The Recent Amendment to China’s Consumer Law: An Imperfect Improvement and Proposal for Future Changes

Abstract

Recently, an Amendment Act (“the Amendment”) was made to China’s core legislation on consumer protection—the Consumers’ Rights and Interests Protection Law (“Consumer Protection Act 1993”). The Amendment comes into force on China’s “Consumers’ Day” of 2014. The Amendment brings some great and significant changes to the principal Act in response to the need of China’s changed and changing market and society. This paper analyses the most significant changes and argues that the Amendment is far from being satisfactory, in that some important issues/problems including, inter alia, the want of a clear legal definition of “consumer”, are left unaddressed. It also articulates the rationale for special protection to consumer and proposes further amendments including a “good” definition of “consumer” that shall be adopted in the future as soon as practical.