China Consumers' Association Releases 2023 Annual Report on Consumer Rights Protection

TapTechNews May 27th news, on May 27th, the China Consumers' Association released the Annual Report on the Protection Status of Chinese Consumers' Rights and Interests (2023) (hereinafter referred to as the annual report) in Beijing.

The report pointed out that in 2023, the national market regulatory authorities implemented a total of 5.604 million vehicle recalls and 9.832 million consumer product recalls; completed 4.728 million batches of food safety supervision and sampling inspections, and took off the shelves, sealed up and recalled 3,969 tons of food; in the Iron Fist operation in the livelihood field, a total of 565,000 various cases were handled, with a value of goods involved of 2.81 billion yuan. Laws were strictly enforced to crack down on 8 types of illegal behaviors such as illegally adding hypoglycemic and antihypertensive substances in food, counterfeit and shoddy fertilizers, false propaganda such as false orders and false reviews, false and illegal advertisements of miracle doctors and miracle drugs, production and sales of inferior gas appliances, illegal production and use of small boilers and unregistered elevators, infringement of consumers' rights and interests by using unfair format terms, counterfeiting of well-known brands and riding on the coattails of famous people and free-riding.

The annual report shows that in 2023, the national consumers' associations received a total of 1.3285 million consumer complaints, resolved 1.1274 million, with a complaint resolution rate of 84.86%, and recovered 1.37 billion yuan in economic losses for consumers. It actively promoted the optimization and upgrading of the complaint system and went online for trial operation of the National Consumers' Association Smart 315 on March 15 this year.

The annual report points out that there are still six prominent problems in the current protection work of consumers' rights and interests in China, which TapTechNews sorts out as follows:

First, the legislation related to consumption credit in the financial field is relatively lagging behind, and the basic rights and interests of consumers such as the right to know, the right to privacy, the right of revocation, and the right to prepay the loan in advance need better legal protection.

Second, the supply of consumer rights and interests protection systems in new consumption fields such as digital consumption is still insufficient. Consumption in fields such as intelligent terminals, smart home appliances, driverless, digital human services, generative artificial intelligence services, metaverse virtual scenarios, and blind box operations needs to accelerate the construction of legal systems.

Third, the new food production and operation model such as pre-made dishes needs to be tightened and regulated. Problems such as unfresh ingredients, insufficient flavor restoration, serious product homogeneity, low branding, and incomplete standards have caused consumers' concerns.

Fourth, there are many overlord clauses in medical cosmetology contracts, and tricks consumers with marketing. Problems such as beauty turning into disfigurement caused by black institutions and black doctors are in urgent need of sound regular supervision.

Fifth, under the digital background, the means of telecom fraud are constantly being renovated. Precise fraud with AI portraits and small-amount and multiple frauds make consumers hard to defend against. It is extremely urgent to increase the intensity of the whole-chain governance and effectively improve consumers' awareness and ability to prevent fraud.

Sixth, the relevant laws, regulations and standa rd specifications of live e-commerce and new network marketing need to be improved, and problems such as data fraud and vulgar product promotion and inducing private transactions on some platforms need to be tightened up for governance.