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<p>This study examines how Hong Kong incorporated the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing standards from 2008 to 2023, exploring how a high-capacity financial centre selectively adopted global soft law recommendations. Using a qualitative documentary analysis of FATF mutual evaluations, follow-up reports, legislation, consultation papers, Legislative Council materials, regulatory guidance, and professional documents, this study developed the concept of negotiated isomorphism. Applying Scott’s regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars, Hong Kong neither fully complied with nor resisted the FATF standards. Instead, external peer reviews, reputational scrutiny, and post-Panama Papers transparency pressures drove legal convergence through the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance, beneficial ownership reforms, designated non-financial business and professional (DNFBP) obligations, trust or company service provider licensing, suspicious transaction reporting, sanctions frameworks, and virtual asset regulations. However, its implementation remains partial, phased, and mediated by domestic institutional filters. Beneficial ownership transparency was accepted through competent authority access and not through public disclosure; DNFBP supervision improved gradually through professional bodies and sectoral guidance; enforcement often favoured remediation and proportionality over punitive escalation; and virtual asset regulation revealed tensions between innovation policy and evolving FATF requirements. The findings show that formal compliance is insufficient for transnational policy diffusion because effective implementation depends on data quality, professional internalisation, supervisory capacity, and cultural assumptions about confidentiality, legal certainty, proportionality, market credibility, and controlled disclosure. This study contributes to global public policy and governance theory by explaining how soft law standards become domestically embedded without producing institutional uniformity.</p>

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Transnational policy diffusion and domestic governance: Hong Kong’s negotiated isomorphism with global FATF standards

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月20日

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  • Raymond L.M. Tang,
  • Bo Wen,
  • Paul S.F. Yip

摘要

This study examines how Hong Kong incorporated the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing standards from 2008 to 2023, exploring how a high-capacity financial centre selectively adopted global soft law recommendations. Using a qualitative documentary analysis of FATF mutual evaluations, follow-up reports, legislation, consultation papers, Legislative Council materials, regulatory guidance, and professional documents, this study developed the concept of negotiated isomorphism. Applying Scott’s regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars, Hong Kong neither fully complied with nor resisted the FATF standards. Instead, external peer reviews, reputational scrutiny, and post-Panama Papers transparency pressures drove legal convergence through the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance, beneficial ownership reforms, designated non-financial business and professional (DNFBP) obligations, trust or company service provider licensing, suspicious transaction reporting, sanctions frameworks, and virtual asset regulations. However, its implementation remains partial, phased, and mediated by domestic institutional filters. Beneficial ownership transparency was accepted through competent authority access and not through public disclosure; DNFBP supervision improved gradually through professional bodies and sectoral guidance; enforcement often favoured remediation and proportionality over punitive escalation; and virtual asset regulation revealed tensions between innovation policy and evolving FATF requirements. The findings show that formal compliance is insufficient for transnational policy diffusion because effective implementation depends on data quality, professional internalisation, supervisory capacity, and cultural assumptions about confidentiality, legal certainty, proportionality, market credibility, and controlled disclosure. This study contributes to global public policy and governance theory by explaining how soft law standards become domestically embedded without producing institutional uniformity.