On June 27, 2025, the Chinese legislature passed the third major amendment to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, which will come into force on October 15, 2025. The amendment comprehensively regulates new types of unfair competition behaviors that have emerged in the era of the digital economy, adding eight new articles and increasing the total number of articles from 33 to 41. The amendment not only responds to cutting-edge issues such as platform economy and data rights protection, but also points to the “inward-looking” competition phenomenon that is prominent in the current Chinese market, providing legal protection for the construction of a fair and orderly market competition environment. In this article, we will systematically sort out the core contents of this amendment, analyze its impact on different market players, and discuss the challenges and strategies for the implementation of the law.
The expansion of the regulation of confusing behavior is one of the highlights of this amendment. Article 7 of the new law expands the scope of protected commercial marks from the traditional “enterprise names and names of social organizations” to “unauthorized use of other people’s names (including abbreviations, font names, etc.) that have a certain degree of influence”, and explicitly includes the protection of individual industrial and commercial enterprises, unincorporated organizations such as farmers’ professional cooperatives, and the screen names of natural persons. In response to the frequent infringements in the Internet environment, the new law adds “new media account names, application names or icons” and other new types of online business logos on the basis of the original “main part of the domain name, the name of the website, the webpage”. This amendment directly responds to the problem of malicious counterfeiting of short video accounts, small programs and other new media forms in practice, and provides a legal basis for brand protection in the digital era.
The amendments to the commercial bribery provisions reflect the strict attitude of the “double penalty system”. Article 8 of the new law breaks new ground by stipulating that “the bribe-taking party shall also be held responsible”, specifying the penalty standards for the acceptance of bribes by staff members and intermediaries of the counterparty to the transaction, thus forming a complete regulatory chain of “active bribery – passive bribery”. Penalties have also been significantly increased: the upper limit of the fine for bribe-giving by a unit has been raised from 3 million yuan to 5 million yuan; and a fine of up to 1 million yuan may be imposed on the legal representatives, principals and persons directly responsible for the operation of the operator who are personally liable for the implementation of the bribe, as well as on individuals who have accepted bribes.
The scope of the regulation of false propaganda has been substantially expanded. Article 9 of the new law will mislead the object of false propaganda from a single “consumer” to “consumers and other operators”, which means that dealers, suppliers and other market entities suffered from false propaganda damage, you can directly invoke the law to protect your rights. At the same time, the article explicitly incorporates “false evaluation” into the scope of regulation, pointing directly to the e-commerce platform in the organization of false transactions to obtain positive feedback or the use of “positive feedback cashback” to induce inaccurate evaluation and other chaotic phenomena.
The amendments to the provisions on commercial defamation are mainly reflected in two aspects: firstly, the target of defamation has been expanded from “competitors” to “other operators”, breaking down the boundaries of the industry; and secondly, “instructing others to fabricate or disseminate false or misleading information” has been explicitly included as an act of commercial defamation. This amendment responds to the phenomenon of operators fabricating and disseminating defamatory information on their own or by hiring network water armies to attract traffic or fight against rivals, which has been a frequent phenomenon in recent years, and makes the legal regulation more comprehensive.
The improvement of the rules on sales with prizes reflects the further protection of consumer rights and interests. Article 11 of the new law adds a new provision prohibiting operators from “changing the types of prizes, redemption conditions, prize amounts or prizes, and other prize sales information without justifiable reasons” after the commencement of the prize sales activities. This amendment addresses the practice of some merchants to change the rules of the activity at will to the detriment of consumer expectations, and promotes more transparent and stable sales activities with prizes, and protects the legitimate rights and interests of participants.
The expansion and refinement of the Internet-specific articles constitute one of the core contents of this amendment. Article 13 of the new law expands the “technical means” stipulated in the original law to “data and algorithms, technologies, platform rules, etc.”, which greatly enhances the foresight and adaptability of the law. This amendment reflects the current trend of diversification of unfair competition means – from pure technical intervention to data manipulation, algorithmic control and abuse of platform rules and other composite forms.
The introduction of data rights protection provisions is a major breakthrough in this amendment. The third paragraph of Article 13 of the new law clearly stipulates: “Operators shall not obtain or use data lawfully held by other operators in an improper manner such as fraud, coercion, avoiding or destroying technological management measures, thus jeopardizing the lawful rights and interests of other operators and disrupting the order of competition in the market.” This provision establishes the basic principle of data rights protection, while skillfully avoiding the controversial issue of data ownership and focusing on the regulation of “improper acquisition or use.”
Abusive behavior of platform rules is explicitly prohibited. Article 13 of the new law adds a fourth paragraph, prohibiting operators from “abusing the platform rules, directly or by instructing others to other operators to implement false transactions, false evaluations or malicious returns and other behaviors”. This amendment points directly to the current phenomenon of vicious competition in the e-commerce ecosystem – some operators in order to combat rivals, the use of platform rules to implement bulk order returns, false evaluation and other behaviors, resulting in the target store search downgrade, shipping losses.
The prohibition of forced low-priced sales by platforms is a prominent manifestation of this amendment to the law in response to social concerns. Article 14 of the new law clearly stipulates: “Platform operators shall not force or disguise to force operators within the platform to sell goods at prices below cost in accordance with their pricing rules, disrupting the order of market competition.” This provision directly addresses the long-standing behavior of e-commerce platforms, such as “choose one or the other” and “lowest price on the net”, which squeezes the profit margins of merchants, and aims to curb the chaotic phenomenon of low-priced dumping caused by the uncontrolled expansion of capital.
