Flash News

TREE NEWS update: Qi Wei, former party secretary and chairman of Jiangxi Financial Holding Group, has been indicted on charges of accepting bribes and abuse of power at a state-owned company, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said. The Jiangxi Provincial Supervisory Commission concluded its investigation and transferred the case for prosecution, with the Pingxiang Municipal Procuratorate filing the indictment with the Pingxiang Intermediate People’s Court. The case is still being processed.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Ministry of Science and Technology said it will deepen cooperation with the central bank and financial regulators to expand tech-finance support for innovative companies. Vice Minister Qiu Yong told a State Council Information Office briefing on the 29th that the ministry, together with the People’s Bank of China, the financial regulator and the securities watchdog, has set up a coordination mechanism for tech finance and rolled out a series of policy measures. Next steps focus on policy implementation, services, pilot programs and the financing ecosystem.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Ministry of Science and Technology said it will keep working with other departments to crack down on violations including the buying and selling of academic papers, Vice Minister Qiu Yong told a State Council Information Office briefing on September 29. Authorities are punishing researchers who buy papers as well as the operators, websites and online shops that sell them, and have publicly named typical cases.

TREE NEWS update: China’s National Financial Regulatory Administration and the Ministry of Commerce issued a joint notice on strengthening coordination between commerce and insurance to develop domestic trade insurance. The notice requires local financial regulators, especially in pilot provinces, to improve risk monitoring, conduct regular business inspections, and seriously investigate and punish illegal activities in the insurance market.

TREE NEWS update: China’s National Financial Regulatory Administration and the Ministry of Commerce issued a joint notice to strengthen coordination between commerce authorities and insurers on domestic trade credit insurance. The notice encourages local commerce departments and insurers to share lists of quality domestic and foreign trade enterprises, and urges insurers to use industry leaders to underwrite entire supply chains and embed the coverage across key industrial chains.

TREE NEWS update: Former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy Eric Saavedra was sentenced to 21 months in prison for using law-enforcement databases to help a crypto businessman’s extortion scheme. He was also ordered to pay $90,984 in restitution for concealing $373,146 in income from the IRS.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued a notice launching the 2026 round of green factory recommendations and dynamic management. The 2026 scope covers green factories, green supply-chain leader enterprises and green industrial parks, with eligible companies and parks able to apply voluntarily. Provincial authorities will review existing national-level green factories and parks, and those failing the new criteria will be removed from the list in due course.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Ministry of Natural Resources and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration issued a notice supporting high-quality, efficient development of the services sector, calling for expanded supply of surveying and mapping geospatial data, products, technology and applications to drive digital and intelligent transformation of services. The notice also widens “standard land” supply from industrial land to producer services land and supports combined supply of land, forest and grassland, sea areas, islands and coastlines.

TREE NEWS update: The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance updated its crypto asset FAQ on September 28 to address token buybacks, stating a repurchase announcement is likely not an investment-contract promise only when the system is functional and has no central party. The revision splits buyback programs into code-executed mechanisms and team-directed profit distributions, with the latter still carrying securities risk. Hyperliquid and Uniswap sit closer to the safe side; pump.fun and Ethena face heavier constraints.

TREE NEWS update: Shanghai rolled out ‘Huke Jifen 2.0,’ an upgraded version of its tech-enterprise credit-scoring program, optimizing policy linkage, indicator design, application procedures, data enablement and application scenarios. The new version adds Shanghai-specific indicators including industrialization application and R&D reserve funds, and adopts a ‘data auto-acquisition plus enterprise confirmation’ filing model. Scoring results will be opened to partner institutions so a single evaluation can be reused across financial services.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Ministry of Natural Resources and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration issued a joint notice supporting high-quality, efficient development of the service sector by revitalizing rural collective operational construction land. Existing collective construction land zoned for industrial or commercial use and already registered under collective ownership, along with land formed through comprehensive land consolidation and the urban-rural construction land increase-decrease linkage policy, will enter the market under a unified national arrangement, with priority given to rural service-sector development.

TREE NEWS update: Tether said it helped freeze $550 million in Iran-linked USDT this year, the stablecoin issuer disclosed as Senate Democratic investigators alleged the token had become a key part of Iran’s shadow banking network. The figure covers freezes carried out in the current year. The disclosure and the Senate allegation surfaced together.

TREE NEWS update: Alphabet has appealed two European Union orders requiring Google to help AI competitors such as OpenAI access its services and to let search-engine rivals obtain its search data. Google said complying would undermine user privacy protections and cause irreversible harm to European users. The appeals challenge the EU’s demands on both the AI and search fronts.

TREE NEWS update: The Federal Reserve on September 24, 2026 released two draft stablecoin rules: one setting 1:1 reserve, redemption, capital, custody and reporting requirements for Fed-supervised payment stablecoin issuers, and a second creating an application process for bank subsidiaries to issue stablecoins. Issuers must value reserves daily at 5pm and pay valid redemption requests within two business days, with weekly confidential operational reporting and quarterly CFO-certified financials. Comments run 60 days after Federal Register publication.

TREE NEWS update: Coinbase has received CFTC approval to operate a US derivatives clearinghouse, bringing the exchange’s derivatives infrastructure in-house. The move follows Kraken’s parent company, which acquired Bitnomial and its CFTC-regulated exchange, clearinghouse and brokerage in May. Coinbase now joins Kraken in owning end-to-end US derivatives clearing capability.

TREE NEWS update: China’s National Radio and Television Administration released guidelines on promoting high-quality development of public-service advertising across broadcasting and online audio-visual media, effective from the date of issuance. The document sets out key tasks, including keeping the correct direction and orientation, advancing the Party’s innovative theories, and running campaigns around major themes and important dates while promoting core socialist values and traditional Chinese culture.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange jointly issued a working guideline on the reverse linkage between administrative enforcement and criminal justice in the foreign exchange sector. The 18-article guideline covers the full process, setting rules on referral conditions, jurisdictional coordination, evidence transfer and conversion, case handling and feedback, and long-term mechanisms, with the aim of punishing FX-related offences and safeguarding market order and financial security.

TREE NEWS update: China’s State Administration for Market Regulation held a coordination meeting on its 2026 campaign against misconduct and corruption affecting the public, pledging to take the lead on online food-delivery food-safety governance. The regulator said it will address entrenched problems including platforms shirking their responsibilities, and will assist other departments in tackling six areas such as medical insurance funds, elderly care and sales of fake or substandard meat products.

TREE NEWS update: Che Shiyi, deputy director of the People’s Bank of China’s Credit Market Department, said on July 29 that the central bank will strengthen fiscal-financial coordination, combining relending and fiscal interest-subsidy policies to further lower financing costs for the service sector. In the first half of the year, the weighted average interest rate on new loans to small, medium and micro private enterprises issued by local legal-person financial institutions fell 0.4 percentage points from a year earlier.

TREE NEWS update: Coinbase has received approval from the CFTC to operate as a derivatives clearing organization (DCO), completing its derivatives infrastructure. The approval lets the exchange list, broker and clear fully collateralized products in-house, rather than relying on third parties for any part of the chain. Coinbase now holds listing, brokerage and clearing capabilities across its derivatives business.