China outlines six key market regulation priorities for 2026-2030 period

On September 20, the State Council Information Office held a press conference under the series theme "A Strong Start to the 15th Five-Year Plan," inviting relevant officials to brief the media on plans for promoting high-quality development of market regulation during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030) and to answer questions.

The 15th Five-Year Plan period is a critical phase for consolidating the foundation and comprehensively advancing the modernization of socialism. It is also an important stage for driving high-quality development in market regulation. The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan sets out major deployments for deepening the construction of a unified national market, accelerating the building of a quality-focused nation, and strengthening food and drug safety supervision, providing clear direction for the work ahead.

During this period, the approach will balance regulatory oversight with development promotion, focusing on preemptive action, systematic thinking, and technology-driven empowerment. Efforts will be made to strengthen proactive governance, full-chain supervision, and penetrating oversight, better regulate competition order, protect consumer rights, support business development, and stimulate market vitality. The goal is to create a world-class, market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized business environment, supporting a unified, open, competitive, and orderly market system that is both "flexible in liberalization" and "effective in governance."

Overall Target by 2030

By 2030, China aims to establish a fully unified, standardized, and efficient market access and exit system for business entities. Key objectives include:

• Enhanced effectiveness of fair competition review and enforcement against monopolies and unfair competition
• Significant improvement in the level of building a quality-focused nation
• Breakthroughs in key generic technologies in metrology, standards, certification and accreditation, and inspection and testing
• Notable results in building quality-strong enterprises, industrial chains, and counties
• More robust and effective safety supervision of food, drugs, industrial products, and special equipment
• Continuous improvement of consumer dispute resolution mechanisms
• A more mature and complete comprehensive market supervision system

Six Priority Areas

To achieve these goals, the following six areas will be prioritized:

1. Improving the Development Guarantee Mechanism for Business Entities

Business entities are the micro-foundation of economic development. When millions of businesses thrive, the economy gains vitality. Measures include:

• Optimizing market access management and promoting the improvement of fundamental legal frameworks for registration
• Deepening reform of the registered capital subscription system to further reduce institutional transaction costs
• Smoothing market exit channels to facilitate the orderly withdrawal of long-dormant or ceased enterprises and individual businesses
• Establishing a mechanism to promote high-quality development of business entities, using standards, price enforcement, and quality supervision to combat "involution-style" competition and guide businesses toward quality improvement rather than price-cutting

2. Enhancing Fair Competition Governance

Fair competition is a fundamental principle of the market economy. Actions include:

• Strengthening the rigid constraints of the fair competition review system and improving its standardization, professionalism, and intelligence
• Effectively curbing typical issues such as hidden market barriers and impediments to the flow of goods and factors
• Intensifying anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition enforcement, improving technical capabilities for monopoly risk monitoring and early warning, and enhancing the quality and efficiency of merger reviews
• Strengthening supervision over data, algorithms, rules, and traffic for platform enterprises, and reinforcing their "gatekeeper" responsibilities to promote innovation and healthy development of the platform economy

3. Optimizing the Consumer Rights Protection System

Protecting consumer rights is both the starting point and the ultimate goal of market regulation. Key measures include:

• Intensifying efforts to address prominent issues infringing on consumer rights, such as counterfeit goods, price fraud, and unfair contract terms
• Continuously regulating online sales and livestreaming e-commerce operations
• Expanding channels for consumer rights complaints and promoting diversified and source-level resolution of disputes
• Extending online dispute resolution mechanisms to cover major online trading platforms
• Strengthening the credit system in the consumer sector to ensure safe and reliable purchasing

4. Strengthening Quality Infrastructure Capabilities

Quality infrastructure elements—metrology, standards, certification and accreditation, and inspection and testing—are vital for building a modern industrial system. Plans include:

• Accelerating the establishment of a national modern advanced measurement system and achieving breakthroughs in key generic metrology technologies
• Enhancing the leading and supporting role of standards, improving the national standards system, and advancing the internationalization of standards
• Building an authoritative and efficient certification, accreditation, inspection, and testing system to significantly improve industry credibility, industrial support capability, and international influence
• Deepening the construction of quality-strong enterprises, industrial chains, and counties, upgrading quality infrastructure services from "one-stop" to "integrated"

5. Improving Safety Supervision of Food, Drugs, Industrial Products, and Special Equipment

Safety is the bottom line and the greatest public concern. Actions include:

• Improving the food safety responsibility system and strengthening the full-chain supervision mechanism
• Enhancing risk prevention and control in key food safety areas, fully implementing "Internet + AI supervision," and improving the quality and efficiency of food sampling and testing
• Raising the level of drug safety assurance, improving the drug safety responsibility system, and supporting innovation in the pharmaceutical industry
• Strengthening source control of industrial products, enhancing quality risk monitoring and supervision sampling, and improving consistency between online and offline supervision
• Implementing full life-cycle supervision of special equipment to improve intrinsic safety levels and ensure overall safety remains stable and controllable

6. Enhancing Regulatory Enforcement Efficiency

Innovating regulatory methods and improving enforcement efficiency are essential for managing a super-large market. Measures include:

• Raising the legal standards of market regulation, promoting the revision of laws and regulations in key areas such as metrology and e-commerce, and improving rules for the application of administrative discretion in penalties
• Deepening credit risk classification management and continuously improving a credit-based new regulatory mechanism
• Strengthening technological support for market regulation, enhancing smart supervision capabilities, and improving penetrating and off-site supervision
• Optimizing market regulation systems and mechanisms, unifying rules for administrative approval, enforcement, and supervision, and strengthening the connection between pre-market access and in-process/post-market oversight
• Reinforcing the grassroots foundation of market regulation and promoting the standardization, normalization, and professionalization of local market regulation offices

Q&A Session

Question from Hong Kong Bauhinia Magazine:

Standardizing law enforcement involving enterprises is an important measure for optimizing the business environment. As a key comprehensive law enforcement department, what considerations does the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) have for further standardizing enforcement?

