China urged to grow legal talent for global fight against terrorism, corruption and cyberscams

He said the emphasis on anti-corruption showed that the top prosecutor’s responsibilities in that area – especially China’s “Operation Fox Hunt” to track down fugitives abroad – require overseas collaboration.

Operation Fox Hunt is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-corruption campaign launched more than a decade ago.
China has been trying to build its own legal framework to pursue fugitives overseas. It also passed its Law on Foreign Relations last July to offer a legal basis for the country’s diplomacy and has called for strengthening international cooperation in combating corruption.

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Matthew Erie, associate professor at the University of Oxford and principal investigator for the university’s China, Law and Development project, said the move outlined how the Supreme People’s Procuratorate was responding to Beijing’s call for help in developing foreign-related rule of law.

“All judicial, legislative, and enforcement organs are called on to help build foreign-related ‘rule of law’, and this is their response,” he said, adding that the country’s legal bodies would need officers who can understand “complex multi-jurisdictional criminal matters”.

Erie said China’s top prosecutor’s office had engaged with ally nations to tackle a host of cross-border issues, and the trend towards coordination in cross-border law enforcement would continue given Beijing’s concerns about domestic and external threats.

In one of the most recent examples, Beijing has doubled down on its attempts to fight cyberscams across the Mekong River basin, with Myanmar emerging as a focus for cross-border collaboration. The Southeast Asian country is a major base for cyberscammers who lure Chinese nationals with promises of jobs and then force them into working for criminal groups.

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China's telecoms fraud crackdown with Myanmar may help workers trapped in scam rooms

China's telecoms fraud crackdown with Myanmar may help workers trapped in scam rooms

Beijing has long focused on counterterrorism, especially in collaboration with Central Asian countries, to stop what it said was “extremism” spilling into its far western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Beijing has also tightened controls and rolled out counterterrorism measures in Xinjiang in recent years, which have drawn criticism from Western governments and international organisations over concerns about alleged human rights abuses in the region.

Some Western countries have imposed sanctions on Chinese officials or imports from Xinjiang. In response, Beijing enacted an anti-sanctions law in 2021 to provide a legal basis for China to take retaliatory measures when other countries take punitive actions against Chinese officials or companies.