China Enacts the 2nd Revision to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law

On 27 June 2025, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress released the newly revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law, which will come into force on 15 October 2025. This revision marks the second amendment to the law since its initial promulgation in 1993.

YaoWang Law Offices will provide a detailed interpretation of the amendments to the new Anti-Unfair Competition Law through a series of articles. This article, being the first in the series, maps out the key changes.

The revised law retains its original chapter structure, consisting of five parts: General Provisions, Unfair Competition Acts, Investigation of Suspected Unfair Competition Acts, Legal Liabilities, and Supplementary Provisions. Modifications have been made to each section. Notably, the total number of articles has increased significantly, expanding from 33 to 41.

The key amendments in this revision are summarized as follows:

Refining the provisions on confusion-based unfair competition acts, including:

• Expanding the scope of “acts of confusion”, by:
  • Adding the unauthorized use of others' influential new media usernames and mobile application names or icons to the list of prohibited acts of confusion.
  • Clarifying that the unauthorized use of others' registered trademarks or unregistered well-known trademarks as trade names, as well as setting others' product names, enterprise names (including abbreviations or trade names), registered trademarks, or unregistered well-known trademarks as search engine keywords that may cause misidentification, shall constitute acts of confusion.
• Explicitly stating that it is illegal to aid others' acts of confusion.

Building upon the existing regulation on commercial bribery:

• The amendments clarify that accepting a commercial bribe is also in violation of the commercial bribery clause, thereby subjecting bribe-taking entities and individuals to administrative penalties. 
• The amendments further increase the upper limits of administrative fines to RMB 5 million for entities committing commercial bribery and RMB 1 million for individuals. 

• Expanding the scope of misleading targets: from “consumers” to “consumers and other businesses.”
• Adding “false reviews” as a prohibited form of false advertising to deter brushing scams.

Introducing new restrictions on prize promotions:

• Once a promotional activity commences, businesses may not alter prize promotion details without good cause. This requires businesses to operate prize promotions in good faith, with a view to protecting the reliance interests of the prize winners. 

Expanding protection against commercial defamation:

• Businesses are prohibited from instructing others to engage in commercial defamation, thereby preventing practices such as hiring “internet water armies” to disparage others. 
• The scope of commercial defamation has been broadened from “competitors” to businesses in general, strengthening the protection of business operators' commercial reputation. 

Enhancing provisions concerning online platform-related unfair competition practices, including:

Adding provisions on delayed payments to small or medium-sized enterprises

• The revised law prohibits large enterprises and other business operators from abusing their dominant positions by requiring small or medium-sized enterprises to accept obviously unreasonable payment terms, methods, conditions, liability for breach of contract, or other transaction terms, or by delaying payments for goods, projects, or services owed to small or medium-sized enterprises

Refining provisions on regulatory measures, including

• Establishing an interview mechanism, under which regulators are empowered to interview relevant responsible persons, requiring them to provide explanations of the circumstances and propose rectifying measures when there is a suspected violation of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.

• Strengthening the protection of privacy and confidentiality during the investigation process, by requiring regulators and their personnel to maintain confidentiality of trade secrets, personal privacy, and personal information obtained during investigations.

• Allowing the infringed party to choose between "actual losses suffered from infringement" or "infringer's profits gained through infringement" for the calculation of damages, thereby reducing the infringed party's burden of proof.

• Introducing exemptions for bona fide resellers, under which resellers who unknowingly deal in illegal products could be exempted from administrative penalties (and only subject to an order to stop the sales) if they can prove their lawful acquisition of the illegal products and identify their source.

• Increasing the upper limits of administrative fines up to RMB 5 million for selected violations.

   

• This new clause provides China with long-arm jurisdiction over unfair competition acts conducted outside China yet causing disruptions to the Chinese market order as well as harm to the legitimate interests of Chinese businesses or consumers.