Response from Wang Guowei, Director of the Planning and Finance Department, SAMR:

Optimizing the business environment and stimulating market vitality can only be achieved on the basis of a standardized market order, which relies on administrative law enforcement and the authority of the rule of law. The starting point for standardizing enterprise-related enforcement is to resolutely prevent the abuse of enforcement power, arbitrary enforcement, and actions that infringe on normal business operations. However, this does not mean refraining from enforcement or weakening it. In key areas concerning people's livelihoods—such as food and drug safety and industrial product quality—enforcement must be strengthened, and illegal acts must not be tolerated. Therefore, standardizing enterprise-related enforcement and improving enforcement quality and efficiency are two sides of the same coin. We will take comprehensive and targeted measures to prevent improper, lax, or unfair enforcement.

In daily management, our primary consideration is to minimize disruption to normal business operations without compromising regulatory effectiveness. We are promoting joint departmental "double random" inspections and "comprehensive single inspection" practices to reduce multiple and duplicate inspections and lower enforcement frequency. More importantly, joint inspections resolve issues where different departments have inconsistent regulatory requirements, making it difficult for enterprises to implement corrective measures. Going forward, we will expand the scope of joint inspections, use credit risk classification to determine inspection scope and frequency based on enterprise credit ratings, and leverage digital technology to enrich off-site supervision tools. The overall goal is to reduce the burden on enterprises in dealing with inspections so they can focus on their business.

Second, to improve the standardization of administrative enforcement, we will further strengthen institutional constraints and procedural norms. We will improve guidance and supervision mechanisms for grassroots enforcement, fully implement rigid systems for case source management, enforcement decisions, and legal review, and ensure full traceability from clue sources and case filing to investigation, evidence collection, and document delivery. Rigid procedures will be established to better protect the rights of enforcement targets to be informed, to present statements and defenses, to apply for hearings, and to access remedies such as administrative reconsideration. We will improve the benchmark system for administrative discretion, promote uniformity in enforcement standards, and ensure that penalties are proportionate to the offense. Another important task is to deepen the "Clean and Iron Discipline" education and rectification campaign to promote fair and civilized enforcement. Since its launch in March this year, we have proactively exposed shortcomings, compiled negative cases of misconduct by market regulation enforcement personnel, and organized in-depth discussions on "why and for whom we enforce the law," further consolidating the concept of "regulation for the people."

We have conducted thorough investigations into problems within the administrative enforcement team, focusing on two areas: failure to file cases or investigate illegal acts, and rough or arbitrary enforcement. To date, we have identified 3,523 such issues and published 384 typical cases. I would also like to mention that a reporting platform for the "Clean and Iron Discipline" campaign is now online, and we welcome public oversight of our enforcement teams. Any verified reports will be dealt with promptly, without cover-up or leniency.

Question from The Paper:

Consumer rights protection concerns the vital interests of every citizen. What key work will the market regulation department undertake to continuously improve the consumer environment and strengthen consumer rights protection?

Response from Shu Wei, SAMR Spokesperson and Deputy Director:

Consumption is an important engine driving economic growth. Safeguarding consumer rights is of great significance for smoothing the supply-demand cycle and fully unleashing consumption potential. The starting point and ultimate goal of market regulation is to ensure that the people can buy with confidence, eat with peace of mind, and use products with satisfaction. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we will focus on three key areas:

First, intensifying efforts to address prominent issues infringing on consumer rights. We will strengthen enforcement, focusing on problems strongly reported by the public, such as counterfeit and shoddy goods, price fraud, post-sale evasion, false promises, and unfair contract terms. We will enhance inter-departmental coordination to regulate market order in areas such as culture, sports, tourism, elderly care, childcare, and domestic services, and urge relevant authorities to improve rules and standards, strengthen daily supervision, and mitigate consumer risks. At the same time, we will use big data and artificial intelligence to screen and identify illegal clues, regulate online sales and livestreaming e-commerce, and promote the healthy and orderly development of new business models.

Second, continuously improving the capacity to resolve consumer disputes. We will promote the improvement of consumer association systems and their social functions, fully accept and mediate disputes across all sectors, smooth complaint and reporting channels, optimize processing procedures, and enhance processing efficiency. We will increase the use of public interest litigation by consumer associations to reduce the cost of litigation for consumers. We will also improve source-level resolution mechanisms, urge businesses to establish compliant consumer rights protection systems, widely promote online dispute resolution mechanisms, and expand and improve the effectiveness of no-reason returns for offline purchases.

Third, innovatively carrying out "worry-free consumption" cultivation. We will build a consumer credit system, improve the public disclosure system for consumer complaint information, expand online and offline disclosure scenarios, explore the dynamic release of a national consumer environment index, and strengthen monitoring and evaluation of the consumer environment. We will actively create worry-free consumption scenarios, cultivating a number of worry-free consumption units and clusters. By 2030, the number of national worry-free consumption clusters will reach over 5,000, with broad coverage of worry-free consumption units in key industries and sectors. This will help establish a "Worry-Free Consumption in China" brand and significantly enhance consumers' sense of gain.

We will adopt higher standards and more concrete measures to protect consumers.