China urges e-commerce platforms to improve quality under plan targeting 2030
Key Facts
China's market regulator urged e-commerce platforms to improve the quality of their products and services, announcing in a statement dated 21 October 2026 that it had held a meeting in Beijing to discuss these responsibilities. Representatives of JD.com and Alibaba's Taotian attended alongside Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, Doudian, Vipshop and Dewu, exchanging views on product and service quality. The regulator said quality and safety risks had become more complex and harder to detect in livestream selling, instant retail and social commerce. It identified the continued sale of counterfeit and substandard goods among the problems in these activities. It added that products failing to match their descriptions and false advertising remained problems facing commerce on platforms.
The regulator called on companies to fulfil their "gatekeeper" responsibilities by improving quality management systems and tightening oversight across the business chain. It stressed the need to assign and embed quality control responsibilities across the various stages of operations, as part of platforms' responsibility for the products and services they offer. It called for the joint use of platform data to support quality improvements in supply chains. Its demands included stronger disclosure and information transparency, as well as better after-sales services and consumer protection. It also urged companies to explore preparing and publishing reports on quality governance indicators as part of efforts to improve quality management on platforms.
The meeting comes under guidelines dated 10 December 2025 that aim to achieve a tangible improvement in the quality of platforms' products and services by 2030. The guidelines make platforms responsible for reviewing merchants' qualifications before allowing them to operate, and for reviewing products and services before listing them for sale. The review includes verifying quality inspection reports and certification documents, as well as the qualifications of the bodies that issued them. The guidelines also call for more intensive inspections of products sold through livestreams, popular products, new and unfamiliar goods, and products with unusual prices. They require platforms to remove non-compliant products promptly and establish mechanisms for a rapid response to recalls of defective products.
The guidelines also address marketing and competition practices, calling for efforts to combat misleading marketing and protect the right of merchants operating on platforms to set their prices independently. They also target harmful competition involving the continued sale of goods below cost. Reuters previously reported, in coverage carried by Investing.com, that Chinese authorities had summoned Meituan, JD.com and Alibaba, urging them to ease rivalry and engage in "rational competition". In parallel, China's Ministry of Commerce plan to improve e-commerce quality calls on platforms to announce commitments and action plans focused on product and service quality. The plan includes publishing quality governance reports and subjecting these efforts to public oversight.
The scrutiny of e-commerce quality comes as online sales of goods and services in China reached 15,147.1 billion yuan in the first nine months of 2026, up 4.4% year on year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Online sales of goods alone reached 9,506.0 billion yuan over the same period, up 3.8% from a year earlier. Across the broader consumer sector, China's retail sales rose 1.1% year on year in September. Growth accelerated from a 0.4% increase in August, according to the bureau's data. The September reading exceeded a forecast of 0.5% shown on the Trading Economics calendar. The National Bureau of Statistics' official schedule sets Monday, 16 November as the scheduled date for the next monthly retail sales report.