SAMR: 15th Five-Year Plan to shift market competition from price wars to quality focus

At a press conference held on the 20th under the series theme "Getting Off to a Strong Start for the '15th Five-Year Plan'", Shu Wei, spokesperson and deputy director of the State Administration for Market Regulation, announced that the administration has launched a special campaign this year to combat low-quality, low-price violations. As of the end of August, a total of 29,000 such cases had been investigated and handled nationwide. By integrating price enforcement, quality supervision, and standard-setting measures, the campaign has effectively curbed malicious low pricing and disorderly competition.

During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the administration will focus on the following three areas to accelerate the shift of market competition from a "price war" to a "quality race":

Strengthening Price Enforcement

• Accelerate the revision of the Price Law and study amendments to the Provisions on Curbing Low-Price Dumping.
• Guide relevant industry associations to develop cost calculation standards, forming a "1+1+N" legal framework for regulating low-price dumping.
• Conduct cost investigations and price inspections on enterprises that lead malicious low-price competition and disrupt production and operational order, and handle such cases strictly in accordance with the law.
• Promote the implementation of the Rules on Price Conduct for Internet Platforms to continuously regulate price competition in the platform economy.
• Study and formulate the Interim Provisions on the Implementation of the Price Supervisor System to reinforce enterprises' primary responsibility for price compliance.

Strengthening Quality Supervision

• Enhance source governance by optimizing the management of industrial product production licenses and dynamically adjusting the compulsory product certification catalog to ensure quality market access.
• Increase quality risk monitoring and random inspections, with a focus on products with abnormally low prices, high safety risks, or historically low pass rates. Raise the proportion of inspections in key areas such as e-commerce platforms and wholesale markets.
• Improve consistency between online and offline supervision and accelerate the establishment of a unified national product quality and safety traceability system.
• Strengthen the responsibility of platform enterprises for verifying product information and coordinating recalls.
• Carry out special campaigns to address quality and safety issues in industrial products sold online, and strictly crack down on illegal and non-compliant online sales activities.

Strengthening Anti-Unfair Competition

• Fully implement the newly revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law and continuously improve supporting regulatory rules.
• Routinely deploy special enforcement actions against unfair competition, focusing on key issues such as false advertising, mutual slander, commercial defamation, and commercial bribery, and investigate and penalize a number of typical cases.
• Strengthen the protection of trade secrets, explore and introduce local regulations and management norms for trade secret protection, and actively promote pilot projects and service stations for trade secret protection innovation.

(Reported by Shen Hui, Economic Daily)