China's Anti-Unfair Competition Law: New Controls On Non-Monopolistic Restrictive Practices

On Oct. 15, 2025, China implemented the amended Anti-Unfair Competition Law of China (2025 AUCL), introducing new controls over competition-restrictive practices that fall short of monopolies regulated under China's Anti-Monopoly Law (AML). This represents the second major revision since the original AUCL was adopted in 1993.

Key E-Commerce Regulations

Illegal data crawling

Article 13 prohibits a business operator from illegal data crawling, defined as the "acquisition or use of data legitimately held by another business operator through improper means including fraud, intimidation, avoiding or comprising technical management measures, etc. that are damaging the legitimate interest of the other business operator and disrupting market competition." The law distinguishes between permissible data scraping and prohibited data crawling by requiring both "improper means" and demonstrable harm.