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In 2008, Yang Dongqin, the then 42-year-old wife of a Burmese drug trafficker, was sentenced to three years in prison for laundering nearly 7 million yuan, or about $925,000, through banks in Ruili, Yunnan, near China's southwestern border, and investing the funds into real estate. In summing up what at the time they described as one of the border province's first convictions for drug-related money laundering, Chinese authorities emphasized the difficulty financial institutions encountered in trying to vet clients using identification from another country—in this case, Myanmar—and flagging potentially suspicious transactions tied to the case. More than a decade later,...