After publishing a draft for comment on February this year, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) officially promulgated and implemented the Service Standards for Third-party Ecommerce Trading Platforms (the “Standards”) on April 12, 2011. The Standards, with nine sections and thirty-two clauses in total, cover issues such as platform establishment and basic code of conduct, platform participants (i.e., individuals and enterprises engaging in trading and related service provision activities on the platform ) management and consumer protection by platform operators, coordination and supervision between platform operators and relevant service suppliers, etc. The Standards particularly clarify and reinforce platform participant management and protection for consumers by platform operators. Set forth below is a summary of salient points of the Standards.