The Plain English Movement has prompted major English-speaking countries to introduce language policies advocating the simplification of legislative English. However, this corpus-based study shows that traditional linguistic features—such as archaic words, loanwords and redundant expressions—still persist to varying degrees in the legislative texts of these countries, indicating that the Plain English Movement has not fundamentally altered the opacity and complexity of legislative language. The English versions of Chinese legislative texts not only exhibit these features but do so with even greater frequency than those in English-speaking countries. This paper argues that the overseas dissemination of Chinese law should pursue genuine simplification so as to better meet the expectations of English-speaking audiences regarding legal language.