into these clauses are always people without a voice, a public relations team, or traffic management. Their voices are the weakest; their expression is most easily labeled “attention-seeking” or “persona-building”; and they have the least access to channels for appeal and defense. When the rules themselves are unclear, enforcement standards will inevitably erode at each level, ultimately resulting in selective enforcement that targets the vulnerable.

An even more absurd paradox lies in implementation. Special campaigns are never carried out by regulators personally reviewing content one item at a time; the work is ultimately pushed down to major short-video platforms. Acting on the instinct of self-preservation, platforms always follow the survival logic of “better to make a mistake than let one slip through”: they would rather delete a hundred pieces of legitimate content by mistake than let a single violation through and invite regulatory trouble. Every previous round of “Clear and Bright” campaigns has seen cases of legitimate content wrongly deleted and ordinary accounts wrongly suspended. Meanwhile, MCN agencies and professional operations teams that mass-produce fabricated personas know the loopholes in the rules and how to create accounts in bulk, switch accounts quickly, and evade scrutiny through careful wording; they can instead emerge unscathed from the crackdown.

So we see a deeply ironic picture: a forceful campaign against fakery fails to reach the actual industry chain of deception, while strict regulation targets ordinary creators without power or influence. Professional traffic fraudsters continue to operate in gray areas and reap profits, while ordinary people’s right to share their lives is continually curtailed. This kind of governance amounts to reverse selection: the weak pay for the chaos, and those who obey the law take the blame for those who break it. When the force of governance is not directed at organized industry sources of fabrication but instead fixates on flaws in individuals’ expression, governance itself is misdirected and loses focus.

Under the basic principles of human rights and the rule of law, freedom of expression has never protected only “correct and error-free” speech, much less only voices that conform to mainstream preferences. It inherently accommodates emotional exaggeration, personal narratives, and even expressions of feelings that differ somewhat from the facts. The vitality of the public sphere lies in its richness and diversity, and in its ability to accommodate people from different social classes, circumstances, and points of view. If preventing “fabricated personas” requires every ordinary person to make every online post, every personal account, and every comment fully objective, absolutely true, and free of any personal embellishment, then the result is not, in essence, to address disorder but to eliminate public expression itself.

Even more concerning is the risk of instrumentalization. When “fabricated persona,” “attention-seeking,” and “piggybacking on traffic” become labels that can be applied at will, they acquire powerful social functions: any unwelcome voice, sharp criticism, or public oversight that touches on vested interests can be suppressed on the grounds that it is “creating a fabricated persona.” A single claim that “he’s just doing it for traffic” can invalidate all criticism; a single finding of “persona fabrication” can silence a dissenter completely. This is more frightening than fabricated personas themselves: the tools used to combat fakery ultimately become weapons for suppressing dissent, and the goal of creating a clean online environment ultimately leads to a dead silence in which no one dares speak.

The purpose of addressing fabricated personas should never be to “control what people say,” but to “control what people do by means of a fabricated persona.” What should truly be targeted are illegal acts that use fabricated personas to commit fraud or extortion, make false claims, or gain improper profits—not harmless embellishments in ordinary people’s expression. The standard must be firmly anchored in the core requirement of “an intent to deceive for profit,” rather than drawing the line based on whether the content is “perfectly true.” This requires governance to stay within the boundaries of the rule of law: clear criteria must be issued to prevent catch-all clauses; a fair appeals mechanism must be established to guarantee procedural justice; and enforcement must focus on organized, industrial-scale groups engaged in fabrication, rather than nitpicking ordinary users’ expression.

The ancients said that governing a great country is like cooking a small fish; the same is true of online governance. Excess can be as harmful as deficiency. Addressing disorder must not come at the cost of vitality, and creating a clean online environment must not come at the cost of silencing people. A truly successful “Clear and Bright” campaign should make it impossible for fabricators to hide and allow those who obey the law to speak freely—not make ordinary people afraid to speak, express themselves, or share. If boundaries fail and standards run out of control, and the iron fist of governance repeatedly strikes ordinary people’s right to express themselves, then the so-called clean online environment will ultimately become the beginning of a chilling effect. This harms the basic human right to freedom of expression and fundamentally betrays the original purpose of online governance.

II. The State Taxation Administration issues the National Benchmarks for Discretion in Tax Administrative Penalties (2026 Edition)

The State Taxation Administration issued Announcement No. 20 of 2026, publishing the National Benchmarks for Discretion in Tax Administrative Penalties (2026 Edition). The announcement was signed on September 28, 2026, and made public that day on the State Taxation Administration’s official website; Xinhua News Agency published a related report on October 6. The document takes effect on November 1. The benchmarks cover 66 tax administrative penalty matters across nine major categories and are accompanied by a list of eight circumstances in which tax administrative penalties are waived for minor violations. They establish five levels of discretion—“minor, relatively minor, general, relatively serious, and serious”—and specify the applicable conditions and penalty standards for each type of violation. Where local tax administrative penalty benchmarks previously in force are inconsistent with this announcement, the provisions of this announcement shall prevail. (For details, see: https://fgk.chinatax.gov.cn/zcfgk/c100012/c5252754/content.html）

Analysis: The National Benchmarks for Discretion in Tax Administrative Penalties (2026 Edition), issued by the State Taxation Administration, sets out detailed rules for 66 penalty matters in nine major categories under the banner of unified enforcement standards, and includes a list of eight cases in which penalties are waived for minor violations. It appears to be progress toward regulating tax enforcement, but viewed from the perspective of human rights protection, the system does not move beyond the traditional governance logic of “using penalties instead of regulation and using penalties to promote regulation.” Instead, it may standardize and normalize penalties, further squeezing the basic rights of market entities amid an economic downturn and pressure on local finances.

Equality is a cornerstone of human rights under the rule of law. These benchmarks seek to bridge differences in enforcement standards across regions, but avoid the root cause of unfair tax enforcement: the problem has never been a lack of penalty standards, but the selective exercise of enforcement powers. For a long time, grassroots tax collection and administration have been closely tied to fine quotas and performance assessments. When penalty revenue becomes a hidden channel for filling fiscal shortfalls, even the most detailed ranges of discretion can be manipulated: tax evasion with malicious intent may be played down through “flexible enforcement,” while non-deliberate reporting errors and procedural mistakes by small and micro businesses and individual businesses are often punished at the maximum level. Uniform discretion on paper cannot solve substantive selective enforcement; it may instead make unfair enforcement more obscure, ultimately eroding the basic human rights principle of equality before the law.

