The “Provisions on the Protection of Trade Secrets,” published by the State Administration for Market Regulation on February 24 this year, officially came into effect on June 1, replacing the nearly three-decade-old 1995 rules. The number of articles has expanded from 12 to 31, marking the most extensive revision of China’s trade secret protection system since 1995. The core change is that data, algorithms, computer programs, and code are now explicitly included in the category of “technical information” and granted legal protection — an area that was previously a clear gap in Chinese law. The new rules also extend protection to failed research outcomes (negative research results), impose stricter confidentiality requirements for remote work and cross-border corporate collaboration, and introduce a new administrative remedy channel independent of judicial litigation, offering enterprises a faster path to rights protection. According to CCTV, this is the first time Chinese law has explicitly protected these digital assets as proprietary secrets.
According to Bloomberg, this new regulation is part of a series of measures by Beijing to strengthen technology secrecy and prevent leaks amid the escalating strategic competition between China and the U.S. The effective date of the new rules largely overlaps with the “State Council’s Provisions on Foreign Investment,” which also took effect on June 1 and explicitly prohibit the transfer of controlled technologies overseas through indirect methods such as cross-border personnel training. Together, these two sets of regulations constitute the latest upgrade of China’s dual domestic and foreign technology control system. Analysts point out that including AI algorithms and datasets under trade secret protection will provide a more solid legal basis for future cross-border merger reviews involving domestic AI assets and interventions in personnel movements.