Anti-Unfair Competition Law Open for Comment

On February 22 at the 26th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress, the State Council introduced a bill for the deliberation of the draft revision to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and is open for public comments through March 25. This is the first revision to this law since its promulgation in 1993.
 
With the development of the market economy in China and the continuous emergence of new business models, the current law has shown some problems: first, the current law doesn't enumerate the emerging behaviors disrupting the competition order and doesn't adequately demonstrate clear characteristics of unfair competition; the unfair competition behaviors given in the current law have changed in characteristics, leading to insufficient basis for the anti-unfair competition enforcement. Second, the mechanism for regulating and managing unfair competition has yet to be improved, as the role of the civil damage compensation system needs to be further strengthened in managing unfair competition, i.e. they need more innovative ways to handle administrative investigations & penalties. There will be a focus on improving a legal liability system emphasizing both civil liability and administrative penalty and using criminal liability as last resort. Third, the laws such as anti-monopoly law and tendering law have been developed after the current law became effective, but the current law creates conflicts with these laws, thus the current law needs to be revised to ensure the consistency of legal provisions.
 
The draft revision contains 35 detailed articles in 5 chapters. Highlights include Article 2, 7, 14, and 27. Also, Article 6 has been completely removed.