---
title: "China's 2026 Draft E-Commerce Law Amendment: From Marketplace Transactions to Platform-Economy Governance"
author: "DCC Editorial"
published: 2026-07-04T09:30:00.000Z
url: https://datacompliancechina.com/posts/ecommerce-law-2026-amendment-draft-platform-governance/
description: "On July 4, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Commerce released the Draft Amendment to the E-Commerce Law for public comment, with comments due August 4, 2026. The draft has 20 articles and, according to the official notice and Xinhua Q&A, moves in five directions: expanding the law's adjustment scope beyond platforms and in-platform operators to other platform-economy participants; strengthening the platform responsibility system with richer, more graduated regulatory tools; building an integrated supervision mechanism for cross-sector platform operations, including consistent online/offline business supervision and stronger department and central-local coordination; targeting prominent illegal conduct in e-commerce; and deepening open cooperation by aligning rules, regulation, management and standards with international practice, supporting industry self-discipline and orderly outbound expansion, and adding countermeasure tools to protect Chinese enterprises. DCC reads the amendment as an attempt to reposition the E-Commerce Law from a transaction/platform statute into a platform-economy governance statute, with operational implications for platform rulemaking, merchant and worker protection, consumer governance, data/network security clauses, competition compliance, and outbound platform expansion."
tags: ["e-commerce-law", "platform-economy", "platform-governance", "samr", "mofcom", "draft-for-comment", "consumer-protection", "platform-workers", "outbound-ecommerce"]
laws_cited: ["online-trading-platform-rules-measures", "live-streaming-ecommerce-measures", "anti-unfair-competition-law", "pipl", "csl"]
domains: ["data-economy", "enforcement"]
original_title: "市场监管总局、商务部就 《中华人民共和国电子商务法（修正草案征求意见稿）》面向社会公开征求意见"
original_author: "State Administration for Market Regulation; Ministry of Commerce"
original_publication: "电子商务法研究 WeChat Official Account; reposted from SAMR official website"
original_url: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/pOVF1s1lXFjKtQRk-sw6mA"
source_language: "zh"
---

> **Source: Data Compliance China** — https://datacompliancechina.com/posts/ecommerce-law-2026-amendment-draft-platform-governance/ · China data law, translated and annotated for overseas counsel. Cite as: Data Compliance China, "China's 2026 Draft E-Commerce Law Amendment: From Marketplace Transactions to Platform-Economy Governance", https://datacompliancechina.com/posts/ecommerce-law-2026-amendment-draft-platform-governance/
> *Editor's Note - DCC.*
>
> On **July 4, 2026**, the **State Administration for Market Regulation
> (SAMR)** and the **Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM)** released the
> *Draft Amendment to the E-Commerce Law* (中华人民共和国电子商务法（修正草案征求意见稿）)
> for public comment. Comments are due **August 4, 2026**.
>
> The WeChat item archived for this brief is a repost from the SAMR website.
> DCC cross-checked it against the public notice as carried by The Paper, and
> against the Xinhua Q&A by the SAMR Online Transaction Supervision Department
> and MOFCOM E-Commerce Department officials. This is a **brief of the
> consultation and official explanation**, not a full article-by-article
> translation of the draft PDF.

## The one-line read

This is not just a clean-up of the 2018 E-Commerce Law. The draft tries to
move the statute from **marketplace transaction law** into **platform-economy
governance law**.

That shift matters for data-compliance teams because China's platform rules no
longer sit in a separate consumer-protection or market-regulation lane. The
same platform governance stack now carries personal-information protection,
network and data security, algorithmic and rulemaking fairness, merchant
governance, worker protection, competition policy, and outbound platform
strategy.

## The consultation

The draft amendment has **20 articles**. The official notice gives three
feedback routes:

- through the SAMR website "Interactive - Consultation and Survey" channel, or
  the MOFCOM website "Interactive Exchange - Solicitation of Opinions" channel;
- by email to **dzswf@samr.gov.cn** or **dzswf@mofcom.gov.cn**; or
- by postal mail to SAMR's Online Transaction Supervision Department or
  MOFCOM's E-Commerce Department.

The feedback deadline is **August 4, 2026**.

## Why revise the E-Commerce Law now?

In the official Q&A, the regulators give four reasons.

First, platforms are described as the **key actors** in the platform economy,
with a strong social attribute. The law needs to strengthen platform social
responsibility and better balance platforms, in-platform operators, workers and
consumers.

Second, platforms are both business operators and managers of online markets.
The regulators want a fuller platform liability system that presses platforms
to strengthen compliance and helps other market participants build a healthier
online market environment.

Third, the policy frame is industrial upgrading: the draft is meant to move
platform economy participants from "traffic first" and price competition toward
innovation and quality.

Fourth, e-commerce is treated as a field for institutional opening. The draft
is intended to add or improve provisions on open cooperation, industry
self-regulation, countermeasures, consultation and dispute resolution, so that
Chinese e-commerce businesses can expand abroad in a more orderly legal
environment.