Property and the right to life are central economic and social rights. Academic research has found a significant positive correlation between local fiscal pressure and the expansion of penalty revenue. In the current cycle of economic pressure and widespread difficulty for market entities, tax enforcement should adhere to the principle of restraint and prioritize preserving markets and employment. Yet the institutional design of these benchmarks still treats penalties as a core means of tax administration: all 66 penalty matters cover the entire tax collection and administration process, while the list of cases in which penalties are waived for minor violations contains only eight items. Many minor violations without malicious intent and procedural defects remain subject to penalties. For small and medium-sized businesses whose cash flow is already fragile, a fine of several thousand or even more than 10,000 yuan could directly break the threshold for continued operation and lead to employee layoffs. This is not simply a “cost of violating the law,” but a direct erosion of the rights to life and development. When penalties shift from corrective measures to revenue generation, the public nature of taxation gives way to profit-seeking, ultimately harming the basic economic rights of ordinary people.

More concerning is that the governance model of “using penalties instead of regulation” inherently erodes the value of due process. In grassroots tax enforcement, many penalties are imposed through summary procedures; the parties’ rights to make statements and defenses and to present evidence often become formalities. Long-standing problems include “setting the penalty first and gathering evidence later” and “emphasizing substance while neglecting procedure.” These unified benchmarks detail the ranges of penalties but do not build a procedural justice safeguard, nor do they establish “malicious intent” as a prerequisite to punishment—that the power to impose penalties can be exercised only after proving that the party deliberately and maliciously violated the law. Without this human rights safeguard, even the most detailed discretionary rules could become a “legal cover” for expanding enforcement powers.

The modernization of tax governance has never meant that a more elaborate penalty system is more advanced. Genuine rule of law and human rights protection require making “no penalty without malicious intent, no unnecessary interference” the basic logic of enforcement, shifting regulatory focus from after-the-fact punishment to services provided in advance, and restoring the public character of tax enforcement rather than allowing it to become a tool for governing through penalties.

III. The Cyberspace Administration of China issues the Provisions of the State Council on Ensuring Minors’ Healthy and Safe Use of the Internet (Draft for Public Comment)

On September 18, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a notice seeking public comment on the Provisions of the State Council on Ensuring Minors’ Healthy and Safe Use of the Internet (Draft for Public Comment), with the aim of strengthening protections for minors online and safeguarding their lawful rights and interests on the internet. The draft stipulates that platforms must be able to identify minors and must proactively activate minor mode when they identify a user under the age of 16. It prohibits providing users under 16 with services such as virtual companions, social networking with strangers, and livestream publishing. It also sets restrictions on algorithmic recommendations, online spending, and protections on smart devices, and holds platforms and device manufacturers responsible for preventing risks such as internet addiction and harm from harmful information. Members of the public can submit comments by email or letter. The deadline for comments is October 17, 2026. (For details, see: https://www.cac.gov.cn/2026-09/18/c_1791482017777471.htm)

Analysis: Protecting minors’ healthy use of the internet is a broadly shared public governance goal. Young people whose minds are not yet mature have limited ability to assess information and resist risks, so building safeguards for them online is justified both emotionally and rationally. But what the governance logic reflected in this draft truly calls for vigilance against is the continued expansion of control in the name of the moral high ground of “protecting minors,” ultimately making all adult internet users pay the price in diminished rights. The protective intent is beyond reproach, but when the means are unconstrained and boundaries continually crossed, the harm will seep into every internet user’s basic rights at an institutional level.

First to be affected is the systematic surrender of all internet users’ privacy and identity rights. Precise identification and behavioral control of minors necessarily require comprehensive identity verification and data collection for all internet users. This is far from targeted management of minors alone: it requires everyone who goes online to hand over their full identity information, activity history, social connections, and even biometric data as the basis for distinguishing between “adults and minors.” In other words, the technical infrastructure for protecting minors is built on the surrender of every internet user’s privacy. When going online, once an anonymous public right, becomes a “real-name privilege” that requires linking a complete profile to a real identity, citizens’ right to online anonymity will exist in name only. Yet anonymity is an important safeguard for freedom of expression: when identity is no longer obscured, the courage to participate in public discussions and the space for expressing dissent will both shrink. Not to mention the enormous risk of data leaks and misuse inherent in the centralized storage of vast quantities of identity and behavioral data. Errors in technical identification could also subject adult users to restrictions on functionality and blocked content for no reason, leaving even their basic rights to use the internet in an uncertain state.

A deeper problem is that generalized content controls will ultimately make the entire online public sphere more child-oriented. If “suitable for minors” becomes the standard for filtering all online content, then almost any content involving complex human nature, violent conflict, or social realities could be classified as “harmful guidance.” In classics such as Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, adults see human nature and the course of history, while minors may see only fighting. But to classify them as content to be controlled on that basis would amount to using children’s standards of understanding to trim adults’ cultural world. Platforms, acting on their instinct to avoid liability, will inevitably enforce even stricter “added restrictions” than the draft requires: better to delete 10,000 items by mistake than let one slip through. The result will be that fighting scenes in classical works are blocked, social records on contemporary subjects have their traffic restricted, and adult expression in film and television is cut, until the entire online space is trimmed into a “child-friendly version.”

This child-oriented transformation erodes adults’ right to information, right to cultural consumption, and right to public discussion. The internet is not only a tool for entertainment but also a public forum for discussing public issues, disseminating social knowledge, and creating diverse cultures. When all content must pass a filter for whether it is “acceptable to minors,” the intellectual depth, cultural vitality, and quality of public discussion throughout society will steadily decline. Curtailing the rights of the majority to protect a minority violates the principle of proportionality in governance and fundamentally betrays the core purpose of human rights protection: the protection needs of one group cannot justify imposing unlimited restrictions on another.

Most concerning is the disorder of power and suspension of rights that vague rules can bring. Throughout the draft, key phrases such as “harmful to physical and mental health” and “adverse effects” have no clear, quantifiable criteria. What is suitable and what is prohibited is left entirely to the discretion of platforms and regulators. This vagueness gives platforms enormous power to review content, creating a strong risk of commercial rent-seeking and selective enforcement; at the same time, it leaves ordinary internet users’ expression exposed to constant uncertainty. You do not know which words or content will trigger controls, and there is no clear channel for appeal or redress. Human rights protection in a society governed by the rule of law rests on clear rules and stable expectations. Vague boundaries on control essentially make rights subject to discretion and freedom give way to control.

Ultimately, the purpose of protecting minors is to create a dedicated safe space for this particular group, not to turn the entire internet into a kindergarten. True governance wisdom lies in precise measures: make minor mode substantive and effective, improve and expand content pools specifically for minors, and provide safeguards in designated spaces, while maintaining the boundaries of adults’ rights online and avoiding a one-size-fits-all child-oriented overhaul of the entire internet. If the boundaries of control keep expanding in the name of protecting children, leaving all internet users to live in an information bubble governed by children’s standards, that would be the greatest betrayal of the original purpose of governance and an implicit harm to universal human rights.

