China: Consumer Trading & Unfair Trading

The radiation leaks in Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant (caused by the earthquake-tsunami in Japan on 11 March) has made consumers in China paranoid about the salt they will consume in the near future. Once news of the leak in the nuclear plant broke, there was a mad "scramble" to purchase table salt – as Chinese consumers were concerned that in the near future, the sea water around China would be contaminated as a result of the radiation leakage.

Partly driven by the QQ-360 disputes (see our article entitled " The QQ / 360 Disputes - Who, What, Where, When and Preliminary Antitrust Analysis"), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released the Interim Rules for Supervision and Management of Internet Information Service Market (Draft for Comment) (Draft Rules), on 12 January 2011.

As the Spring Festival approaches, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has ordered local price authorities to step up enforcement efforts against price fraud conducts by retail stores, upon widespread consumer complaints