## The five change vectors

The official notice and Q&A describe the draft through five directions:

| Direction | What changes |
|---|---|
| Expanded scope | The law would no longer focus only on platforms and in-platform operators; it would further define rights and obligations of other platform-economy participants. |
| Platform responsibility | The draft enriches regulatory tools beyond fixed fines and orders to suspend business for rectification, building a more graduated responsibility system. |
| Integrated supervision | Cross-sector platform operations would be supervised through a more coordinated mechanism, including consistent rules for online and offline business, stronger department coordination, and central-local coordination. |
| Prominent illegal conduct | The draft targets recurring e-commerce violations that have generated strong public concern. |
| Open cooperation and outbound protection | It pushes alignment of rules, regulation, management and standards with international practice, strengthens industry self-discipline, guides orderly outbound expansion, and adds countermeasure tools to protect enterprise rights. |

## What DCC is watching

### 1. "Platform" becomes a governance position, not only a marketplace role

The original E-Commerce Law was built around electronic-commerce operators,
especially e-commerce platform operators and in-platform operators. The draft's
scope language suggests a wider platform-economy perimeter. That matters
because many regulatory duties now attach to the platform's **governance
position**: it sets rules, ranks traffic, allocates data access, disciplines
merchants, designs consumer flows, and structures labor-like relationships.

For counsel, the core question is no longer only "is this entity an e-commerce
platform operator?" It is also "does this entity exercise platform governance
power over another participant's market access, pricing, traffic, data, or
rights protection?"

### 2. Platform rules move closer to hard-law supervision

DCC has already archived the **Measures for the Supervision and Administration
of Online Trading Platform Rules**, effective February 1, 2026. Those Measures
require platform rules to be published, searchable, opened for comment before
major changes, retained historically, and paired with appeal channels including
human review where AI alone made the decision.

The E-Commerce Law amendment appears to move in the same direction at the
statutory level. If adopted, platform service agreements, merchant rules,
consumer dispute rules, personal-information rules, IP rules, fee rules and
ranking/traffic rules will be harder to treat as ordinary private contracts.
They are becoming regulated governance instruments.

### 3. Data and network security remain embedded in platform governance

The official explanation is not framed as a data-law reform. But the operating
surface is data-heavy. Platforms govern personal information, transaction data,
merchant operating data, ratings, logistics data, advertising data and
algorithmic traffic allocation.

The existing Platform Rules Measures already require platform rules to address
information security, personal-information processing, third-party providers'
network-data security obligations, and minors' online protection. The draft
E-Commerce Law amendment should be read with that rulemaking layer: platform
data compliance is now partly a question of whether the platform's own rules
allocate data rights and obligations lawfully and fairly.

### 4. The liability model is becoming more graduated

The official Q&A emphasizes "proportionality between violation and punishment"
and a multi-level legal responsibility system. That is a response to a common
problem in platform regulation: flat penalties are too blunt for day-to-day
governance failures, but business-suspension tools are too heavy for routine
compliance defects.

Expect more intermediate tools: interviews, orders to correct, public
disclosure, compliance reports, transitional periods for rule changes,
targeted restrictions, and more precise allocation of responsibility between
platforms and in-platform operators. The exact tools depend on the final text,
but the direction is clear.

### 5. Outbound e-commerce becomes a legal-policy topic

The draft's outward-facing language is unusual for a domestic platform statute.
The regulators speak of aligning rules and standards with international
practice, guiding orderly outbound expansion, and adding countermeasure tools.

For Chinese platforms and overseas counterparties, that signals a two-sided
compliance agenda:

- outbound Chinese platforms will need stronger internal governance for
  foreign market entry, foreign consumer protection, foreign data rules and
  cross-border dispute handling; and
- foreign trade or regulatory actions affecting Chinese e-commerce enterprises
  may be met through domestic legal countermeasures once the final law supplies
  the tool.

## Operational checklist

For platform operators or investors with China exposure, the draft points to
six workstreams worth starting before the final text:

- map all participant roles, including platforms, in-platform operators,
  third-party service providers, workers, consumers and other platform-economy
  participants;
- inventory platform rules and identify which ones affect important rights or
  market access;
- test the rule-change process: public notice, comment solicitation,
  transition period, historical retention and appeals;
- review fee, traffic, ranking, restriction and penalty rules for fairness and
  proportionality;
- align personal-information, network-data security and minors-protection
  clauses across platform rules, privacy policies and merchant agreements; and
- for outbound business, document the governance path for overseas legal
  compliance, dispute handling and regulatory escalation.

The draft is still a consultation text, so clause numbers and tools may move.
The direction is stable enough to log: China's e-commerce platform law is
being pulled into the broader platform-economy governance project.

---

- *SAMR / MOFCOM, public-consultation notice on the Draft Amendment to the E-Commerce Law, July 4, 2026; reposted by 电子商务法研究. [WeChat source](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/pOVF1s1lXFjKtQRk-sw6mA).*
- *Public notice and attachment links as carried by The Paper. [Source](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_33516946).*
- *Xinhua Q&A with SAMR and MOFCOM department officials, as carried by The Beijing News. [Source](https://www.bjnews.com.cn/detail/1783127096129424.html).*

*Not legal advice. This brief is DCC's structural reading of a public-comment draft and official explanatory materials; the final statutory text may differ.*