Authored by: Wu Wei and Zhang Shuang
In our earlier note, Auditing Your China Supply Chain in 2026: Meeting Forced-Labour Due Diligence Mandates Without Crossing China’s New Red Lines, we made a reassuring point: companies caught between Western mandates and China’s rules do not face an inevitable “choose one side” dilemma. Ordinary commercial due diligence — product quality, commercial credit, provenance verification by lawful means — remains legitimate. The real exposure lay elsewhere: in conduct that operationalises measures China regards as improper, or that coerces the interruption of normal transactions with Chinese parties.