Development of China's Trade Secrets Law in the US' Shadow: Negative Consequences for China and Suggestions

China’s trade secrets protections are not the result of developments in its own industry, but rather the outcomes of US–China trade negotiations. This article is a first attempt at comprehensively examining how the US has affected the development of China’s trade secrets regime, primarily through its strong Special 301 process. Based on the historical development route, it is argued that every legal amendment to add stricter rules to the regime to enhance legislative protection levels in China followed US “recommendations.” Such a development path has resulted in the current trade secrets protection regime’s lack of accounting for local industry’s needs and interests. Evidence demonstrates that the current strict trade secrets regime in China exceeds the local industry’s needs and may impede local industrial innovations. The interests of local industry are being neglected because of the substantial representation of US industrial interests in China’s legal amendments. Since the US industry’s interests conflict considerably with the interests of local industry, the current strict regime in China may only benefit the US industry by preserving their competitive edge at the expense of unduly impeding the development of the local industry. Meanwhile, this evolutionary path has made many local scholars take trade secrets protection for granted and put the research focus mainly on further enhancing protections, without taking a step back to examine basic theories and limiting doctrines. In light of the development route and the accompanying negative consequences, this article suggests some directions that China may move towards at the legislative, academic, and enforcement levels. The author seeks not to repudiate the benefits of the current strict Chinese rules for effectively protecting trade secrets and only suggests instituting more reasonable limiting doctrines to enable the country’s trade secrets law to better serve its policy goals.