Extraterritorial criminal liability under China's Ethnic Unity Law

The fear-mongering may well be justified.

China’s Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress (LPEUP) (民族团结进步促进法) comes into effect on July 1st. This post will discuss the alarm that has been raised over its extraterritorial application. Are foreigners who say or do certain things unwelcome to the Chinese government potentially subject to criminal liability if China gets its hands on them, even if the act is committed abroad and is legal where committed? It looks like the answer is yes. Here’s why.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first. The LPEUP does not create any new crimes. Instead, like many other laws of its type, it says (tautologically) that if some act described in the LPEUP constitutes a crime, then criminal responsibility will be pursued. If. China’s Criminal Law remains the only place where crimes are defined and sanctions spelled out.

Where the LPEUP breaks new and threatening ground is in its provision on extraterritoriality in Article 63:

When organizations or individuals outside the mainland borders of the People’s Republic of China engage in acts aimed at the People’s Republic of China that sabotage ethnic unity and progress and manufacture ethnic separation, legal responsibility shall be pursued according to law. 中华人民共和国境外的组织和个人，针对中华人民共和国实施破坏民族团结进步、制造民族分裂行为的，依法追究法律责任.。[1]

There are basically two ways of reading this. One way is to read it as we read the language about crimes: it’s not creating any new liability, but just restating existing liabilities. Article 63 doesn’t specify any consequences that would follow from the pursuing of legal liability—and note that legal liability could mean civil liability as well as criminal liability. Thus, we still need to turn to legal norms outside of the LPEUP to understand what a person’s liability might be, particularly since Article 63 includes the terms “according to law”.

In the case of the Criminal Law, the applicable law already includes provisions about extraterritoriality. Article 8 reads as follows:

This law may be applied to foreigners who commit crimes against the state or citizens of the People’s Republic of China outside the territory of the People’s Republic of China, provided that this law stipulates a minimum sentence of not less than three years’ imprisonment for such crimes; but an exception is to be made if a crime is not punishable according the law of the place where it was committed. 外国人在中华人民共和国领域外对中华人民共和国国家或者公民犯罪，而按本法规定的最低刑为三年以上有期徒刑的，可以适用本法，但是按照犯罪地的法律不受处罚的除外。

Thus, under the existing Criminal Law, acts such as criticizing China’s policies or leaders, if undertaken by a non-Chinese citizen in countries where such speech is not criminally punishable, are not criminally punishable in China.

But if we read Article 63 as changing nothing, what was its point? It is perhaps more reasonable to read it as overriding, within its defined scope, the limitations on extraterritoriality contained in Article 8 of the Criminal Law.

What, then, is its scope? Here we have to look for the intersection set of (A) crimes defined in the Criminal Law and (B) “acts aimed at the People’s Republic of China that sabotage ethnic unity and progress and manufacture ethnic separation”. Any actions falling within that set, then, could lead to criminal liability in China, regardless of the citizenship of the actor or the place of the act.

What acts fall within Set A that could plausibly be said to fall also within Set B? There are a few:

• Article 102 (harming China’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security)

• Article 103 (plotting to split the country and undermine national unification)

• Article 120 (participating in a terrorist organization)

• Article 120A (providing financial support to terrorist organizations)

• Article 120B (other kinds of support for terrorism)

• Article 120C (advocating terrorism or extremism)

• Article 120D (using extremism to sabotage implementation of state law)

• Article 120F (possession of books and other materials that advocate terrorism or extremism)

• Article 249 (stirring up ethnic hatred)

Incidentally, the above list should not be read as a list of actions as defined by a reasonable, objective person. It’s better read as a list of labels under which the Chinese government could choose to prosecute unwelcome words and actions. In Xinjiang, for example, a woman was punished under Art. 120D of the Criminal Law for having gotten married in 2002, when she was 18, in an Islamic ceremony without having first obtained a marriage certificate. A man was punished under Art. 120C of the Criminal Law because between 2012 and 2014, when buying daily necessities, he stressed buying products labeled halal.[2]

If the second reading is correct—that is, Article 63 of the LPEUP operates to override the restrictive extraterritoriality rules of Article 8 of the Criminal Law—then the bullet-pointed provisions listed above (and perhaps others) apply to non-Chinese acting outside of China. And they are interpreted very broadly by Chinese authorities.

Will China actually use these provisions to prosecute foreigners it doesn’t like? Perhaps they are hoping to get the benefit of scaring people without paying the cost in bad publicity of actually prosecuting anyone. There’s just no way at this point to know, and whatever aims the central government has in mind (assuming it has a unified view), we can’t be sure officials at lower levels won’t try to score points by patriotically prosecuting meddling foreigners. You can avoid danger, of course, by staying out of China—and Hong Kong, and Macau, and any countries, with or without extradition treaties, that are likely to be vulnerable to Chinese pressure.

JUNE 26, 2026 ADDENDUM: The Chinese government has confirmed that the law does indeed extend to foreigners outside of China. In a June 24, 2026 press conference, Deputy Minister of Justice Hu Weilie stated,

Article 63 — providing that organizations and individuals outside China who engage in acts of undermining ethnic unity and progress or creating ethnic separatism against China shall be held legally liable — is legitimate, lawful, and consistent with international norms.

Somewhat bizarrely, Hu also condemned as smears and distortions reports that China was exercising long-arm jurisdiction or extraterritoriality:

We have recently noted that some Western media are paying attention to Article 63 of the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress — that is, “organizations and individuals outside the territory of the People’s Republic of China who commit acts of undermining ethnic unity and progress or creating ethnic separatism against the People’s Republic of China shall be held legally liable in accordance with the law” — and are distorting it, even smearing it as “extraterritorial jurisdiction” or “long-arm jurisdiction.”

What can one say? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks to Bill Bishop at Sinocism for the source.

NOTES

[1] The “and” before “manufacture” could be translated as “or”. Technically, “or” broadens the sweep of the provision, whereas “and” is more restrictive. But it is utterly unrealistic to think that anyone in the Chinese legal system is going to be engaging in that kind of parsing if the state wants to go after someone. It is best to understand the sentence as intended to have a very broad sweep regardless of the conjunction. From the drafters’ standpoint, anything that sabotages ethnic unity must necessarily create ethnic separation. They are just restating the same proposition, and don’t need to worry about what a crafty lawyer before an independent judge might make of the language.

[2] My source for both of these cases is the Xinjiang Police Files.