IV. The State Council approves the National Action Plan for Disability Prevention (2026–2030)

On October 8, the Chinese government website published the State Council’s approval of the National Action Plan for Disability Prevention (2026–2030). The document is dated October 3, 2026. The State Council approved the plan in principle, and the State Council Working Committee on Disability will distribute it to localities and relevant departments for implementation. The plan follows the principle of prevention first and combining prevention with treatment, covers the entire population and the whole life cycle, and sets out six key actions: public education on disability prevention; prevention at the source of disabilities caused by birth defects and developmental disorders; whole-chain prevention and control of disabilities caused by disease; prevention and control of injuries causing disabilities in key areas; improvement of rehabilitation services; and capacity-building and quality and efficiency improvements in disability prevention. Under the plan, by 2030 China’s policy system and prevention and control network for disability prevention will be further improved, while the incidence and progression of disabilities will continue to be reduced and controlled. The document directs each locality to carry out the tasks in light of local conditions. (For details, see:

https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/202610/content_7082737.htm)

Analysis: The National Action Plan for Disability Prevention (2026–2030) has been officially published. Its six major actions cover the entire life cycle, from screening for birth defects to injury prevention, and from rehabilitation services to public education and capacity-building. The framework is comprehensive and its purpose beyond reproach. But the weight of public policy is never determined by the length of its text. Read the whole document, and there is only one question that most needs asking: Can this time break out of the old cycle of “excellent documents, difficult implementation”?

The causes of disability are a complex systemic issue, and the most hidden and central blind spot lies precisely at the edges of the responsibilities and powers set out in this plan. Illnesses and accidents acquired later in life have clear contexts for intervention and responsible parties; but preventing disabilities at their source requires action beyond the jurisdiction of any single department. The cumulative pollution of water, air, and soil, and hidden risks in the food chain quietly erode the physical health of men and women of reproductive age, ultimately leading to fetal developmental defects. These risks are scattered across gaps between the responsibilities of departments such as ecology and environment, market regulation, and agriculture and rural affairs. A disability prevention plan can unify goals, but it cannot unify the enforcement priorities, assessment indicators, and interests of every department. Unless departmental barriers are broken, source prevention will remain superficial.

This is not the first time public governance has faced such a predicament. The Labor Law came into force in 1995, and every right—from labor contracts and social insurance contributions to overtime pay—was laid out clearly in black and white. Thirty-one years later, the provisions remain in place, but reality continues to fall short: failure to sign contracts, unpaid social insurance contributions, and unpaid overtime remain widespread among market entities. Statutes do not grow teeth on their own, and policies do not automatically take root. When the cost of violating the law is lower than the cost of complying, and incentives to enforce are weaker than the motivation to evade, even the most perfect top-level design will be whittled away at each level of grassroots implementation and ultimately leave rights existing only on paper.

From a human rights perspective, freedom from preventable disabilities and the right to live in a healthy and safe environment are among citizens’ most basic health rights. But rights on paper are never real human rights. Real human rights mean that couples preparing to have a child do not have to spend every day worrying that pollution around them will harm the fetus; that ordinary workers can receive every yuan of overtime pay they are owed; and that ordinary people do not have to rely on “luck” to escape preventable harm. If a policy stops at being circulated from one level to the next and discussed in meetings at every level, and its completion rate appears only in reports, then what it protects is not the public’s right to health but one work ledger after another compiled to satisfy assessments.

A five-year period is neither very long nor very short. When it comes to disability prevention, the greatest risk is earnestly going through the motions and solidly making a show of it. However good the intentions or loud the slogans, they matter less than breaking down an interdepartmental barrier, investigating a pollution case, or filling a gap in grassroots implementation. Let this livelihood plan, full of expectations, not end up leaving behind only a string of attractive statistics and ordinary people still exposed to risks.

V. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security releases the Measures for Protecting the Rights and Interests of Workers in New Forms of Employment (Draft for Public Comment)

Analysis: The Measures for Protecting the Rights and Interests of Workers in New Forms of Employment (Draft for Public Comment) have appeared out of nowhere. Every provision directly targets employment standards, and every sentence concerns protecting rights and interests; on paper, the document takes the stance of speaking up for the people. But when examined against the reality of an economic downturn and a contracting market, this document that raises the banner of human rights looks more like a governance spectacle in which responsibilities are reversed: it does not address decades of accumulated failures in labor enforcement or remedy unfairness in the markets of state-owned and private enterprises, but instead piles pressure onto the most vulnerable market entities just as small and medium-sized businesses are struggling to survive and workers at the bottom are trying to secure a meal. Since ancient times, it has been “the officials may burn down houses while the people are forbidden to light lamps.” How familiar the situation today.

The long-standing ills in China’s labor sphere have never been due to a lack of laws, but to years of tolerating laws that go unenforced and enforcement that is lax. The Labor Law was promulgated back in 1995; labor contracts, social insurance, and overtime pay were set out clearly, with responsibilities and rights clearly defined. Yet more than three decades have passed, and while the law remains on the books, unwritten rules prevail in daily life. Small and micro businesses have long treated failure to sign contracts, failure to pay social insurance contributions, and unpaid overtime as open secrets in the industry. Selective enforcement and flexible accountability by regulators have made “the cost of violating the rules is far lower than the cost of compliance” a market consensus. The net of the law may be wide, but it has always picked on the easy targets. Now that economic growth is slowing and corporate profits are at rock bottom, the authorities suddenly remember the need for strict enforcement and to make up for past failures. This is not rights protection; it is clearly a way to impose on already struggling private businesses, all at once, the costs of decades of accumulated governance failures.

Even worse is the built-in tilt in the competitive market environment. Today, government projects and public services in various localities are invariably subject to the principle that “those closest to the water get the moon first,” with preference given to state-run enterprises. Even when they are inefficient and lack capability, they can still reliably win contracts. These state-run enterprises, with their control of resources, are often poor at actually operating businesses, so they turn around and subcontract projects through multiple layers to private enterprises, drastically lowering compensation and pocketing the gains, taking most of the profits. Private businesses that do the real work and bear the risks can only scrape together the meager crumbs left over. As the saying goes, “Those dressed in silk and brocade are not the ones who raise silkworms”: state-owned enterprises rake in profits on the strength of their status, while private enterprises struggle for survival through hard labor. In such a market structure, failing to break monopolies, clean up subcontracting, and ensure fair competition for private businesses, while instead imposing strict and detailed restrictions on employment, is like adding another bundle of straw to the back of a camel already carrying a thousand catties.

From a business’s perspective, inducing workers to register as individual businesses and sign cooperation agreements is not inherently malicious; it is a survival strategy forced by high regulatory costs. Paying full contributions to the five social insurances and one housing fund, complying with the minimum wage, and paying statutory overtime can increase labor costs by more than 30 percent. For small and medium-sized service businesses whose net profit margins are generally below 5 percent, full compliance is tantamount to a direct death sentence. Businesses are not charities; staying alive is the first priority. When compliance means closing down and everyone losing their jobs, a business that chooses flexible arrangements to preserve positions is, rather than evading responsibility, preserving the last livelihood of workers at the bottom. If policy ignores this basic reality and pushes ahead with “de-flexibilization,” the result will never be a rosy picture in which everyone has social insurance and overtime pay; it will only be fewer jobs, platform layoffs, and millions of flexible workers losing their means of making a living. From the most basic human rights logic: the right to life is the foundation of all rights, and the prerequisite for the right to work is having work available. When people at the bottom cannot even secure a living to support their families, even the most perfect list of rights on paper is just a castle in the air, an empty promise.