Abuse of dominant position by large enterprises is specifically regulated. Article 15 of the new law stipulates: “Large enterprises and other operators shall not abuse their dominant position in terms of capital, technology, trading channels, industry influence, etc., and require small and medium-sized enterprises to accept transaction conditions such as obviously unreasonable payment periods, modes, conditions and default liabilities, and default on payments to small and medium-sized enterprises in respect of goods, projects, services, etc.”. This provision focuses on the current general problem of SMEs being owed accounts, breaks through the traditional anti-monopoly law to “dominant position in the market” as the premise of the regulatory thinking, and expands the scope of protection to the behavior of enterprises with a “relatively dominant position”.
The strengthening of platform governance responsibilities is another important dimension of this amendment. Article 21 of the new law requires platform operators to “specify the rules of fair competition within the platform in the platform service agreement and transaction rules and establish a mechanism for the reporting of complaints of unfair competition and the handling of disputes”, and to take timely measures to deal with and report to the supervisory authorities when they discover acts of unfair competition within the platform. This provision gives the platform the role of “quasi regulator”, utilizing its technical capabilities and data advantages to carry out first-line governance. However, at the same time, how to prevent platforms from abusing their management authority for their own benefit, and ensure the transparency and legitimacy of platform governance, will also become a key issue in the implementation of the law.
The innovation and enrichment of law enforcement means is a notable feature of this amendment. Article 18 of the new law adds an “interview system”, stipulating that “if an operator is suspected of violating the provisions of this law, the supervision and inspection department may interview the person in charge of the operator and ask him/her to explain the situation and put forward improvement measures”. This flexible means of law enforcement is conducive to timely intervention in the early stages of violations, reducing law enforcement costs, while also giving enterprises the opportunity to correct themselves.
The overall increase in penalties constitutes a core measure to strengthen the deterrent effect of the law. The amendment significantly upwardly revised the fine ceilings for a wide range of unfair competition behaviors: the fine ceiling for commercial bribery was raised from 3 million yuan to 5 million yuan; and the fine ceilings for commercial defamation and online unfair competition behaviors were correspondingly raised.25 Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the new law establishes specific penalties for platforms’ forced undercutting, with fines of up to 2 million yuan; and for abuses of dominant position that are not corrected after the deadline are punishable by a fine of 1 million to 5 million yuan.
The introduction of double penalties and personal liability has further strengthened legal deterrence. In addition to penalizing the offending enterprise, the new law explicitly provides that “legal representatives, principals and persons directly responsible for the operator” may be subject to personal fines. In the field of commercial bribery, individuals can be fined up to 1 million yuan for giving or receiving bribes. This “punishment to the person” mechanism will effectively curb the enterprise executives in pursuit of performance and acquiescence or connivance of unfair competition, prompting enterprises to strengthen internal compliance management. Meanwhile, Article 8 of the new law breaks new ground by stipulating that “Organizations and individuals shall not accept bribes”, which fills the blank of the previous law on the regulation of the bribed party and forms a complete chain of responsibility for anti-commercial bribery.
The optimized adjustment of the regulatory hierarchy reflects the rational allocation of enforcement resources. For different types of unfair competition, the new law sets up differentiated enforcement levels: general unfair competition is investigated and dealt with by the market supervision departments at or above the county level; while complex cases such as abuse of dominant position are explicitly investigated and dealt with directly by the supervision and inspection departments of the people’s governments at or above the provincial level. This adjustment not only takes into account the specialization and complexity of the cases, but also helps to prevent local protectionism from interfering with law enforcement and ensures that major cases are handled fairly.
The establishment of extraterritoriality expands the scope of legal protection. Article 40 of the new law explicitly provides for the first time for jurisdiction over acts of unfair competition outside the territory of the People’s Republic of China: “For acts of unfair competition that occur outside the People’s Republic of China, this law shall apply if such acts have an exclusionary or restrictive effect on competition in the market of the People’s Republic of China or jeopardize the lawful rights and interests of domestic operators or consumers.” This provision responds to the trend of economic globalization and provides a legal basis for addressing new types of challenges, such as cross-border data crawling and international false advertising.
Platform operators will face the most immediate compliance challenges and increased responsibilities. A number of provisions of the new law are specifically designed for platform enterprises, including the prohibition of forced low-priced sales (Article 14) and the establishment of fair competition rules and complaint handling mechanisms (Article 21). Large e-commerce platforms need to focus on reviewing the “lowest price on the net” and “automatic price-following” clauses in their existing agreements, and cleaning up any content that may constitute “mandatory or disguised mandatory low-priced sales”. At the same time, the platform needs to invest resources to establish an internal monitoring mechanism, take the initiative to detect and dispose of false transactions on the platform, malicious returns and other behavior, which will increase operating costs in the short term. However, in the long run, compliant platforms will gain a healthier ecosystem and sustainable development environment.
Data-driven businesses need to pay special attention to data compliance risks. Article 13 of the new law explicitly prohibits the acquisition or use of other people’s data in an improper manner, which poses higher compliance requirements for enterprises relying on data crawling and aggregation analysis. Such enterprises should carry out data source compliance audits as soon as possible, focusing on verifying whether external data obtained through crawlers, API interfaces, etc. have been validly authorized or licensed. At the same time, they should sign a written agreement with the data provider to specify the purpose, scope and restrictions of use, and set up protective clauses such as “prohibition of material substitution”. In the future, data compliance will become the core competitiveness of Internet enterprises.
The above content is provided for informational purposes only. The provision of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship between D’Andrea & Partners and the reader and does not constitute legal advice. Legal advice must be tailored to the specific circumstances of each case, and the contents of this article are not a substitute for legal counsel.
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