China's eight-ministry notice draws the line on RWA tokenization — and routes global capital through Hong Kong

On February 6, 2026, eight Chinese regulators jointly issued Yinfa [2026] No. 42 — the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with Cryptocurrencies and Related Risks" — a document that simultaneously bans unauthorized RWA tokenization on the mainland and signals, for the first time, that state-sanctioned tokenization of Chinese assets can proceed offshore.

The 2026 Notice supersedes Yinfa [2021] No. 237, the notice that had governed virtual-currency regulation for nearly five years. It was issued immediately with same-day effect, and it came paired with a second document: the CSRC's Regulatory Guidelines on the Offshore Issuance of Asset-Backed Securities Tokens Based on Domestic Assets — the first implementation framework for tokenized ABS backed by Chinese assets.

What the eight ministries actually decided

The eight signatories include the People's Bank of China and the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The notice does three things that the 2021 version did not.

First, it defines RWA tokenization for the first time in a ministerial document: "the activity of utilizing encryption technologies, distributed ledgers, or similar technologies to convert asset ownership, income rights, etc. into tokens, or into other rights or debt instruments possessing token-like characteristics, and to subsequently issue and trade them." That definition matters because it draws a regulatory perimeter. Before this notice, RWA business operated in a deliberate grey area. Now it has a statutory definition and a compliance pathway — narrow, but real.

Second, it prohibits Chinese entities and their controlled offshore vehicles from issuing any virtual currency outside China without regulatory approval. The previous notice focused on onshore activities and explicitly targeted only offshore crypto exchanges providing internet-based services to Chinese residents. The 2026 Notice applies a control-based, look-through approach: if a Chinese individual or entity controls an offshore structure — a BVI company, a Cayman foundation, or a DAO — that structure falls within mainland regulatory reach for issuance purposes. Chinese law firm Han Kun notes that "control" is not defined in the notice, meaning that early governance token allocations, board composition, and funding sources will become relevant factors in any enforcement analysis.

Third, it imposes a reciprocal prohibition on offshore entities: no foreign firm may provide RWA tokenization-related services to any person or entity in China, in any form. Combined with the issuance ban, this creates a two-sided firewall. Chinese parties cannot issue outbound tokens without approval; foreign parties cannot provide inbound tokenization services without exposing themselves.

The narrow compliance path

The 2026 Notice does not close all doors. It explicitly permits RWA tokenization within China when conducted "through designated financial infrastructure and approved by the competent authority(ies)." In practice, that means state-sanctioned blockchain infrastructure — platforms operating under BSN (Blockchain-based Service Network) governance or equivalent state-approved rails. Private or permissionless chains do not qualify.

For offshore tokenization of Chinese-origin assets, the notice creates three categories based on the nature of the instrument: foreign-debt structures (regulated by NDRC and/or SAFE), ABS-type and equity-backed structures (regulated by CSRC), and all other forms (also falling to CSRC in coordination with other departments). The CSRC's same-day ABS tokenization guidelines fill in the implementation detail for the second category, covering tokenized interest certificates backed by cash flows from domestic assets.

Norton Rose Fulbright's analysis of the notice notes that the allocation of authority across NDRC, CSRC, and SAFE is "broadly consistent with the existing regulatory framework outside the RWA context." The legal plumbing is familiar; the asset type is new.

Hong Kong as the only licensed channel

The offshore RWA pathway points almost exclusively toward Hong Kong. That is not coincidence. On August 1, 2025, Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance came into force, establishing a licensing regime for fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers under HKMA oversight. By the September 30, 2025 application deadline, the HKMA had received 36 first-batch applications from banks, payment providers, securities firms, and e-commerce companies.

On April 10, 2026, the HKMA granted its first two licenses under the Ordinance: to HSBC and to Anchorpoint Financial Limited, a joint venture of Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HKT, and Animoca Brands. The HKMA's official statement confirmed that all 36 applications were reviewed for risk management capability, regulatory compliance history, and viable use cases. Both licensed issuers plan to issue HKD-referenced stablecoins, with stated use cases including cross-border payments, local payments, and settlement for tokenized asset trading.

The 2026 Notice effectively designates licensed HKD stablecoin issuers as settlement infrastructure for Chinese-origin tokenized assets reaching international markets. A Chinese real-estate fund tokenizing rental income rights, or a trade-finance originator tokenizing receivables, can structure offshore issuance through Hong Kong under CSRC oversight — and use HKMA-licensed stablecoins for on-chain settlement. That chain of approvals — CSRC filing, offshore issuance in Hong Kong, HKMA-licensed settlement — is the only pathway that does not run into the 2026 Notice's prohibitions.

What this means for global funds

For international asset managers seeking exposure to Chinese real-estate or trade-finance RWAs, the structure that survives regulatory scrutiny now requires a Hong Kong-domiciled issuance vehicle, CSRC filing for the underlying assets, and settlement via an HKMA-licensed stablecoin or equivalent regulated instrument. Any structure that bypasses the Hong Kong window — or uses an unlicensed offshore intermediary providing services into China — violates either the inbound or outbound prohibition of the 2026 Notice.

The two open questions the notice leaves unresolved are material. Both Norton Rose Fulbright and Han Kun flag that the "competent authority(ies)" for approvals and the qualifying definition of "designated financial infrastructure" remain to be clarified in implementing regulations. Until those details arrive, lawyers advising on cross-border RWA structures will be working from a framework whose compliance pathway is clear in direction but unresolved at the execution layer.

Sources: Norton Rose Fulbright, China rolls out updated crypto framework, establishing the legal regime for RWA tokenization (Feb. 2026); Han Kun Law, Key Takeaways from Notice No.42 (Feb. 2026); HKMA, Robust development of the regulated stablecoin ecosystem in Hong Kong (Apr. 10, 2026), hkma.gov.hk.