On Oct. 15, 2025, China implemented the amended Anti-Unfair Competition Law of China (2025 AUCL), introducing new controls over competition-restrictive practices that fall short of monopolies regulated under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML). This represents the second major revision since the original AUCL was adopted in 1993.
Key E-Commerce Regulations
Illegal data crawling
Article 13 prohibits a business operator from illegal data crawling, defined as the “acquisition or use of data legitimately held by another business operator through improper means including fraud, intimidation, avoiding or comprising technical management measures, etc. that are damaging the legitimate interest of the other business operator and disrupting market competition.” The law distinguishes between permissible data scraping and prohibited data crawling by requiring both “improper means” and demonstrable harm.
In practice, such damages might be proved if the injured business operator shows disrupt that normal operations of its e-business is (e.g., due to high-frequency visits) or cost of operations has increased. The disruption to competition might be proved by demonstrating the competitive or other illegal purposes behind the act of crawling – for example, in some recent cases, Chinese courts have held data crawling illegal when a business operator is able to prove that the crawler is usurping the data crawled with an effect to “substantially replace the operator’s own business.”
E-commerce fraud
Article 13 also prohibits fraudulent practices that abuse e-commerce platform policies, including
- fabricating user comments to boost one’s own sales or hinder others’ sales,
- faking transactions, including by fraudulently entering and then cancelling transactions to boost one’s own sales, and
- abusing return policies to boost one’s own sales.
Since certain e-commerce platforms dominate China’s e-commerce market, the practices prohibited under 2025 AUCL must have abused policies on user comment, refund of goods, cancellation of transactions, etc., that those platforms endorsed.
Below-cost pricing
The new article 14 prohibits e-commerce platforms from forcing sellers to price products below cost, either directly or indirectly. This reinstates a prohibition that was abolished in 2017. The new prohibition is targeted at e-commerce platforms who have various tools to influence the seller’s pricing – e.g., through a pricing algorithm. The new article 30 penalizes a violating platform with a fine between RMB 50,000 and RMB 500,000, and in an aggravated case, RMB 500,000 and RMB 2 million.
Abuse of Market Advantage
The new Article 15 mandates that “large enterprises” shall refrain from abusing their market advantages in respects of capital, technology, business channels, market influence, etc., against “medium and small enterprises” (MSEs). Examples of certain abusive conduct includes forcing MSEs to:
- accept “unreasonable” terms such as time and method of payment, conditions for payment, liabilities for breach of contract, etc., or
- accept delayed payment for goods, services, and engineering works.
As background, China’s AML has a similar ban against business operators with market dominance from imposing unreasonable terms on its counterparties. Comparatively, 2025 AUCL applies the prohibition to all “large enterprises” as defined by the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) – for example, an auto manufacturer with at least 1,000 employees or an annual sales of RMB 400 million.
Article 15 enforcement will require highly fact-dependent determinations, including whether an act is “abusive” and whether a term under the contract is “unreasonable.” 2025 AUCL authorizes the provincial counterpart of the State Administration of Market Regulation to stop any violation of Article 15 and in case of failing with a stop order, to impose a fine upon the wrongdoer with an amount below RMB 1 million in a non-aggregated case, and an amount between RMB 1 million and RMB 2 million in an aggravated case.
Implications
2025 AUCL will enable companies selling products via China’s e-commerce platforms to better defend against unfair competing practices like illegal data crawling, return abuse, and user scams. However, Article 15 creates some uncertainty for companies meeting the “large enterprise” definition. Such companies may wish to review their standard terms and conditions on procurement and sales to avoid potential litigation and/or government enforcement.
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