China’s New Mobilisation Law Learns From Russia: Foreign Companies Should Too
China’s new mobilisation law learns from Russia: foreign companies should too
WRITTEN BY DR STAN KWIATKOWSKI
30 September 2026
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin was not ready for the level of resistance it faced. Moscow spent the following year improvising: eight days into the war, it criminalised "false information" about its armed forces punishable by up to 15 years in prison, a law that applied to Russian citizens and foreign reporters alike. Through that year, it struggled to make its defence industry independent of sanctioned Western components fast enough. By 2023, it was taking over local operations of Western companies trying to leave, placing the Russian subsidiaries of Danone and Carlsberg under "temporary management". Many of those companies had stayed on after the invasion, assuming they could leave if things got worse. By the time they tried, the door had been closed by presidential decree.
Beijing has been watching the war in Europe closely. On 28 August 2026, China revised its National Defence Mobilisation Law, with the new version coming into force on 1 October. It is the first revision since the law was passed 16 years ago, and it should worry Chinese citizens, China's neighbours, and every foreign company still operating on the mainland. Read closely, the revision is a list of the problems Moscow tried to solve under fire, solved in advance.
The revision widens the conditions under which mobilisation can be declared, places the decision firmly in the hands of the Party leadership, and gives the state legal tools to secure industry, information, and property from the first day. For foreign companies, the revision adds more risks to their future existence on the Chinese market. Just like with the war in Ukraine, many still operating in China assume that if relations with Beijing break down, they will have time to move staff, data, and capital before the worst arrives. Under the revised law, that window could close the moment a mobilisation order is issued, and the courts they would turn to would not provide any help. None of this means war is imminent. It does, however, mean that if Xi Jinping decides to fight, much of the legal groundwork Russia had to build during its war will already be in place, and foreign assets will be caught inside it.
The Russian lessons
The first issue Moscow had to address after the invasion was information flow, and this is one of the key amendments to the Defence Mobilisation Law in China. Article 72 of the revised law has no 2010 equivalent. Once mobilisation is declared, authorities are to issue information, manage communication platforms, regulate the order of information distribution, and deal with anyone fabricating or spreading “false defence mobilisation information” although it does not define what “false information" is. That kind of vagueness is a familiar feature of Chinese law, and Chinese legal scholars have long criticised catch-all “pocket crimes” that let prosecutors fit almost any conduct into a charge. Chinese online media already work under unwritten rules, self-censoring around sensitive words to stay online. The revision gives that practice a legal name and a wartime penalty.
The time to reduce exposure is before a mobilisation order is issued, not after.
Article 46, also new, requires security assessments of the supply chains behind military production, with measures to follow from the results. In the first phase of the war, Russia's defence industry could not produce at the rate the front demanded. Russian forces fired upward of 10 million artillery rounds in 2022, draining prewar stocks, and the Kremlin later turned to North Korea for millions more shells. Many of the components it needed were under Western sanctions: one investigation found more than 450 foreign-made components in Russia weapons recovered from the battlefield. Beijing is auditing for that failure before it happens: the revision also adds technology, data, and software products to what enterprises must stockpile and supply first once mobilisation begins, and brings cybersecurity firms into the sectors obliged to perform defence services. The assets a modern war runs on go beyond physical, and this law addresses the issue of software and data to be utilised in modern warfare.
The final target is property. The 2010 chapter on "requisition of civil resources and compensation" is now titled "expropriation, requisition and compensation", and every organisation and individual is obliged to accept these actions. Requisition means temporary use, whereas expropriation means the state keeps what it takes. While the compensation language has improved — the law now promises "fair and reasonable" compensation, where the 2010 text only pointed to relevant state regulations — a sentence stating that the state would bear the cost of converting requisitioned civilian assets to military specifications had quietly disappeared.
No carve-out for foreign business
The first question for any company is what could set mobilisation in motion. The 2010 law spoke of threats to sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and security. Following the 2020 National Defence Law, the revision adds "development interests" and makes them an explicit basis on which the National People's Congress Standing Committee may declare total or partial mobilisation. The term is not defined, and is vague enough to cover sanctions, export controls, or pressure on shipping lanes, which are exactly the tools Western governments would reach for in a crisis over Taiwan. The decision itself now sits under the centralised leadership of the Party Central Committee rather than the State Council and the Central Military Commission, with Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the military written into the text.
The second question is what falls under a mobilisation’s scope. Here, the most important feature of the law is what is absent: there is no carve-out for foreign-invested enterprises. Article 64 applies to any organisation and individual. The exemptions from expropriation cover personal and household necessities, residences, and facilities serving children, the elderly, and the disabled. Nothing on the list protects foreign enterprises: their factories, vehicles, data, and software are within reach if they sit on PRC territory, and their Chinese employees — men aged 18 to 60 and women aged 18 to 55 — carry the national defence service obligation. A new mobilisation data system gives the state a standing claim to collect and use relevant data. Once mobilisation is declared, the Commission’s offices may collect directly whatever they cannot otherwise obtain.
The third question is what recourse a company would have. Article 77 suspends litigation, arbitration, administrative review, and state compensation proceedings once a mobilisation order is issued. A contract or compensation dispute would freeze at exactly the moment it mattered most. The revision does add one restraint: Article 76 requires special measures to be necessary and proportionate, and to end when no longer needed. But with the courts closed, there is no one to hear the argument that they are not.
Leave before the door closes
The revision did leave certain parts untouched. The clauses on civilian obligations barely moved, because they did not need to: the 2010 law already reached every adult in the country. Beijing added the mechanisms around them: a broader trigger, tighter Party control, the power to keep what it takes, a claim on data and code, a supply chain audit, and a name for the crime of contradicting the official line.
The preparation for potential mobilisation is being done carefully and in the right order. Beijing does not want its defence industry to miss its orders, and Article 46 answers that. It does not want footage that embarrasses the state, and Article 72 covers it. It does not want assets walking out the door, and the expropriation chapter handles that. Russia wrote its equivalent measures after its campaign went wrong. China has written them first.
None of this provides a strict timetable. Yet, Xi faces floods, youth unemployment, departing foreign investment, an ageing population and a stalled economy, and even with that much pressure at home, his leadership has made clearing the legal path to mobilisation a priority. Foreign companies should read the revision for what it is: a notice. The firms that lost their Russian businesses were caught out by assuming they would have time to leave after the war had already started. Under China's new law, that assumption no longer holds. The time to reduce exposure is before a mobilisation order is issued, not after.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Stan Kwiatkowski, PhD, is a political commentator and host of the YouTube channel 新聞硬邦邦 (Hard News). He is a research fellow at the Indo-Pacific Strategy Think Tank and the Taiwan National Security Institute. Image credit: Wikimedia/SPLCorp.