A deeper paradox lies in the misallocation of responsibility for social security. The underlying logic of these measures remains the old idea that “employment means a safety net,” as though it were only natural for businesses to pay for workers’ old-age, medical, and unemployment security. But one fact is deliberately avoided: every citizen is a statutory taxpayer and contributes to state finances. The state’s public services should bear the fundamental responsibility for ensuring citizens’ basic livelihood; this should not be a reward available only to those tied to a full-time job and social insurance contributions paid by an employer. Flexible workers and individual businesses obey the law and pay taxes just like others; their basic protection should not have to be secured through mandates imposed on businesses. By passing the pressure of social insurance revenue and expenditure down to market entities, the state appears to protect workers but in fact shifts its own public service responsibilities onto businesses. It is little wonder that people suspect there is “an ulterior motive”: what looks like a safeguard for labor rights is really a way to fill the social insurance gap, with private businesses and workers at the bottom sharing the cost.

The ancients said, “When a dynasty rises, the people suffer; when it falls, the people suffer.” This is true of dynastic changes and of shifts in policy. A policy that truly takes a human rights position must calculate the cost of survival as well as the ledger of rights; examine the government’s duties as well as businesses’ responsibilities; and target privilege rather than piling more burdens on the vulnerable. If monopolies held by state-owned enterprises are not first broken, subcontracting abuses cleaned up, and fair competition restored, and if the boundary between the state’s and businesses’ responsibilities for social security is not clarified, then applying the yardstick of labor law only to private businesses battered by storms will ultimately harm the workers who just want to earn a living through their labor and the small and medium-sized businesses that want to do honest work. Justice on paper is never real justice; the greatest human right is ensuring everyone has a way to make a living and something to strive for.

VI. Four departments jointly launch a special campaign to address improper marketing and hype involving military-related content online

On October 15, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission, and the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Central Military Commission jointly issued a notice announcing a two-month special campaign, beginning in October, to address improper marketing and hype involving military-related content online. The notice states that authorities will focus on screening and handling ten types of noncompliant websites and accounts, including those that use the identity of veterans or military family members to conduct improper marketing or mislead the public; sell goods in livestreams while fabricating military personas; profit by distorting military-related policies; sell military uniforms and imitations; or disseminate sensitive military-related information. The campaign aims to regulate the dissemination of military information online and safeguard the good image of the military and the veteran community. (For details, see: https://www.cac.gov.cn/2026-10/15/c_1793820656286917.htm)

Analysis: Four departments jointly issued a notice launching a two-month special campaign targeting ten types of disorder, including fraudulent military entrance exam training, impersonation of military personnel to commit fraud, and AI-generated military-themed fantasy dramas. To be fair, exploiting patriotic sentiment for profit and committing fraud by falsifying one’s identity are ills that a society governed by the rule of law should eliminate; no one would object to precisely targeting illegal conduct. But what truly demands vigilance in this campaign has never been whether disorder should be addressed, but the fact that when the scale of enforcement is wrong, those most likely to be harmed first are the people who should be harmed least.

The most glaring problem with the entire notice is the inherent vagueness of its central concepts. What constitutes “improper marketing”? What does it mean to “mislead public understanding”? What counts as “affecting the image of veterans”? The notice gives no clear legal definitions or quantifiable standards. These labels, with their enormous room for interpretation, naturally create an impulse to expand as enforcement filters down to the grassroots. The habitual pattern of “campaign-style governance” has always been this: for every unit of requirement set above, ten units of force are added below; when the higher level says to address disorder, the lower level conducts a sweeping investigation. When “military-related identity” becomes a screening label and “marketing hype” can be interpreted at will, the normal online expression of tens of millions of ordinary veterans and military family members may at any time be classified as “improper.” Does a veteran sharing military life amount to exploiting their identity? Does a military family member livestreaming sales to earn a living count as marketing under false pretenses? Could an old soldier’s comments on current affairs be deemed “misleading”? These questions should not need to be asked, yet under vague standards they have become swords of Damocles hanging over ordinary people.

From the basic human right to freedom of expression, the life of a right depends on clear boundaries. “What the law does not prohibit is permitted” is the baseline for citizens’ freedom of expression. Citizens have the right to disclose their true identity, discuss their genuine experiences, and make a living using their identity as long as they do not break the law. These rights should not be broadly curtailed or collectively penalized because a few people abuse them. If a few people impersonate military personnel to commit fraud and all genuine veterans must therefore watch every word online; if individual accounts exploit their identities to create hype and millions of military family members are therefore afraid to reveal their identities, then the innocent are being made to pay for the wrongdoing of others, and the rights of the majority are being curtailed for the sake of efficient governance. As the ancients said, “Cutting off a toe to fit a shoe is not the height of skill.” Shrinking an entire group’s space for normal expression to address disorder caused by a small number of people is never good governance.

A deeper paradox is that the fundamental way to safeguard the honor of veterans and military personnel is not to control what they say, but to make protections real. In reality, it is the reduction of benefits for some veterans, the failure to implement preferential policies, and the lack of effective channels for veterans to defend their rights that truly damage the group’s image and erode public respect. Failing to make a serious effort to realize their rights while strictly controlling online speech; failing to address real problems while focusing on expression inevitably gives the impression of “neglecting fundamentals in favor of trivialities.” Ultimately, public respect for the military is never built through enforced silence, but earned through real status, visible protections, and a life with dignity.

Address disorder according to the law; protect honor without harming civil rights. A truly effective special campaign must investigate every violation without wrongful or selective enforcement: punish fraud as fraud, investigate counterfeit sales as counterfeit sales, and ensure every measure corresponds to proven facts of wrongdoing and every standard is clear and predictable. If the campaign follows the idea of “better to kill a thousand by mistake than let one escape” and expands its scope indiscriminately, it will only break the hearts of millions of veterans and their families and undermine the credibility of the policy itself.

