China’s securities regulator has delivered one of its stiffest penalties yet to a private fund manager, signaling a sharpened enforcement stance that reaches from firms to their controlling individuals. The China Securities Regulatory Commission and its Shanghai bureau imposed combined administrative penalties on Zhejiang Ruifengda Asset Management and related private fund entities that total more than RMB 41 million, and levied personal fines exceeding RMB 13 million on five responsible individuals. Ruifengda’s ultimate controller, Sun Wei, has been barred from the securities market for life, while the industry association has revoked the managers’ registration.
The enforcement action characterises the misconduct as serious breaches of private fund laws and regulations, including improper fundraising, misappropriation and other irregular practices. Regulators made clear that where evidence points to criminality, case files will be transferred to the public security authorities. The Asset Management Association of China has supplemented administrative steps with self‑regulatory measures, using case revocation to strip offending managers of their licence to operate.
This penalty is the latest and most salient in a broader, sustained sweep through China’s private fund sector. Authorities have recently taken similar action against other managers: a month earlier Zhejiang regulators fined Youce Investment and imposed lifetime market bans on its controller after uncovering fund misappropriation and false reporting. Over 2025 the securities regulator says it imposed administrative measures on more than 600 firms and individuals, opened roughly 30 probes and referred about 40 leads to police — a pattern of enforcement that mixes administrative sanction, industry de‑registration and potential criminal referral.
A salient feature of the recent enforcement drive is the “double‑penalty” approach: regulators simultaneously punish institutions and the individuals who run them. That strategy removes the protective buffer of the corporate entity and raises the personal stakes of non‑compliance. Coupled with a three‑track accountability matrix — self‑regulatory revocation, administrative fines and criminal referrals — the policy is designed to deter a broad spectrum of abusive behaviours and to recalibrate incentives inside private fund firms.
The immediate market impact is twofold. In the near term, tougher supervision and higher personal liability raise compliance costs and are likely to accelerate consolidation in the private fund sector as smaller or loosely governed managers exit or are forced to formalise. In the medium term, the crackdown should strengthen investor protections and reduce systemic tail risks that stem from opaque fundraising and intra‑group financing schemes, which has relevance for domestic retail savers and institutional counterparties alike.
Regulators are pairing enforcement with education: industry outreach campaigns, published casebooks of disciplinary precedents, and mandated self‑checks aim to drive remediation and build internal controls across the sector. Beijing has signalled it will continue this dual approach in 2026, expecting private managers to upgrade governance, adopt clearer investor‑first practices and cooperate with rectification efforts, while warning that serious breaches will face multi‑dimensional consequences.