CIEL Deputy Director Professor Chao-Hung Chen Attends International Academic Exchange｜Asian Corporate Law Forum

On April 14–15, 2026, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Chao-Hung Chen attended the 3rd Asian Corporate Law Forum hosted by Monash University Malaysia. The forum brought together representatives from 11 leading law schools across Asia, focusing on corporate law and corporate governance, and showcasing the most innovative and impactful recent research in the field.

Professor Chen presented his research titled “Directors as Geopolitical Risk in Corporate Governance,” examining whether, amid intensifying geopolitical competition, foreign directors may shift from being a source of governance diversity to a potential source of risk, thereby challenging existing corporate governance frameworks.

Prof Chen noted that conventional theories tend to regard the board of directors as a neutral and rational decision-making body. However, in the context of globalization and increasingly internationalized supply chains, directors’ nationality and jurisdictional ties may give rise to conflicting legal obligations, tensions between national loyalty and fiduciary duties, and even affect communication and decision-making within the board—turning the boardroom itself into a locus of geopolitical risk.

Drawing on case studies including Intel, TikTok, Toshiba, and TSMC, the research demonstrates that adjustments to ownership structures or board composition do not necessarily alleviate geopolitical concerns. On the contrary, under certain circumstances, the presence of foreign directors may intensify internal divisions and influence corporate strategic direction.

Professor Chen concluded that, while the value of board diversity should be recognized, geopolitical risk must be incorporated into the consideration of corporate governance. Potential solutions may include enhancing disclosure of directors’ nationality, conducting geopolitical due diligence in board composition, and rethinking the design of diversity policies against a broader context.

CIEL will continue to engage in cross-border and interdisciplinary collaboration, working with academia and practice to advance the development of corporate governance and emerging risk frameworks.

On March 11, 2026, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Chao-Hung Chen was invited to participate in an academic exchange jointly organized by National Taiwan University and Kyoto University. During the session titled “Low Fertility, Aging Population, and the Law,” he delivered a presentation titled “Elderly Finance and Challenges to Financial Consumer Protection,” examining emerging challenges to financial consumer protection in an aging society from the perspectives of financial law and regulatory practice.

As Taiwan’s population continues to age rapidly, the number of elderly investors and retirees is expected to grow significantly, increasing the demand for elderly finance, namely financial services designed for elderlies. Deputy Director Chen noted that existing financial consumer protection tools largely rely on Know Your Customer (KYC) , product rating and product disclosure. However, in the context of elder customers, these tools may be less effective due to degration in physical, sensory, or mental capacity. At the same time, a regulatory dilemma arises as to whether elder customers should necessarily be considered unsuitable for highly speculative investment products, since investment decisions remain closely related to personal financial planning and individual autonomy.

In practice, financial institutions may strengthen the identification of and assistance to elder customers through staff training, the creation of a friendly service environment, continuous communication, and proper record-keeping. These measures can help prevent fraud while also managing potential legal risks.

Deputy Director Chen concluded that demand for elderly finance will continue to increase over the next two to three decades. Accordingly, the financial consumer protection framework will need to be adjusted and further refined. Moving forward, more effective institutional designs will require interdisciplinary collaboration and the sharing of international experiences.

On March 11, 2026, CIEL Chief Executive Officer Professor Chung-Chia Huang was invited to participate in an academic exchange jointly organized by National Taiwan University and Kyoto University. During the session on “Artificial Intelligence and Law,” he delivered a talk entitled “The Liability of AI-Assisted Human Decision-Making,” exploring the issue of liability allocation arising from AI involvement in human decision-making.

With the widespread adoption of AI in finance, healthcare, and the legal system, it offers significant advantages in efficiency and cost-effectiveness. However, like human decision-making, it remains subject to misjudgments, which may lead to substantial harm and give rise to liability disputes. Professor Huang emphasized that, in terms of liability allocation, users have the final authority to decide whether to rely on AI recommendations and thus exercise direct control over the occurrence of harm.