VII. The State Council Executive Meeting approves in principle a draft revision of the Teachers Law

On October 16, Premier Li Qiang chaired a State Council Executive Meeting that discussed and approved in principle the draft revision of the Teachers Law of the People’s Republic of China, deciding to submit it to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress for deliberation. The meeting noted that teachers are the foundation and source of education. It called for effectively strengthening protections for teachers’ compensation and rights, reducing their burden of non-teaching tasks, improving public services for teachers, and protecting their professional dignity and lawful rights and interests in accordance with the law. It also called for continued improvement of the teacher education and training system, efforts to enhance teachers’ professional capacity to educate and teach, strict attention to professional ethics, continued efforts to lay a solid foundation for building a high-quality and professional teaching workforce, and sustained efforts throughout society to consolidate and foster an environment that respects teachers and values education. (For details, see: http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s6052/moe_838/202610/t20261017_1454897.html)

Analysis: “Good intentions alone are insufficient to govern; laws alone do not enforce themselves.” More than three decades later, the Teachers Law of the People’s Republic of China is undergoing a comprehensive revision. The draft revision approved in principle by the State Council Executive Meeting on October 16 improves the system of teachers’ rights in several areas, including their legal status, compensation protections, professional title reform, and reduction of burdens. Public opinion has high hopes that it will restore the dignity of the teaching profession. But from a human rights perspective, rights written on paper are not the same as rights realized in practice. The risks of distortion in implementation, opportunities for rent-seeking, shortcomings in procedural remedies, and one-sided interpretations of the boundaries of rights embedded in the draft deserve greater scrutiny and questioning.

The revision designates public primary and secondary school teachers as public officials, a move widely seen as an institutional elevation of their professional status. But from the perspective of labor rights and professional autonomy, public official status has always entailed both rights and obligations; in the reality of grassroots governance, it often means rigid administrative assignments and local responsibilities. The non-teaching burdens long criticized by teachers are essentially the continuing erosion of professional autonomy by administrative power. After teachers are included in the public official ranks, various levies, campaigns, and inspection tasks may instead acquire a more “compliant” justification. Promises to reduce the burden could easily become a numbers game in which the burden is reduced on paper but increased in practice, while teachers’ right to rest and autonomy in teaching come under new pressure.

The draft stipulates that teachers’ salaries must be no lower than those of local civil servants and must receive priority fiscal support, directly addressing the right to remuneration, a core economic and social right. Yet for many years this requirement has faced the practical problem that grassroots governments “have no money to implement it,” with wage arrears and disguised deductions from performance pay common in remote areas and rural schools. Even more concerning is reform of professional title reviews. Removing limits on the proportion of positions is intended to open up the right to career development, but if evaluation criteria remain vague and flexible and oversight mechanisms remain absent, the education authorities holding review powers may create new opportunities for rent-seeking. Promotion could shift from “waiting out the quotas” to “competing through connections,” ultimately betraying the amendment’s original aim of equality of rights.

Systemic shortcomings in remedies are an even more central pain point in protecting teachers’ rights. For a long time, the teacher appeal system has suffered from vague procedural rules, a lack of neutrality among the bodies that accept appeals, and no binding deadlines for handling them. Teachers seeking to defend their rights often find themselves in the predicament of “nowhere to appeal, no smooth path to administrative reconsideration, and difficulty bringing a lawsuit.” If this revision merely expands substantive rights without filling gaps in procedural remedies, or fails to establish a relatively independent appeal-handling mechanism and a clear system of oversight and accountability, then even the best provisions on compensation and career development may become promises on paper with no safety net. Remedies are central to human rights protection; without remedies, rights are essentially hollowed out.

Even more concerning is the one-sided interpretation of the boundaries of rights. The revision strengthens protection of teachers’ dignity and prohibits insulting, defaming, or harming teachers. This is essentially a professional extension of citizens’ basic personality rights, but in implementation it could easily be turned into a “shield” against public oversight. There is no doubt that abusive attacks and malicious accusations against teachers must be regulated in accordance with the law, and the professional dignity of the classroom must not be trampled. But factual reports of professional misconduct and reasonable criticism based on publicly available information are part of citizens’ freedom of expression and right to social oversight and must not be broadly classified as “insult or harm.” If the desire to protect the group’s image leads to silence about reasonable oversight, suppression and cover-up of exposed problems, or even labeling people who report facts as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” then this is essentially an erosion of the public’s right to know in the name of professional protection. It will ultimately squander public trust in the entire teaching profession. As the saying goes, “When a person is upright, others will follow without being ordered”; defending the dignity of the teaching profession requires the confidence to remove bad actors, not the arrogance to suppress criticism.

Likewise, the legislative purpose of disciplinary authority in education is to give teachers room to act and resolve the predicament in which they “dare not discipline and do not want to discipline,” preventing overly broad accountability for any perceived offense from hijacking teachers’ autonomy in teaching. But this does not mean disciplinary authority becomes an unconstrained “privilege to discipline,” much less a safe haven for those who violate professional ethics. The boundaries for applying discipline, statutory procedures for accountability, and channels for remedies must be clearly defined and transparent. Normal educational discipline must not be constrained by unreasonable complaints, leaving teachers unable to act; nor must students’ personality rights and right to education be left unprotected, allowing the abuse of disciplinary authority. The essence of human rights and the rule of law is balance. No one’s rights are absolute, and legislation that favors only one side will ultimately create new injustice.

Ultimately, protecting teachers’ rights is an important part of everyone’s right to education, and the value of the amendment will be determined by the quality of its implementation. If it focuses only on building systems on paper and not on oversight and accountability in practice; grants administrative discretion without setting boundaries for remedies; or protects the interests of one group without balancing social oversight, even the best institutional design may be distorted in implementation. Only by establishing a safety net for enforcement, maintaining the two-sided boundaries of rights, and translating human rights protections from legal provisions into the classroom can teachers have dignity, education have a firm foundation, and the public have trust.

VIII. Six departments jointly issue the Guiding Opinions on Advancing the Renovation and Upgrading of Old Neighborhoods and Factory Areas

On October 23, the General Office of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Commerce, and the General Office of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Advancing the Renovation and Upgrading of Old Neighborhoods and Factory Areas, setting out a systematic plan for improving and renovating old neighborhoods and factory areas nationwide. The new policy is based on improving the quality and efficiency of urban renewal and focuses on prominent problems such as aging facilities, outdated functions, limited business formats, and insufficient use of space in old areas. It sets out a systematic path for renovation and upgrading. The document requires localities to conduct urban assessments, accurately identify weaknesses in their old neighborhoods and factory areas, scientifically plan the sequence of renovations, and advance improvements by category and in stages. Renovation will focus on old residential neighborhoods, old commercial districts, old industrial areas, and areas around transport hubs. Through facility renewal, environmental improvements, revitalizing business formats, and making better use of space, the policy aims to improve public facilities, invigorate neighborhoods, and preserve urban heritage. It also calls for streamlined approvals and services, innovative investment and financing models, participation by social capital, joint development and governance by residents and businesses, and long-term operations and management mechanisms to continuously improve urban livability and overall capacity. (For details, see: https://www.mohurd.gov.cn/gongkai/zc/wjk/art/2026/art_4e701b22880944b38799ca132532dfbd.html)

Analysis: Six departments have jointly issued guiding opinions on renovating and upgrading old neighborhoods and factory areas. At the level of top-level policy design, every measure—from making use of idle space, upgrading urban facilities, and improving neighborhood business formats to promoting integration between transit stations and surrounding cities and preserving urban heritage—is grounded in improving people’s livelihoods and developing cities. The intentions benefit the people, and the direction is positive; this is a measure to improve urban functions and enhance public welfare.

