First Modification After 23-year Implementation of China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law (Nov-2016)

According to the World of Finance and Economics, China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law will be modified for the first time after 23-year implementation. Recently, the executive meeting of the state council passed the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People’s Republic of China (revised draft) to be submitted to the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress for examination, which will strengthen credit disciplinary measures and sanctions.

The Anti-Unfair Competition Law is a law that normalizes the economic order of the socialist market, advocating fair and orderly competition with its core being “let a business war have a bottom line”. However, after the development of more than 20 years; the marketization degree in China has been raised significantly, profound changes have taken place in the economic aggregate, market size, degree and state of the market competition, many regulations made at early 90s’ of the last century are not fit with the new situation, the voice for modifying the Anti-Unfair Competition Law has been heard for a long time.

With the modification of the Trademark Law and Advertisement Law, the crossed-repeated contents between the Anti-Unfair Competition Law with above mentioned laws need to be adjusted and cohered. Regarding the existing law blind spot, the revised draft improves and enriches the legal definition for the unfair competition behavior, adding stipulations such as cracking down business bribery, strengthening protection for business secrets and anti-unfair competition on the internet, strengthening civil liability for compensation, and ramping up the efforts for credit disciplinary measures and administrative penalty on unlawful behaviors.   

(Source: World of Finance and Economics)