Users typically adjust their decisions dynamically based on information provided by AI to maximize overall benefits. Therefore, Huang stressed that a one-size-fits-all liability rule should not be applied, but instead should take into account factors such as the relative costs of errors and AI accuracy, and be flexibly designed across different contexts. For instance, in the AML context, given the number of false-positive transactions, human review may be desirable. By contrast, human review should be refrained from reviewing transactions released by AI systems. In applications with high AI accuracy, greater reliance on AI may be justified.

In the age of AI, how to establish a liability allocation mechanism that balances efficiency and fairness in human–AI collaboration will remain an important issue for the future. CIEL will continue to engage in research and promote academic dialogue and institutional development.

A joint study titled Organizing REITs in Asia by CIEL Deputy Director Yueh-Ping Yang, Professor Kelvin F. K. Low of the University of Hong Kong, Professor Jianbo Lou of Peking University, and Associate Professor Mutsuhiko Yukioka of the University of Tokyo is now available on SSRN. The chapter will appear in the forthcoming edited volume Asia-Pacific Trusts Law, Volume 4: Connections in Context, co-edited by Professor Ying Khai Liew of the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor Yang.

Adopting a comparative law perspective, the study examines Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) regimes across five major Asian jurisdictions—Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. The analysis focuses on two key issues: first, the organizational structures of REITs in these jurisdictions, including whether they adopt trust-based structures and how different institutional designs influence market development; and second, the regulatory and legal challenges associated with different organizational arrangements.

The study finds that significant differences exist in the organizational forms of REITs across Asia. Japan, the most mature REIT market in the region, structures its J-REITs as investment corporations rather than trust-based vehicles. In contrast, Hong Kong and Singapore primarily operate REITs through unit trusts structures, although differences in tax design and market structure have led to distinct developmental paths. Meanwhile, Taiwan and China place trust structures at the core of their REIT frameworks. China has rapidly expanded its infrastructure REIT market through multi-layered structures, whereas Taiwan’s REIT market has remained relatively limited due to legal design and regulatory constraints.

Overall, the study suggests that there is no single optimal legal structure for REITs. Institutional arrangements are shaped by each jurisdiction’s tax regime, corporate and trust law frameworks, as well as its financial regulatory environment. Through cross-jurisdictional comparison, the research further highlights the diverse developmental pathways of REIT markets in Asia and sheds light on the processes of institutional transplantation and legal adaptation.

📖 Full article:https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6332318

On January 21, 2026, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang was invited to speak at the 17th Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Financial Crime Conference—Taiwan, hosted by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS). In his featured lecture, titled “Transparency of Legal Persons and Legal Arrangements,” Professor Yang examined the central role of the beneficial ownership regime within the anti-money laundering framework, drawing on international standards and Taiwan’s current legal system.

Professor Yang first outlined the requirements under Recommendations 24 and 25 of the FATF Recommendations concerning beneficial ownership for legal persons and legal arrangements. He emphasized that the FATF calls on jurisdictions to ensure that competent authorities can obtain beneficial ownership information on legal persons and legal arrangements swiftly and effectively, and to adopt effective measures to prevent the misuse of nominee shareholders or nominee directors for money laundering or terrorist financing.

Turning to Taiwan’s legal framework, Professor Yang referenced Article 22-1 of the Company Act and Article 11 of the Money Laundering Control Act, noting that while the current system imposes reporting and record-keeping obligations for certain company information and for some trustees, Taiwan still relies heavily on financial institutions and DNFBPs to identify beneficial owners. A comprehensive system for the reporting and centralized access to beneficial ownership information has yet to be fully established. Significant transparency gaps also remain with respect to nominee shareholders/directors, legal persons other than companies, and legal arrangements other than trusts.

By comparing international AML standards with Taiwan’s existing legal framework and regulatory practices, the lecture identified key areas where further reforms are needed to enhance the transparency of legal persons and legal arrangements, and offered important policy and legislative insights for strengthening Taiwan’s anti-money laundering and counter-financial crime regime.

In January 2026, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang co-authored the book chapter “Control and Ownership of Digital Assets: Taiwan” with Professor Meng-Shiang Lin of Ming Chuan University.  It is included in Control and Ownership of Digital Assets, edited by Mirjam Eggen, Linda Jeng, and Sebastian Omlor.