Policy is supposed to be a good way to help society and benefit the people, but a review of past urban renewal efforts in China shows that the best top-level designs often cannot withstand the most distorted implementation at the grassroots level. Many new policies that benefit cities and the public can easily be turned into tools for a small number of power holders to profit once they reach the local level, and the renovation of old neighborhoods and factory areas is especially vulnerable to becoming a “golden track” for rent-seeking by grassroots officials.

For people who genuinely hope for improved cities and better living conditions, a policy document is good news. But for some grassroots officials with ulterior motives who are waiting for a chance to profit, it becomes a “window of opportunity to rake in gains.” Renovation projects are fragmented, numerous, and complex in their funding flows, with regulatory blind spots. From project approval, tendering, and contracting construction to purchasing materials and acceptance and settlement, the entire chain is full of opportunities for manipulation. Taking advantage of policy implementation and project expansion, officials in many places have engaged in backroom dealings and favoritism, privately assigning public welfare projects that should be open and competitive to relatives, close associates, and related parties.

What appears to be a vigorous urban renovation has already formed a closed loop of interests: power determines the projects, connections secure the contracts, capital seizes the profits, and the public bears the costs. The benefits of renewal that should be shared throughout the city are privately appropriated by a small circle; public projects that should be openly tendered become “exclusive businesses for insiders.” This corruption hidden behind urban renewal is more harmful and more devastating than construction defects. It directly breaches the fairness at the heart of public policy, erodes government credibility, and completely distorts policies intended to benefit the people.

The undercurrent of rent-seeking inevitably comes with the continual erosion of people’s rights. To make way for connected contractors, meet performance targets, or cut renovation costs, the lawful rights and interests of original residents are wantonly disregarded. Implementation at the local level is widely caught in a distorted logic: focus only on the speed of renovation, look only at the results, and demand that projects be completed, while entirely disregarding the human rights baseline of people’s right to housing, property, and life.

In reality, many old neighborhood renovation projects have fallen into a vicious cycle: no regard for residents’ wishes, no meaningful consultation, and no implementation of compensation or resettlement, with demolition starting on the basis of a single notice. Many people’s homes have been forcibly torn down, and old houses razed in an instant, while promised replacement housing remains nowhere in sight and lawful compensation has been delayed or withheld for years. To be sure, residents’ demands cannot always be accommodated without distinction, and the few who make unreasonable demands or obstruct work without cause should receive a fair ruling through the courts and be regulated according to law. But the biggest problem at the grassroots level today is that fair judicial procedures are often absent, while crude administrative force always comes first.

Grassroots governance has long been turned upside down: ordinary people who reasonably defend their rights are readily accused of obstructing development, while officials’ rent-seeking and transfers of benefits are often met with a blind eye. On one side are connected projects flourishing and benefits flowing through hidden channels; on the other, people are left without homes, their concerns go unanswered, and they have nowhere to assert their rights. The newer the city’s appearance becomes, the larger the gray areas of power grow, while the living space of people at the bottom is squeezed ever narrower.

Even more deserving of reflection is the fact that the core purpose of urban renewal is to put people first and improve quality for public benefit. It is never to sacrifice people’s rights for a glossy city, much less to use public policy as a vehicle for nurturing corruption. Old neighborhoods hold the everyday memories of generations of residents, while old factory areas bear the marks of a city’s development. The ultimate purpose of renovation and upgrading is for original residents to share in the benefits of development and live in security and comfort, not to drive local people from their homes to make room for capital and power.

Real urban progress has never been the surface prosperity of high-rises and polished streets, but the deeper warmth of rights protected, fairness felt, and justice delivered. If grassroots power is allowed to overstep its bounds, rent-seeking corruption to erode people’s livelihoods, and human rights baselines to be repeatedly breached, then even the most perfect policy design and the grandest renewal project will be trees without roots and water without a source.

Renovating old neighborhoods and factory areas must produce a new appearance and a new quality while also preserving the baseline of fairness, the red line of human rights, and the firewall against corruption. Only by tightening institutional restraints, severing chains of vested interests, operating openly and transparently, severely punishing favoritism and rent-seeking, and putting residents’ resettlement, compensation, and rights protections first can policies intended to benefit the people return to their original purpose and urban renewal truly benefit and earn the trust of the people.

IX. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment seeks public comment on an environmental management document for key areas for groundwater pollution prevention and control

On October 21, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued a letter seeking public comment on the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening Environmental Management in Key Areas for Groundwater Pollution Prevention and Control (Draft for Public Comment). The document was prepared on the basis of the Ecological and Environmental Code of the People’s Republic of China and other documents. It divides key areas for groundwater pollution prevention and control into protected and controlled areas and applies management by zone and category. The draft proposes strict controls on new projects in key areas that could cause groundwater pollution, stronger requirements for pollution-source seepage prevention, risk inspections and monitoring and early warnings, and phased control targets. It aims to initially establish a management system for key areas by 2028 and fully implement the control system by 2030. Government agencies, enterprises and public institutions, and members of the public may submit comments. The deadline is October 31. (For details, see: https://www.mee.gov.cn/xxgk2018/xxgk/xxgk06/202610/t20261022_1184312.html)

Analysis: The Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s draft on managing key areas for groundwater pollution prevention and control fills gaps in the rules for groundwater and soil management at the institutional design level. It concerns the public’s most basic rights to life and health, and its institutional purpose and value for people’s livelihoods are beyond question. But we must face a harsh reality: even the best rules are merely human rights promises on paper if they are not implemented. They cannot stop pollution flowing unseen, nor rescue villages and communities already poisoned.

The chief evil of groundwater pollution lies in its concealment. Unlike foul-smelling, visibly polluted surface water, the soil acts as a natural cover: industrial wastewater illegally discharged by companies, hazardous liquid waste dumped in violation of the rules, and chemical waste from failed seepage-prevention systems slowly percolate through the soil into underground aquifers, silently contaminating groundwater. Ordinary people cannot see or detect it with their bare hands and are unguarded when drawing and using water every day. Only after toxins accumulate in their bodies for years and difficult-to-diagnose diseases and malignant tumors break out in clusters do they realize that their homes have long been polluted. The cancer clusters that have appeared in many parts of China are generally caused in this way. Common sense shows that domestic sewage alone cannot possibly cause a regional spike in cancer. The root cause is almost always the long-term, disorderly discharge of industrial pollution, enabled by years of local regulatory negligence and tolerance. Environmental safeguards that should protect the land have repeatedly retreated in the face of considerations of tax revenue and output value.

Even more concerning is that under downward economic pressure, this shortsighted logic of “pollute first and clean up later, prioritize output over people’s livelihoods” is returning in many places. To retain businesses and stabilize tax revenues, many localities turn a blind eye to illegal discharges, leaks, and missing seepage-prevention facilities. Regulatory enforcement becomes a formality, penalties are ineffectual, and complaints and reports from the public are suppressed at each level and left unresolved. On one side are control requirements piled up in policy documents; on the other is a regulatory baseline that keeps retreating in practice. Under this outward compliance and covert opposition, the breaches in groundwater pollution control will only widen.

