China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has issued a new regulation, effective 2026, that for the first time lists 68 specific categories of “irregular” conduct in scientific and technological activities, spread across six categories of actors — not only individual researchers but also project managers, evaluation experts, funding and administering institutions, and third-party service providers. The regulation, Provisions on the Investigation and Handling of Irregularities in Science and Technology Activities (科学技术活动违规行为调查处理规定), was issued as MOST Order No. 24 on February 11, 2026, alongside an official policy interpretation published on the ministry’s own site.
What the 68 “red-line” categories cover
According to MOST’s own policy interpretation, the regulation “lists in checklist form 68 types of irregular conduct across six categories of science and technology activity subjects” (以清单形式列举了6类科技活动主体的68种违规行为), each tied to differentiated handling measures depending on the nature, circumstances, impact, and severity of the violation. The stated intent is to sharpen the standards used to determine what counts as a violation in practice — moving from general principles toward an enumerated list regulators, institutions, and researchers can check conduct against directly.
What CASRAI can confirm and what remains unclear: MOST’s own published interpretation confirms the regulation’s name, order number, effective date, and the “68 types across 6 actor categories” framing. English-language secondary reporting on the regulation’s granular content — the exact list of 68 items, or which specific conduct falls under each of the six actor categories — was thin at the time of writing. Readers who need the underlying enumeration for compliance purposes should consult MOST’s original Chinese-language text directly rather than rely on secondary summaries, including this one, for specifics beyond what’s cited here.
This regulatory mechanics question — how research misconduct and related irregularities get defined, investigated, and adjudicated — sits alongside CASRAI’s existing coverage of how a research misconduct investigation actually works and the general research misconduct definition, both written primarily around U.S./European frameworks (ORI, COPE); Order No. 24 is a useful point of comparison for how a national system with a different institutional structure approaches the same problem of standardizing what counts as a sanctionable violation.
A distinct, related action: penalizing universities that look away
Order No. 24 is a separate instrument from — but part of the same broader 2026 enforcement push as — a MOST notification directing universities to investigate papers retracted from international journals for misconduct, publicize the results, and log serious cases in a new national retracted-papers database, with the ministry warning that institutions themselves face “serious penalties” for concealing or tolerating researcher wrongdoing (though, per that notice, the specific penalties were not detailed). CASRAI has covered that notification and the institutional-accountability mechanism it establishes in a dedicated article: China’s MOST Orders Universities to Probe Retracted-Paper Misconduct. This piece focuses specifically on Order No. 24’s contribution — a formal, enumerated definition of what “violation” means across the science and technology system — rather than repeating that coverage.
Read together, the two actions point the same direction: China is moving from case-by-case discretion toward codified categories of misconduct (Order No. 24) paired with explicit institutional liability for failing to act on them (the retracted-papers notification) — a shift from an individual-researcher-only accountability model toward one that also reaches the institutions responsible for oversight.
How this connects to China’s existing research-integrity record system
Both actions build on an already-established piece of infrastructure: China has maintained a national scientific research integrity “seriously dishonest conduct” record system since guidance issued by central authorities in 2018, under which confirmed serious misconduct findings are logged in a MOST-managed database and shared through the national credit-information-sharing platform, with consequences that can include time-limited ineligibility for public funding and honors. Order No. 24’s enumerated violation categories and the retracted-papers notification’s institutional-penalty language both plug into that same underlying credit/record architecture — giving investigators a more specific rulebook (the 68 categories) and a wider net of accountable actors (institutions, not just individuals) feeding into it. CASRAI has not independently re-verified the current operational details of that broader credit-record system as part of this article; readers relying on it for compliance purposes should check MOST’s and the State Council’s current published guidance directly.
Why this matters for research administrators and international collaborators
- Institutions with China-based collaborators or branch campuses should expect Chinese partner institutions’ misconduct-handling processes to reference an increasingly codified rulebook rather than case-by-case judgment — useful context when negotiating collaboration agreements or assessing a partner’s research-integrity governance.
- Research-integrity offices tracking international regulatory developments now have a concrete instrument (Order No. 24) to cite alongside the 2026 retracted-papers notification when documenting how China’s system compares structurally to ORI/COPE-based models — see CASRAI’s existing US-China Research Collaboration: Research Security and Compliance Concerns guide for the broader compliance context.
- Publishers and editors handling retractions involving Chinese-affiliated authors may see referrals into a more formalized institutional investigation and reporting pathway going forward, though the practical effect depends on enforcement, which is not yet independently verifiable from outside China at this stage.
Sources and caveats
Primary source: Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, policy interpretation of the Provisions on the Investigation and Handling of Irregularities in Science and Technology Activities (MOST Order No. 24, effective February 11, 2026), published on most.gov.cn. CASRAI also drew on Nature’s news coverage of the related institutional-accountability notification for context on the broader 2026 enforcement push. Because the regulation’s full text and the specific 68-item list have not yet been widely summarized in English-language coverage, this article deliberately limits itself to what MOST’s own interpretation confirms (name, order number, date, and the 68-types/6-categories structure) rather than reconstructing the full list secondhand. This is a fast-moving area of Chinese science policy; readers using this for compliance decisions should verify current details directly against MOST’s published text.
