The State Administration for Industry and Commerce ("SAIC") has recently distributed the Circular on Launching the Red Shield Quality and Legal Right Protection Action in 2018 (the "Circular").
The Circular lays out requirements in six respects, including "focusing on key tasks and strengthening regulation and law enforcement in an all-round manner", "urging business operators to fulfil their subject responsibilities for quality according to the law" and "intensifying random inspections to look at the quality of commodities in the circulation sector". Further, the Circular notes that efforts in checking the quality of goods in the circulation sector in 2018 will focus on six major categories of products, including "household appliances", "clothing, shoes and hats", "decorative and finishing materials", "children products", "auto parts", and "auxiliary devices for the disabled". In addition, the Circular expressly states that, should any case is established during the random inspection of the quality of commodities in the circulation sector, information on the administrative penalty must be made public on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System according to the law, and gathered together under the name of the business operator concerned; furthermore, efforts will be stepped up to crack down more severely on certain violations, such as infringements of consumers' personal data emerging in relevant service sectors, cheating consumers while offering maintenance, after-sales, intermediate services and others alike, and making a false or misleading promotion of goods or services.