SAMR Declares War on Local Protectionism With Seven-Month Enforcement Sweep

The State Administration for Market Regulation said Wednesday it will mount a seven-month nationwide campaign to dismantle regulatory obstacles that fragment China's domestic market, coupling a wave of enforcement actions with freshly amended competition laws.

Wang Shizhong, director of SAMR's Competition Coordination Division, described the campaign's objective as "four batches" by year-end: prosecuting a batch of significant cases; abolishing or revising a batch of policies that impede fair competition and market unification; publicly exposing a batch of typical violations; and accelerating the issuance of a batch of institutional mechanisms.

The enforcement focus falls on four categories: barriers to fair market entry and autonomous business operations; restrictions on the free movement of goods and factors of production; qualification and certification regimes that treat domestic and foreign firms differently; and hidden bidding thresholds created through improper use of credit evaluation systems.

The push is backed by legislative reinforcement. A revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law took effect in 2025, codifying rules against newer forms of market distortion — the regulator uses the term "involution-style competition" to describe price wars and subsidy races that drive margins below sustainable levels. Implementing regulations for the Fair Competition Review Ordinance have also been enacted, further constraining government agencies from issuing policies that exclude or restrict competition.

Additional legal revisions are underway. SAMR is advancing amendments to the Price Law, the Metrology Law, the Certification and Accreditation Regulations, and the Industrial Product Production Licensing Regulations — a package designed to close gaps in antitrust, anti-unfair-competition, pricing, standards, and quality oversight.

Xin Qun, deputy director of SAMR's Price Surveillance and Anti-Unfair Competition Bureau, said enforcement would concentrate on platform economics, consumer-facing sectors, and technology innovation. The regulator will target unfair practices driven by data, algorithms, platform rules, and technical infrastructure, while strengthening trade secret protection through both ex-post enforcement and ex-ante safeguards — including sector-specific standards, guidance for emerging industries, and a proposed certification system for trade secret management.

The campaign operates within the legal framework of the 15th Five-Year Plan outline, which calls for unified market rules and regulatory capabilities. Wednesday's announcement suggests SAMR is moving to translate that framework into enforcement actions and revised statutes simultaneously — an approach that, if sustained, would narrow the gap between competition policy as written and competition policy as experienced by firms operating across provincial lines.