Analysis Of China's E-commerce Legislation

As a brandnew business model emerging from the Internet, Electronic commerce (hereinafter referred to as E-commerce) represents a business trend that will shape the way people trade with one another in the future. It has been widely acknowledged that E-commerce constitutes one of the greatest growth points of global economy in early 21st century. As it flourishes, E-commerce will inevitably have an impact on every part of the society. Notably, its unique operational mechanism poses significant challenges to the existing business regulatory framework in such areas as technology, finance and transaction security. It relates to the whole array of legal issues involving civil law, commerce law, criminal law, economic law, administrative law and procedural law, and lashes upon the international legal system. E-commerce can hardly develop smoothly without appropriate laws and regulations. Therefore, legislative efforts will enable and safeguard the development of E-commerce. In this context, E-commerce legislation has become a new subject of global interest.Promoting E-commerce is vital as it has a direct bearing on the development of China's national economy and the life of general public. In particular, China needs a full-fledged E-commerce to pursue its Independent Innovation Initiative and participate in international competition more effectively. However, in the absence of relevant laws and regulations, E-commerce has encountered sizable obstacles on its way to healthy development in China. As an emerging trade power, China needs to crack this bottleneck by proactively establishing a legal framework. Under such circumstances, China is facing an important legislative mission to timely prepare and adopt relevant laws and regulations that encourage, guide and protect E-commerce to move forward on the right legal track.This paper employs comparative study approach to put international E-commerce regulations in perspective. Following careful analysis of the state-of-play of China's E-commerce legislation and major problems, the paper conducts in-depth research into the principles, modalities and ways that China could potentially adopt in the E-commerce legislative process. Based on these research results, the paper puts forward some basic thoughts on how to design an E-commerce legal framework in China and lays down a number of concrete ideas and proposals.