On July 25, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) released a judicial directive to accelerate the establishment of a unified national market at a press conference. Yang Wanming, vice-president of the SPC attended the conference and gave detailed information.

Yang noted that the release of the directive was part of the judicial effort to implement the guidelines jointly issued by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council in April, in order to accelerate the establishment of a unified national market.

The directive focuses on "unification" from the following five perspectives: Strengthening unified and equal protection over market entities, such as unifying market access, intensifying equal protection over property rights, equal protection over both domestic and foreign entities, improving the rescue and withdrawal mechanism and timely cashing the rights and interests of winning entities. Fostering markets with unified factors and resources, such as supporting the development of a unified land market in urban and rural areas, a unified capital market, a technology and data market, and an energy and ecological environment market. Maintaining unified market trading rules in accordance with the law, such as optimizing judicial guarantee mechanisms for a better business environment and a fair and honest trading environment, supporting regional market integration, advancing the alignment of rules and regulations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan as well as the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, and the connection of Chinese laws and international rules. Propelling a high-level unification of commodity and service markets, such as intensifying IPR protection, protecting workers’ rights, and improving the quality of commodities and consumer services. Maintaining a unified market competition order, such as cracking down on monopolies and unfair competition, overseeing and supporting administrative organs to strengthen unified market supervision and law enforcement, punishing illegal and criminal acts that disrupt market order, and helping coordinate epidemic prevention and control and socioeconomic development.

Specific measures were introduced in the directive to facilitate the establishment of a unified national market. They included systematically integrating a slew of measures applied in judicial system reforms, intensifying the development of the one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service system, strengthening the internet judiciary and smart court construction, improving and unifying working mechanisms of law application, and focusing on team building and supportive measures.

Yang said the highlights of the directive can be summarized as coordinating all aspects of judicial work for all-round protection, involving all interested parties for integrated measure implementation, providing overall protection for every segment of the market, advancing law-based governance for both domestic and foreign parties, and matching macroscopic requirements with specific measures.