The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce organized a webinar on China AI Regulation in Practice: What European Companies Need to Know in 2026 on April 27, 2026.
Ms. Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce, introduced the speaker, Mr. Winston Jin, who is based in Shanghai and joined the webinar from New York. Mr. Jin is the Senior Partner at Fangben Law Firm which has recently become a structural partner of the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC). Fangben Law Firm is a full-service Chinese law firm headquartered in Shanghai with over 15 branches across China, providing legal services in corporate law, foreign investment, M&A, international trade and dispute resolution and with extensive experience supporting foreign companies investing and operating in China. In 2026, Fangben was recognized by Corporate International Magazine, a UK-based international business publication, focused on legal, financial and corporate advisory sectors as International Business Law Firm of the Year in China for 2026. Mr. Winston Jin has been practicing law since 1986 and is a highly experienced international business lawyer and arbitrator. He advises European-American companies operating in China and many Belgian companies, including a number of FCCC member companies such as Picanol, Vyncke, Televic and so on. Since 2005, he has also acted as an arbitrator for major Chinese arbitration institutions, including CIETAC and the Shanghai International Economic and Trade Commission, Arbitration Commission. His expertise covers international business law, foreign direct investment, cross-border M&A, international trade, construction projects and technology licensing and IP.
China has emerged as a global leader in AI, both in deployment and in innovation. Recent analyses estimate that China accounts for around 60% to 70% of all AI-related patents applications worldwide, far ahead of any other country. In 2024 alone, Chinese investors filed roughly 300,000 AI patent applications compared to about 67,000 in the United States, which ranks second. At the same time, China is no longer discussing AI at the level of a national strategy. It is now actively implementing a practical and comprehensive regulatory framework that directly affects business operations.
Mr Winston Jin, Lawyer and Partner, Fangben Law Office, gave a presentation on China AI Regulation in Practice: What European Companies Need to Know in 2026. Why does China AI regulation matters now? In early in 2017, the People’s Republic of China set forth AI as its national strategy. It is one of the few countries that have done so. The Chinese National Strategy 2017 clearly stated that qualitatively, China would like be the hub for AI technology and committed that the core industrial value of AI would reach up to CNY1 trillion. Belgian business people could be part of it and potentially be successful. The main powers trying to manage AI by means of lawmaking are the U.S., EU, China and the UK. Belgium, in Tier 2 globally for AI applications, has a huge hope and big potential.
China has already a very large industrial value in AI, but so far due to the legal barriers on the Chinese and EU sides, has not yet really managed to get into Belgium or the EU, but there is potential. If Chinese major players want to penetrate into Belgium and the EU, they will need a local partner instead of doing business only themselves. AI for both the EU, Belgium, and China does not care about the boundaries anymore. The extraterritorial effects have already been imposed by GDPR years ago. The EU is the pioneer in protecting data rights and privacy. The last three to four years, China issued a lot of technical regulations. If your services would reach Chinese customers, then you may trigger filing, registration, and labeling. And when China-related data are moving overseas, you can easily trigger it. For example, if a Belgian company has a subsidiary 100% controlled in China, the Belgian HR Director is not entitled to request or instruct the HR Director in China to send all employee personal data. The HR Director in China will have to neutralize a lot of sensitive personal information before sending it to Belgium.
It is very important for Belgian business people to know who owns the legal and operational risks in relation to China, where there are life cycle liabilities and responsibilities. Although EU and Chinese lawmaking have quite a lot of things in common, they are widely different. For the same technology of AI, there is a widely different regulatory logic. On the EU side, you focus on risk classification and rights protection, while China focusses on social stability and the contents that every platform player in China or in relation to China has. If an AI solution is EU-compliant, this does not mean that it is also China-cleared and vice-versa. The Chinese AI regulation is governed by a lot of sophisticated technical lawmaking such as algorithm recommendation rules; deep cynicism rules; interim measures for AI services; and laboring measures. It is much more complicated than the EU measures and practices. China has no uniform AI law, but a lot of regulations, and several provinces and special cities like Shenzhen even have their own lawmaking.
A Q&A session concluded the webinar.