Legal Characterization of Virtual Assets under Civil Law: The Trend toward Personal Property

• Legal characterization: Although Taiwan has not yet enacted a special private law statute governing virtual assets, judicial practice has gradually formed a consensus characterizing virtual assets as personal property under the Civil Code.
• Determination of possession: Courts tend to regard the actual knowledge of private keys or seed phrases as the core criterion for establishing actual control and powers of disposition. This approach is broadly consistent with the UNIDROIT Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law.

Custodial Relationships and Allocation of Rights: Application of the Deposit Contract

• Legal relationship: Where traders hold virtual assets through custodians, current regulations and court decisions generally characterize the relationship between customers and custodians as a deposit contract under the Civil Code.
• Ownership attribution: Under Taiwan’s Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registration regime, enacted in 2024, ownership of the virtual assets remains with the customer, while the custodian is deemed the direct possessor. The customer retains the status of indirect possessor and holds a right to request the return of their virtual asset.

Limits of the Personal Property Framework and the Proposed Ledger-Based Approach

• Doctrinal debate: While Taiwanese courts tend to classify virtual assets as personal property, a majority of scholars conceptualize virtual assets as intangible property rights.
• Challenges of publicity: Defining “possession” by reference to the knowledge of private keys or seed phrases fails to generate the level of publicity and observability traditionally required for possession under property law.
• Legislative proposal: The chapter suggests that the transfer and publicity of rights in virtual assets would be better grounded in a ledger-based system, using distributed ledger records as the basis for rights attribution, thereby addressing the deficiencies in publicity and reliability associated with key-based control.

This research not only presents the current state of Taiwan’s private law framework for virtual assets, but also proposes forward-looking institutional designs that may inform future legislation and judicial practice. The information of the book is as follows: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/book/control-and-ownership-of-digital-assets-9783162001344/.

CIEL will continue to engage with the intersection of virtual assets, financial technology, and private law, fostering in-depth dialogue and international collaboration in emerging areas of technology law.

On December 20, 2025, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang was invited to attend the conference “Major Constitutional Challenges in the AI Era,” hosted by the ROC Constitutional Law Society. Professor Yang delivered a speech entitled “AI Discrimination and Explainable AI: Focusing on AI Credits,” offering an in-depth analysis of how AI-driven decisions affect financial fairness and how law and technology can work together to respond to these challenges.

Professor Yang first introduced the provisions on AI fairness set out in the Financial Supervisory Commission’s Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications in the Financial Industry. He emphasized that “fairness” does not mean uniform equality or the absence of differential treatment, but rather differential treatment with legitimate justification. The key issue lies in whether such differential treatment is grounded on reasonableness and whether it results in systematic adverse impacts on specific groups with reasonable grounds.

Professor Yang further noted that while AI entails risks of discrimination, a more comprehensive understanding is that AI “may be more fair than humans, yet also more discriminatory.” The fundamental risk of AI stems from its “black box” decision-making process, and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) can play a critical role in addressing this challenge. Through techniques such as SHAP, LIME, and counterfactual explanations, financial institutions can analyze the key variables used in AI-driven decisions and the influence of individual variables on outcomes, thereby assessing whether protected characteristics are being used and whether such use can be justified.

In conclusion, Professor Yang proposed the “relative black box theory,” arguing that the integration of AI with XAI does not necessarily exacerbate discrimination, but may instead facilitate more objective solutions. Nevertheless, this approach requires supporting legal frameworks, including clearly defined protected groups in relevant legislation, permitting the use of protected characteristics for testing purposes, and empowering regulators to establish acceptable thresholds for differential treatment.

CIEL will continue to closely monitor the interaction between the evolution of AI technologies and the rule of law, promote financial fairness and justice in the digital age, and contribute to the development of a more resilient and transparent AI regulatory framework in Taiwan.

CIEL Deputy Director Professor Chao-Hung Chen has recently published his article, “Regulating Consumer Contracts with Government-Made Templates: An Examination of Taiwan’s Approach to Boilerplate Forms,” in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law. The study examines Taiwan’s practice of issuing government-issued standard contractual templates to regulate business conducts and reassesses the boundary between private autonomy and public regulatory intervention from comparative law and law-and-policy perspectives. The article explores how contractual templates function as a regulatory instrument guiding market participants toward stronger consumer protection, offering an innovative Taiwanese perspective to the global comparative law community.

