Revisal Context and Effective Date
On June 27, 2025, the National People's Congress of China approved the revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law, which will enter into force on October 15, 2025. The amendment process, initiated by the State Administration for Market Regulation's public consultation draft released on November 22, 2022, underwent nearly three years of extensive feedback collection, focusing on cutting-edge fields such as digital economy, platform governance, and data rights protection.
Comprehensive Analysis of Major Revisions
1. Establishment of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (Article 40)
The Law for the first time explicitly stipulates jurisdiction over unfair competition acts conducted outside China, provided such acts disrupt domestic market competition order or harm the legitimate rights of domestic operators/consumers. For instance, overseas enterprises engaging in false advertising through online platforms to mislead Chinese consumers and damage domestic operators' business reputation may be subject to this clause. Specific application requires coordination with laws like the Civil Procedure Law and Law on the Application of Law in Foreign-Related Civil Relations to determine judicial jurisdiction, litigation procedures, and liability enforcement.
2. Expanded Regulation on Online Unfair Competition (Article 13, Paragraph 2)
The scope of prohibited online unfair competition means has been expanded from "technical means" to "data & algorithms, technology, platform rules, etc.". Compared with the Interim Provisions on Online Anti-Unfair Competition (2024), the addition of "platform rules" highlights a regulatory upgrade from technical/data layers to platform rule governance, indicating that the validity and legality assessment of platform rules will become a key component in determining online unfair competition acts in the platform sector.
3. New Protections for Data Rights (Article 13, Paragraph 3)
Protection Principle: Clarifies that "lawfully held data" is entitled to legal protection, while sidestepping the contentious debate surrounding data ownership;
Prohibited Conducts: Prohibits "unfair acquisition or use" of data (including means like fraud, coercion, circumvention or destruction of technical protection measures), removing the previous requirement of "acquisition AND use";
Damage Determination: Adopts the open-ended standard of "damaging other operators' legitimate rights and disrupting market competition order", providing judicial authorities with the flexibility to develop more nuanced evaluation benchmarks (e.g. the "substantive substitution" test in practice or something analogous to the "obstruction and disruption" criteria in Article 13.2) to determine the actual harm inflicted.
4. Strict Prohibition on Platform-Forced Below-Cost Sales (Article 14)
Aiming at e-commerce platforms' practices of forcing merchants to sell below cost through "automatic price following" or "traffic-for-price" rules, this new clause prohibits such behaviors, forming a systematic regulatory framework together with Article 35 of the E-Commerce Law and Article 14 of the Price Law to curb destructive low-price competition in the e-commerce sector.
5. Mandatory Complaint Handling Mechanisms for Platforms (Article 21)
Platforms are required to establish clear fair competition rules and complaint disposal mechanisms for unfair competition. It should be noted that this clause falls under Chapter III "Investigation of Suspected Unfair Competition Acts", meaning that platforms' failure to establish such mechanisms does not constitute an unfair competition act under Chapter II, and enforcement shall rely on relevant laws like the E-Commerce Law.
6. Refined Regulation on Confusing Acts (Article 7)
Expansion of Protected Commercial Identifiers: Includes unauthorized use of others' net name, new media account name, app name and icon;
Enhanced coherence with the Trademark Law: Explicitly prohibiting unauthorized use of others' registered trademarks or unregistered well-known trademarks as enterprise name characters, aligning with Article 58 of the Trademark Law;
Regulation on Keyword Bidding: Prohibits setting keyword bidding with others' marks to cause market confusion. No more distinction between "overt use" (visible mark display in search results) and "covert use" (keyword - only setting), pending further theoretical and practical clarification;
Prohibition of Aiding Confusion: New Paragraph 3 prohibits assisting others in committing confusing acts, improving the protection system for commercial identifiers.
7. Holistic Governance of False Transactions and Reviews (Articles 9 & 13, Paragraph 4)
Anti-‘Brush Trading’ Measures: Prohibits assisting others in false propaganda through "false transactions or reviews";
Curbing Malicious Rule Abuse: Adds "malicious returns" (e.g., "coupon scalpers" abusing "no-questions-asked return" policies) to regulate evolving unfair competition behaviors. The State Administration for Market Regulation’s concurrently released typical cases (e.g., a third-party price control company’s malicious return case) provide practical guidance for application.
8. Dual-Sided Regulation of Commercial Bribery (Articles 8 & 24)
New Prohibition on Accepting Bribery: Paragraph 2 of Article 8 explicitly prohibits operators from accepting commercial bribes, filling the prior law’s gap of only regulating bribery giving;
Extended Liability Subjects: Article 24 stipulates that both bribe-giving/taking operators and their legal representatives/direct responsible persons shall bear legal liabilities.
9. Protection of Prize Promotion Stability (Article 11)
Prohibits "unjustified changes" to prize promotion terms (such as types of prizes, redemption conditions, etc.), incorporating provisions from the Provisions on Regulating Promotional Activities (2020). "Justified reasons" are generally limited to typographical errors or adjustments beneficial to consumers.
10. Restricting Large Enterprises’ Abuse of Relative Dominance (Article 15)
Introduces a clause against "abuse of relative dominance" to address the Anti-Monopoly Law’s high threshold for regulating "abuse of market dominance", specifically targeting large enterprises’ delayed payment practices against SMEs. Coordinated with the Regulations on Protecting Payments to Small and Medium Enterprises (2025) and judicial interpretations, this clause is enforced by "supervision and inspection departments at or above the provincial level" to balance transaction freedom and regulatory prudence.
NTD’s Compliance Recommendations
The amendments closely respond to the evolving competition landscape in the digital era, particularly making institutional breakthroughs in platform governance, data rights, and SME protection. Enterprises are advised to prioritize online competition compliance, clarify data usage boundaries, and fulfill platform obligations. For customized compliance solutions or case-specific analyses, please contact NTD’s legal team for professional support.