From a human rights perspective, groundwater pollution is one of the most hidden and severe forms of harm to people’s livelihoods. It infringes not only on the health rights of people today but also on the foundations for future generations’ survival: restoring contaminated aquifers can take decades or even centuries; land left fallow may be reclaimed in the future, but crops grown there will still contain toxins from the soil; and villagers who return home after working away may find that the well water they drink has quietly changed. Even more cruel is the lack of remedies: when illness strikes, ordinary people have neither the ability to test groundwater quality nor a way to trace the source of pollution, and it is even harder for them to prove corporate responsibility or regulatory negligence. In the end, they alone bear the double costs of illness and poverty. This is not a natural disaster, but a human rights debt created by failures of governance.

As the saying goes, correcting an error requires going too far in the other direction. In the face of groundwater pollution that is hard to detect, causes delayed harm, and is protected by deeply rooted local interests, gentle persuasion, lax regulation, and requirements on paper have never been effective. Without penetrating inspections and accountability, severe penalties for regulatory negligence, punitive compensation from polluting companies, and full public disclosure of groundwater monitoring data, even the most numerous guiding opinions and the most comprehensive zoning controls will ultimately risk becoming a case of thunder without rain.

Protecting groundwater means protecting the basis for generations of local residents to survive and the most basic environmental human rights. The rules are on their way. The real test has never been whether they can be written, but whether they can be implemented faithfully beneath every inch of land.

X. The Ministry of Civil Affairs seeks public comment on the national standard for grading eldercare institutions

On October 28, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a notice seeking public comment on the revised national standard for grading eldercare institutions. The standard revises the previous Standard for the Grading and Evaluation of Elderly Care Institutions. It stipulates that grading should follow the principles of voluntary application, objectivity and fairness, and standardized procedures, and that institutions should be evaluated comprehensively across four dimensions: environment, facilities and equipment, operations and management, and services. It divides eldercare institutions into five levels, from Level 1 to Level 5, with higher levels indicating stronger overall service capacity; the levels are represented by stars. A grade certificate is valid for three years. Institutions must apply for reassessment three months before it expires; if they fail to apply by the deadline, their grade automatically expires. The deadline for comments is December 28, 2026. (For details, see: https://www.mca.gov.cn/aofront/publishopinion.jsp?themeId=2115266330880929794)

Analysis: The Ministry of Civil Affairs is seeking public comment on a national standard for grading eldercare institutions. By clarifying levels of eldercare services against a uniform yardstick, the intention is to protect older people’s right to know and right to choose and strengthen the institutional support for eldercare services as a basic human right. It accords with the traditional ethic of “respect the elderly in your family and extend that respect to the elderly in other families,” and its institutional purpose deserves full recognition.

But well-intentioned institutional design can never withstand the distortion of implementation by itself. Once this grading system takes effect, the first challenge it will face is not a positive cycle of service improvement, but the combined erosion of unwritten rules in a relationship-based society and local fiscal difficulties. Ultimately, the people harmed will be the most vulnerable older adults, whose dignity in life and human rights baseline are at stake.

First, ratings distorted by personal connections directly undermine fairness in eldercare services. Any field where ratings confer endorsement and policy benefits is bound to leave room for rent-seeking. The grade of an eldercare institution is directly linked to its ability to set prices, the amount of subsidies it receives, and its public credibility, making it a natural target for backroom deals. Institutions with connections that are willing to cultivate them may secure a high grade even if their facilities fail to meet standards and their care has shortcomings; private institutions that focus on the work and lack influential connections may have their ratings deliberately lowered, no matter how good their service reputation is. The “star” presented to older people and their families will no longer prove service quality but become a trophy of connections and capital. Older people choosing an institution on the basis of a false rating may pay high prices without receiving equivalent services. Their right to know and their right to fair access to quality eldercare are hollowed out; this is itself an open disregard for the human rights of older people.

Second, public institutions silenced by tight fiscal constraints breach the human rights baseline for eldercare safety nets. Public eldercare institutions are the last line of support for older people who are in extreme hardship, have lost the ability to care for themselves, or receive minimum-livelihood assistance; they are the most basic vehicle for guaranteeing the human right to eldercare. The reality, however, is that many grassroots governments are short of funds, public welfare homes are strapped for operating expenses, facilities are old and dilapidated, there are too few care workers, and wages are not enough to retain staff. Their service capacity is inadequate from the outset, putting them at a natural disadvantage in grading. The more an institution bears responsibility for providing a safety net, the less likely it is to receive a high grade; the less likely it is to receive a high grade, the harder it is to secure policy resources and funding—trapping it in a vicious cycle of “the poorer, the weaker; the weaker, the worse.” In the end, the highest grades will largely go to high-end market-based institutions, while ordinary and vulnerable older people will have to make do in low-grade public institutions. The stratification of eldercare resources will deepen, and the dignity of older people at the bottom will be squeezed further.

Even more concerning is the standard’s clear tendency to emphasize grading over oversight. During the three-year cycle between assessments, there is no routine dynamic review or mandatory exit mechanism. Many institutions work hard to meet targets before receiving a grade, then immediately cut costs and services afterward; some even leave care unattended and mistreat older people. A rating becomes a “golden signboard” that lasts indefinitely, with no corresponding binding constraints, while older people who lack bargaining power bear all the risks and costs.

From a human rights perspective, the right to eldercare is a basic right regardless of class or background; every older person has the right to dignified and predictable care. The grading system is intended to make that right clearer and more accessible. But when implementation is watered down and the safety net lacks substance, the standard is distorted: rather than safeguarding older people, it becomes a yardstick that magnifies inequality and sorts people by class.

The virtue of respecting the elderly has never been something that can be realized through a grading standard alone. Unless the chains of vested interests behind ratings are severed and the funding shortfalls in grassroots eldercare are addressed, even the most detailed national standard will meet the fate of thunder without rain. Protecting the human rights baseline for eldercare depends not on how bright the stars are, but on how firmly the rules are enforced and how strong the safety net is.

