China’s SAMR Issues Guidelines for Anti-monopoly Compliance of Internet Platforms

On February 13, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) issued the Guidelines for Anti-monopoly Compliance on Internet Platforms (the “Guidelines”), which comprise five chapters and thirty-eight articles. The Guidelines are designated “to support and guide platform operators in effectively preventing antitrust compliance risks, improving antitrust compliance management systems, protecting the lawful rights and interests of relevant parties, maintaining fair market competition order, and promoting innovation and healthy development in the platform economy.” 

The term “internet platforms” as defined in the Guidelines refers to “a commercial organizational form that enables interdependent bilateral or multilateral entities to engage in transactions or other activities under rules provided by a specific carrier through network information technology, thereby jointly creating value.” The operators of such platforms are defined as “operators that provide internet platform services such as business premises, transaction matching, and information exchange to natural persons, legal persons, and other market entities.”

Chapter II of the Guidelines, “Risk Identification” systematically covers monopoly risks, including monopoly agreements (such as horizontal and vertical monopoly agreements); abuse of market dominance position (such as unfair high/low pricing, sales below cost, refusal to deal, tying, tying with other unreasonable conditions, or differential treatment); undertaking concentration; and abuse of administrative power to exclude or restrict competition.

Taking the monopoly agreements as an example, the Guidelines provide platform operators with specific guidance to avoid entering into horizontal monopoly agreements, vertical monopoly agreements, and organizing or assisting operators within the platform to form monopoly agreements. For instance, in order to avoid entering into “horizontal monopoly agreements such as fixing or altering prices, restricting production or sales volumes, dividing markets, limiting new technologies or products, or jointly boycotting transactions,” platform operators in competitive relationships should avoid the following practices: "(1) Communicating or exchanging competitively sensitive information through meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails, shared documents, instant messaging tools, shared data pools, interoperability protocols, cloud storage platforms, artificial intelligence, etc.; (2) Collecting and exchanging competitively sensitive information such as pricing models, commission rates, preferential policies, customer lists, traffic allocation mechanisms, and R&D, investment, production, marketing, or promotion strategies; (3) Using data, algorithms, technology, or platform rules to achieve coordinated actions in user classification, dynamic pricing, traffic allocation, or product ranking."

It is worth noting that the Guidelines also incorporate eight risk examples to better illustrate the identification of antitrust compliance risks related to monopoly agreements or abuse of market dominance position. These include algorithm collusion among platforms, organizing assistance for intra-platform operators to form monopoly agreements, unfair high pricing by platforms, below-cost sales by platforms, blocking and shutting out competitors, “exclusive choice” practices, “lowest price across all platforms,” and platform discrimination.Among them, the first two examples primarily concern monopoly agreements. For instance, “organizing assistance for intra-platform operators to form monopoly agreements” refers to “platform operators organizing or coordinating competing intra-platform operators to form horizontal agreements or providing essential support or creating critical conditions to substantially facilitate such agreements. For example, platform operator A signs identical or similar price adjustment agreements with competing operators within the platform. During this process, the platform facilitates communication among the intra-platform operators, enabling the exchange of competitively sensitive information, ultimately resulting in coordinated pricing behavior that excludes or restricts market competition.”

The latter six risk examples focus on abusing market dominance position. Taking “blocking and shutting out competitors” as an example, it refers to “a platform operator with a market dominance position abusing its position without justifiable grounds to block or shut out counterparties at the application layer, transport layer, network layer, or other levels, thereby preventing them from entering the relevant market and excluding or restricting market competition. For example, platform operator A, holding a market dominance position, without justifiable grounds, restricts link redirection or port access, thereby preventing transaction counterparts from conducting specific business operations or participating in market competition.”

In terms of risk management, Chapter III of the Guidelines guides the platform operators in establishing robust risk management systems through dimensions such as risk assessment, risk alerts, risk prevention and control, platform rule review, algorithm screening, cooperation with investigations, compliance rectification, and compliance incentives. The relevant content includes but is not limited to: encouraging platform operators to establish risk assessment indicator systems and implement categorized and tiered management based on risk assessments, adopting different measures for risks of varying categories and levels; encouraging platform operators to implement role-based and tiered risk alerts for employees, particularly for specific personnel (such as legal representatives, directors, senior management, etc.); guiding platform operators to conduct corresponding anti-monopoly risk prevention and control before important matters, during business operations, and after significant transactions; listing key areas for platform operators to focus on during platform rule reviews and algorithm screenings: examples for the former include account management rules, end-user policies, agreements with platform-based operators, and management measures whereas examples for the latter include various pricing algorithms, recommendation systems, ranking logic, and advertising placement strategies used within internet platforms; reminding platform operators, their employees, and platform-based businesses to cooperate with antitrust investigations by providing truthful evidence materials as requested and implementing required compliance rectifications; advising platform operators facing antitrust investigations to apply for compliance incentives from antitrust authorities under relevant regulations.

Chapter IV of the Guidelines addresses compliance safeguards, assisting platform operators in establishing robust antitrust compliance mechanisms through measures such as compliance management bodies, compliance reporting, compliance training, compliance assessments, compliance supervision, and compliance management informatization. The relevant content includes but is not limited to encouraging platform operators to provide necessary resources for the independent operation of compliance management bodies and to establish a Chief Compliance Officer position; encouraging platform operators to establish antitrust compliance reporting mechanisms and antitrust compliance training mechanisms and to establish sound personnel assessment and reward/punishment mechanisms for antitrust compliance; encouraging platform operators to establish mechanisms for handling and responding to antitrust compliance reports, as well as external evaluation mechanisms involving platform users such as operators, consumers, employees, and independent third parties; and encouraging platform operators to enhance the informatization of compliance management.

 Comment
Although the Guidelines provide only general guidance for the internet platform operators and are not mandatory, their detailed enumeration of potential antitrust compliance risks that may arise on internet platforms, along with corresponding risk management and compliance safeguards, can assist platform operators in accurately identifying potential antitrust risks and strengthening their own antitrust compliance management.

In addition, the Guidelines demonstrate strong relevance and effectiveness. For instance, by integrating the industry characteristics and business models of internet platforms and drawing on accumulated antitrust regulatory experience, it enumerates eight potential antitrust risks platform operators may face. Such examples encompass numerous classic platform monopolistic practices observed in practice, such as “exclusive choice” practices, “lowest price across all platforms,” and platform discrimination. Taking the “exclusive choice” practice as an example, the guideline first summarizes its defining characteristics as “A platform operator with a market dominance position abuses its position by compelling transaction counterparts to choose between it and other competitive platform operators without legitimate justification and enforces such ‘exclusive choice’ through punitive or incentivizing measures, thereby excluding or restricting market competition.” A further illustrative example follows: “Platform operator A, holding a market dominance position, demands that platform merchants pledge not to cooperate with competing platforms without justifiable grounds. It then punishes non-compliant merchants through search demotion, product delisting, traffic restrictions, or security deposit deductions, thereby restricting merchants' freedom of choice and achieving the effect of excluding or restricting market competition.” Thus, these examples translate abstract rule descriptions into concrete business scenarios, not only delineating clear boundaries for platform operators but also facilitating self-correction and risk prevention.

In short, the release of the “Guidelines for Anti-monopoly Compliance of Internet Platforms” represents a significant refinement of China's regulatory framework for the internet platform economy. It provides comprehensive compliance guidance for the internet platform enterprises while contributing to the maintenance of a fair and competitive market order.