🔹 A Top-Down Regulatory Approach: Templates as Administrative Guidance

Unlike jurisdictions where contractual templates emerge through industry associations, Taiwan adopts a top-down approach in which government agencies issue standard form contractual templates to harmonise industry practices and balance the rights and obligations between businesses and consumers. Although most templates lack formal binding legal force and operate primarily as administrative guidance, they demonstrate considerable “stickiness” in practice and serve as influential benchmarks for contract drafting.

🔹 Case Study in Payment Services: Effectiveness and Strategic Adaptation

Drawing on a comparative case study of electronic payment institutions and third-party payment service providers, the research finds that firms largely adhere to government-issued templates even when adoption is not legally mandatory. This suggests that templates function as quasi-regulatory instruments in practice. At the same time, businesses strategically adjust specific provisions within the template framework to preserve operational flexibility and align contractual terms with commercial interests.

🔹 From Administrative Guidance to Quasi-Regulatory Norms

The study further observes that, while Taiwan’s Consumer Protection Act expressly authorises regulators to issue mandatory and prohibitory clauses, the legal status and effects of contractual templates remain partly ambiguous. As government-issued templates become widely adopted and exert substantive regulatory influence, greater transparency and procedural legitimacy in their formulation will be essential to strengthen their normative authority in regulating unfair contract terms.

Overall, the article traces the evolution of nearly one hundred contractual templates issued in Taiwan over the past two decades and demonstrates how governments may employ contractual design as a regulatory “nudge” to promote consumer-friendly market practices in the digital economy.

CIEL will continue advancing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of technology law, financial regulation, and private law, enhancing the international visibility and impact of Taiwanese legal scholarship through global academic engagement.

📖 Full article: https://doi.org/10.1017/asjcl.2025.10009

The second session, titled “Infrastructure Development and Regulatory Challenges of Emerging Payment Instruments,” was moderated by Deputy Director Chao-Hung Chen of CIEL. The panel featured Kuo-Liang Lin, Chairperson of the Financial Information Service Co.; Quincy Chen, Chief Digital Officer of Cathay United Bank; and Darren Wang, Founder of the OwlTing Group. Drawing on perspectives from financial market infrastructure, banking practice, and startup experience, the panel examined the institutional challenges and future possibilities arising from innovations in payment systems.

Founder Wang shared his experience with cross-border stablecoin applications, noting that while stablecoins offer clear advantages in improving the efficiency and immediacy of cross-border remittances, significant challenges remain, including compliance procedures, anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, cross-chain settlement, and fiat currency conversion. Chairperson Lin observed from a financial infrastructure perspective that the evolution of payment instruments is fundamentally a process of continuous digitalization, and that the potential of stablecoins to enhance settlement speed and efficiency represents a trend that existing systems must directly address. From a banking perspective, CDO Chen emphasized that customers place the highest priority on immediacy, stability, and uninterrupted service—particularly in corporate and cross-border financial contexts. While blockchain and stablecoins offer efficiency gains, he noted that their adoption must proceed cautiously within sound risk management and compliance frameworks.

The third session, titled “Infrastructure Development and Regulatory Challenges of AI in Finance,” was moderated by Chief Executive Officer Chung-Chia Huang of CIEL. The panel featured Yi-Chun Shih, Deputy Director of the Department of Development and Innovation, Financial Supervisory Commission; Tzu-Hsiung Wang, Director at the Science and Technology Law Institute; and Shih-Ming Lo, Chief Compliance Officer at HSBC Taiwan. The discussion focused on the practical applications of artificial intelligence in finance, as well as the associated regulatory and institutional challenges.

During the discussion, CCO Lo noted that financial institutions currently rely primarily on machine learning, which is widely applied to internal process optimization, customer service and wealth management chatbots, as well as AML and fraud prevention. He emphasized that model explainability and continuous validation remain indispensable. Deputy Director Shih explained that AI is also being applied in areas such as credit analysis, underwriting and claims processing, and investment management. However, due to risks associated with generative AI—including hallucinations, inaccuracies, and personal data protection concerns—its current use is largely limited to internal support functions. Regulators have therefore adopted a guidance-first, risk-based supervisory approach. Director Wang highlighted that financial institutions’ heavy reliance on third-party suppliers for AI development may give rise to concentration and single-point-of-failure risks, underscoring the need for institutional design to balance outsourcing management with operational resilience.

