China’s draft amendment to road traffic law includes autonomous vehicles

China’s State Council approved a major revision of the country’s Road Traffic Safety Law on June 12, sending the draft to the National People’s Congress for legislative review. The revision includes an entire chapter dedicated to autonomous vehicles, marking the first time self-driving technology has been addressed at the national legislative level in China.

The move is designed to create a unified legal framework for testing, operating, and assigning liability for autonomous vehicles across the country. Until now, the rules governing self-driving cars in China have been a patchwork of local regulations, with cities like Shenzhen and Beijing writing their own playbooks in 2022 and 2024 respectively.

What the law actually covers

The draft law tackles the thorniest question in autonomous driving: when a car with no human behind the wheel causes an accident, who pays? The revision explicitly delineates liability among drivers, vehicle owners, system operators, and developers.

The legislation is paired with a new mandatory national safety standard, GB 44721-2026, which was approved on July 30. This standard targets Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous systems specifically. For context, L3 means the car can drive itself under certain conditions but expects a human to take over when asked, while L4 means the car handles everything within a defined area with no human intervention needed.

The standard takes effect on July 1, 2027, giving automakers roughly a year to comply. It mandates performance benchmarks requiring autonomous systems to operate at a level comparable to a competent human driver. It also includes guidelines for human-machine interaction, essentially the rules for how a car communicates with its occupants when it needs them to grab the wheel.

Who’s at the table

The list of companies that participated in drafting the new L3/L4 safety standard reads like a who’s who of Chinese automotive and tech ambition. BYD, Geely, SAIC, XPeng, Li Auto, Xiaomi, and Baidu Apollo all had a hand in shaping the rules they’ll soon have to follow.

The first concrete market access approvals for L3 passenger vehicles were already granted back in December 2025, going to Changan and BAIC models. The national law now under review is the infrastructure meant to support what comes next: large-scale commercialization.

The global picture

China isn’t legislating in a vacuum. The country played a significant role in shaping the United Nations’ Global Technical Regulation on Automated Driving Systems, which was adopted in June 2026. By aligning its domestic standards with international frameworks, Beijing is positioning itself to export not just autonomous vehicles but the regulatory architecture around them.

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