XI. The Ministry of Public Security establishes a bureau for drone safety and prevention to coordinate low-altitude safety governance

According to reporting by the Southern Metropolis Daily, the Ministry of Public Security has established a Drone Safety and Prevention Bureau as a new internal agency. Its personnel are mainly selected and seconded from the Ministry’s Public Order Administration Bureau and grassroots public security agencies, and it has been established for nearly a year. At a recent public security session of the 2026 Low-Altitude Economy Industry Development Conference in Zigong, Sichuan, a relevant official from the bureau publicly attended and performed official duties. The bureau is mainly responsible for public safety controls in the drone sector, investigating and handling drone-related crimes, low-altitude security at major events, and emergency response to sudden incidents. As the country accelerates development of the low-altitude economy and drone applications continue to expand, risks such as “unauthorized flights” and interference with aircraft have increased. The establishment of a dedicated agency will promote integrated development of the public security governance system for low-altitude safety nationwide. Many localities are also advancing the development of supporting capacity; some provinces are preparing to establish drone safety and prevention corps. (For details, see: https://www.cqcb.com/news/13/2026-10-28/6245262.html)

Analysis: The ancients said, “When laws are too onerous, the people become deceitful; when governance is intrusive, the people are unsettled.” The chaos of drones making unauthorized flights, interfering with aircraft, dropping objects that injure people, and invading privacy has long been a source of distress for the public; taking action against it is only natural. But now that the news of the Ministry of Public Security’s establishment of a Drone Safety and Prevention Bureau has emerged, instead of cheering that “someone is finally taking charge,” we should see clearly that once a dedicated control agency is in place, unclear boundaries and insufficient constraints could easily turn it from a tool for “addressing disorder” into a means of expanding power. Unless we are alert in advance to the deeper problems hidden behind the banner of “security,” the result will be to bind not only drones flying in disorder but also the vitality of the entire low-altitude space and ordinary people’s freedom.

The harm caused by drone violations needs no elaboration: intruding into restricted airspace and forcing flights to stop, falling into busy streets and injuring passersby, or hovering outside windows to invade privacy—each crosses a red line for public safety. But “precision targeting” is the only proper way to address disorder; it must never be an excuse for “tightening controls everywhere.” The most common error in practice is to immediately establish an agency, add approval requirements, and expand no-fly zones whenever a risk arises, using the lazy governance of “one size fits all” instead of precise regulation. The establishment of a dedicated control agency gives this logic a concrete institutional means to expand.

The first drawback is the unlimited expansion of control boundaries, with freedom to fly gradually eroded.

Controls in various places have already shown a clear “impulse to expand”: the statutory no-fly zones should be limited to airport clear zones and core, sensitive areas, but in practice, urban centers, parks and scenic areas, suburban wetlands, and even ordinary farmland in townships can all be arbitrarily placed under control. In many places, the rules have quietly shifted from “no-fly zones are listed; everything else may be flown in” to “areas where flying is permitted are listed; everything else is prohibited,” while the permitted areas are repeatedly shrunk until only remote corners that hardly anyone visits remain.

After a dedicated agency is established, with a specialized enforcement team and ongoing control powers, this impulse to expand will only grow stronger. After all, for a newly established agency, the broader its area of control and the more matters it can enforce, the easier it is to prove its value. So, in pursuit of “absolute safety,” flying over riverbanks is prohibited, flying over hills is prohibited, and flying over town centers is prohibited; in the end, ordinary people will find it difficult even to locate an unoccupied stretch of sky for ordinary aerial photography. The judicial baseline is “better to let a guilty person go than punish an innocent one,” but low-altitude governance has turned this into the lazy policy of “better to ban a thousand aircraft than let one fly.” As for ordinary people’s right to fly legally, it is always the first sacrifice in the face of the big label of “security.”

The second drawback is that enforcement discretion under vague rules can easily breed rent-seeking and departmental interests.

A major pain point in drone regulation has never been a lack of laws, but overly broad rules and excessive discretion. What kinds of flights count as “endangering public safety”? Which circumstances warrant a warning, and which warrant confiscating a drone and imposing a fine? The standards remain unclear. Cases of selective enforcement at the grassroots level have long been common: for the same aerial photography in an urban area, one person may have their drone confiscated on the spot and be fined several thousand yuan, while another may face no inquiry at all.

With the dedicated agency in place, powers across the entire chain—from real-name drone registration, pilot qualification training, and airspace approval and filing to enforcement against violations—will be concentrated within a single system. Without effective oversight and constraints, this chain could easily turn into a channel for gain: mandatory designation of training institutions, high-priced processing of various “flight certificates,” disguised fees at the filing stage, and enforcement that varies from person to person. Regulation originally established for public safety could ultimately become a tool for departmental revenue generation and rent-seeking. Sima Qian said, “Laws and orders are tools for governing, but they are not the source of clear or corrupt governance.” When control itself becomes a business, no lofty invocation of security can prevent the rules from becoming corrupted.

The third drawback is that excessive control will suffocate industrial vitality, causing the low-altitude economy to wither before it flourishes.

The country’s push for a low-altitude economy is intended to open up airspace resources and unleash the potential of new forms of business such as drone logistics, agricultural plant protection, emergency rescue, and geographic surveying. But the logic of control in practice continues to follow the old path of “control it first and ask questions later.” A company carrying out a routine crop-protection operation must run through several layers of approvals from civil aviation, public security, and the local township, taking three to five days at minimum or more than half a month at most. For urban low-altitude logistics pilots, every route must undergo repeated reviews and approvals, with efficiency far below expectations.

The core logic of low-altitude governance in Western countries is “what the law does not prohibit is permitted”: clearly list the scenarios and areas where flying is prohibited, and open up all remaining space so that the market and innovation can develop on their own. Our logic, by contrast, is often “no flying without approval,” treating every flight as a risk by default and requiring administrative permission for it to be legal. Now that a dedicated control agency has been established, continuing with “control first, services later” will only put heavier shackles on the low-altitude economy. Businesses will be exhausted by approvals, grassroots innovation will be bound by rules, and in the end, although everything may look calm and orderly, the entire era-defining opportunity for the low-altitude industry will have been missed. Zheng Banqiao wrote, “Cut the clutter, like an autumn tree; stand out with originality, like a February flower.” Governance of innovative industries should simplify, but if it only adds requirements, even the most promising field will be suffocated by red tape.

Ultimately, the purpose of drone regulation is to make the sky safer, not emptier.

“Your rights end at another person’s nose”—this is the most basic boundary of freedom: as long as they do not enter no-fly zones, harm passersby, or invade privacy, ordinary people’s enjoyment of using drones to view the landscape and businesses’ right to develop industries based on low-altitude airspace should not be arbitrarily taken away. Safety is a baseline, but it should not become an excuse for the unlimited expansion of power; regulation is a means, but it should not become the entire purpose of governance.

The ancients said, “The sky is high, and birds can fly freely.” A clear sky is one of the most universally accessible public resources on earth. If, in pursuit of zero risk, authorities keep reaching farther and imposing tighter controls on airspace, then in controlling disorder they will also have constrained freedom and stifled vitality—a complete reversal of priorities.

Good governance is never about controlling more; it is about controlling more precisely. Mark the red lines clearly and open up the rest of the airspace; strictly punish those who cross the line and treat those who follow the rules fairly. That is what low-altitude governance should look like.

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Outlet: 维权信息中心报告
Original report: https://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2026/10/20261026.html
Original publication: Oct 31, 2026
Site: https://wqw2010.blogspot.com/
Retrieved: Oct 31, 2026

China Human Rights Defenders: Interpretation of China’s Policies, Laws and Regulations (October 2026) (Issue 26)

Source

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