A series of new laws and regulations took effect Wednesday, the first day of the New Year, including revamped regulations on overseas asset declaration and transfers within China.

Under the new rule, Chinese citizens and organizations need to declare any overseas financial assets and liabilities. Foreign individuals and organizations that make economic business transactions on Chinese territory are also required to declare their international receipts and payments to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

If transactions are made through an agent, it will declare them. 

The existing rules, put in place in 1995 by the People's Bank of China, the central bank, only require declarations of economic transactions between Chinese and non-Chinese.

Zhao Xijun, deputy director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that the revision is in accordance with the requirements of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to have broader coverage of data collection to meet the global standards along with the economic development.

As the transaction values of international receipts and payments have increased and become more diversified in recent years, it is necessary to collect data at a larger scale to help formulate economic policies, said Zhao.

"Irregular cross-border capital flows have become more frequent, so it's necessary to improve the declaration mechanism so authorities can enhance the monitoring and warning capabilities," Ding Zhijie, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics, told xinhuanet.com.

The regulation stipulates that those who fail to declare international receipts and payments will face a penalty from a warning to fines as much as 300,000 yuan ($49,530) for organizations and 50,000 yuan for individuals.

While the regulation stipulates that declaration information will be kept confidential and only used for statistics on international receipts and payments, the public are concerned about its impact on the anti-graft drive, as it is widely believed that corrupt officials transfer their assets overseas to avoid inspection.

However, the new policy does not reveal a timetable and detailed requirements for Chinese citizens to declare their overseas assets directly.

SAFE said in a statement Tuesday that it will not submit the statistics to anti-graft or anti-money laundering departments, and the data cannot be used as evidence for combating crime and corruption except for certain legal circumstances.

Other new laws and regulations that took effect on Wednesday include a nationwide requirement for courts to publish judgment documents online,  and lower tariffs on some 760 imported commodities by an average of 60 percent to aid economic restructuring and achieve balanced trade growth.