On February 6, eight Chinese agencies led by the People’s Bank of China and the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a joint notice banning the issuance, distribution, marketing, and servicing of unapproved RMB‑pegged stablecoins inside the mainland and by offshore entities that target mainland users and classifying unauthorized tokenized claims on property, bonds, commodities, securities, and receivables as illegal securities or unauthorized futures. The notice states four enforcement priorities: protecting monetary sovereignty and the integrity of the RMB, avoiding competition with the e‑CNY rollout, enforcing anti‑money‑laundering and know‑your‑customer standards, and preserving capital controls. The measures apply onshore by default and extend extraterritorially to offshore firms and branches that solicit mainland residents via apps, over‑the‑counter channels, or corporate affiliates, and they raise geofencing and outbound marketing requirements. Any token that conveys ownership, income rights, or other financial claims must secure prior approval from the relevant financial regulator before issuance or secondary trading, and compliant tokenization will be treated as a licensed financial business subject to domestic technical and security standards. Supervisors will build filing and approval regimes, publish negative lists that bar high‑risk asset classes and problematic controllers, and enforce penalties for disguising fundraising as utility token sales, with enforcement emphasis on corporate facilitation such as routing, payment links, marketing, and technical integration and on RMB‑linked instruments that could function as unofficial settlement channels. Existing bans on exchanges, token issuance, mining, advertising, and speculative services remain in force, and offshore relief is available only where an issuer holds a recognized local license, maintains full customer identification, and rigorously ring‑fences access from the mainland; approvals in Hong Kong do not grant access to mainland users. Market implications include pauses or wind‑downs of RMB stablecoin pilots with China exposure, increased geofencing and KYC requirements for offshore issuers and service providers, limited direct impact on global liquidity for major tokens given constrained onshore participation, and higher friction and longer onboarding for cross‑border settlement routes involving RMB. Recommended operational responses for builders and investors include shifting tokenization and stablecoin development to jurisdictions with clear licensing and disclosure rules, pursuing permissioned chain designs with identity capture, engaging qualified custodians, integrating oracles and audit‑ready recordkeeping, revising corporate names and business descriptions to remove prohibited terms, and updating legal and compliance structures to avoid exposing affiliates or users in the mainland while budgeting for regulator sign‑off where tokenized claims are involved. Regulators will publish implementing rules and technical standards that define ledger, custody, identity, and traceability thresholds, will clarify negative lists and eligible asset classes for supervised tokenization and secondary trading, and are expected to target offshore services that solicit or unknowingly serve mainland users with administrative and criminal penalties, a regulatory trajectory that will create a clear operational divide between mainland controls and regulated pilots in other jurisdictions. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/china-extends-ban-stablecoins-rwa/

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