Draft revision to Law against Unfair Competition to undergo review at China's NPC Standing Committee

The second draft revision to the Law against Unfair Competition will be submitted for review at the 16th session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), Huang Haihua, spokesperson for the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee, told a press conference on Monday, noting that the draft revision adds provisions regarding the fair competition review system, chinanews.com reported. 

Huang noted that the draft revision proposes six key amendments, including adding provisions on the fair competition review system, as well as revising and improving regulations to tackle "involution-style" competition among platform companies.

The revision also improves the coordination mechanism for anti-unfair competition efforts by clarifying the responsibilities of market supervision authorities. 

It enhances the obligations of platform operators to address unfair competition practices by businesses operating on their platforms, and further clarifies the standards for identifying confusion-based unfair competition behaviors, such as using another party's trademark as a trade name or setting another party's product name or enterprise name as search keywords, Huang noted.

The spokesperson added that the draft revision clarifies the elements that constitute unfair competition practices such as data rights infringement and malicious trading. It also focuses on addressing the issue of large enterprises and other operators abusing their relative dominant position to delay payments to small and medium-sized enterprises, and raises the level of authority for administrative penalties.

The Standing Committee of the 14th NPC, China's top legislature, will hold its 16th session in Beijing from June 24 to 27, Xinhua News Agency reported. 

During the upcoming session, lawmakers will review draft revisions to the Public Security Administrative Penalty Law, the Law against Unfair Competition, the Maritime Law, the Fisheries Law, and the Civil Aviation Law, as well as draft laws on responding to public health emergencies, and promoting publicity and education on the rule of law, according to Xinhua.

They will also review a report on the central government's final accounts for 2024, an audit report on the execution of the central government's 2024 budget and other fiscal revenue and expenditure, and a report on the development of new quality productive forces, Xinhua reported.