On February 25, 2016, the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council promulgated the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People’s Republic of China (Revised Draft for Comment) (“Revised Draft”). This is the first time that China has revised the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People’s Republic of China (“Existing Law”), which has been in effect for 23 years. The Existing Law was promulgated in 1993 during China’s transition from a planned economy to a market economy. With the deepening of reforms, many provisions of the Existing Law have been incompatible with the continued development of the market economy. The SAIC started to revise the Existing Law in 2003 and the revision has been in progress since that time. The Revised Draft revises 30 of the 33 articles of the Existing Law, removes 7 articles and adds 9 new articles, with 35 articles in total. One highlight of the Revised Draft is that it revises the provisions relating to commercial bribery.