Discussions in Sessions II and III concluded successfully, with each session focusing on two critical fintech themes—payment innovation and artificial intelligence—while showcasing diverse perspectives from government, industry, and academia on infrastructure development, regulatory flexibility, and risk governance. Building on the valuable insights shared by the panelists, CIEL will continue to advance its research efforts with the aim of contributing concretely to the future development of legal and regulatory frameworks.

On December 15, 2025, CIEL hosted the 2025 Enterprise Law Innovation Salon, bringing together representatives from government, industry, and academia to engage in dialogue on key topics including real-world assets (RWA), cross-border payments, stablecoins, and artificial intelligence. The salon opened with welcoming remarks by Professor Wang-Ruu Tseng, Vice President of National Taiwan University and Director of CIEL. Professor Tseng emphasized that a central purpose of the salon was to shape the Center’s research agenda for the coming year through cross-sector exchange. She further expressed the expectation that financial regulatory authorities, in the course of policy formation, could draw on international practices by establishing advisory committees, issuing policy white papers, and conducting public consultations. Such mechanisms, she noted, would enable deeper regulatory research and facilitate open dialogue with industry, thereby enhancing the professionalism, transparency, and market responsiveness of regulatory frameworks.

The opening session continued with remarks by Chairperson Jin-Lung Peng of the Financial Supervisory Commission. Chairperson Peng affirmed the salon’s focus on the regulation of financial market infrastructure and shared the regulator’s overarching supervisory approach to real-world assets, emerging payment instruments, and artificial intelligence. He underscored the guiding principle of “neither rushing ahead nor falling behind,” under which pilot programs and institutional discussions should be advanced in a measured and orderly manner. Using a basketball analogy, Chairperson Peng illustrated the complex relationship between industry development and rule-making, observing that many fintech innovations require the prior establishment of legal frameworks and foundational institutions in order to develop smoothly. His remarks highlighted the critical importance of legal and institutional innovation. Chairperson Peng concluded by reaffirming the significance of CIEL’s establishment and recognizing the Center’s role and contributions in advancing research on financial regulation and innovation.

Following the remarks by the two distinguished guests, Session I of the salon formally commenced. The first session, titled “Infrastructure Development and Regulatory Challenges of Real-World Assets,” was moderated by Deputy Director Yang. The panel featured Zhong-Hao Huang, Deputy Director General of the Securities and Futures Bureau (SFB) ; Hui-Hua Pai, Director of Legal Affairs and Compliance at the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corporation (TDCC); and Hung-Chih Chen, Project Manager at the Bank of Taiwan. The panel explored the development of RWA infrastructure and the associated practical challenges from regulatory, financial market infrastructure, and banking perspectives.

During the session, Deputy Director General Huang outlined the SFB’s regulatory planning for security-token RWA, addressing potential supervisory issues across various stages, including the legal characterization of property rights, issuance and reissuance, over-the-counter trading, custody, and settlement. He also provided a comparative assessment of different blockchain architectures and their respective advantages and limitations. Director Pai drew on the TDCC’s experimental work with security-token RWA to highlight potential civil law property issues, such as the applicability of enforcement, liquidation, and inheritance regimes to tokenized securities. She further explained the role that the TDCC could play in bridging on-chain and off-chain systems, enabling investors to access securities recorded under different ledger structures. Project Manager Chen shared insights from the Bank of Taiwan’s ongoing gold RWA project, illustrating the practical impact of RWA on clearing, settlement, and the optimization of financial market infrastructure, while also identifying emerging challenges related to competition from non-bank entities, personal data protection, anti-money laundering compliance, and asset exit mechanisms.

The discussion in Session I concluded successfully. Looking ahead, CIEL will continue to facilitate dialogue among academia, practitioners, and regulatory authorities through conferences and industry salons, providing an important foundation for future research and institutional development.