Study On The Protection Of Consumers’ Rights And Interests In The Transmutation Of The Paradigm Of Unfairness Recognition

In the early stages of industrialization and trade liberalization,countries generally faced unfair competition problems such as counterfeiting,disparagement,and trade secret infringement directly against competitors.The anti-unfair competition law is designed to protect honest operators from commercial attacks by dishonest competitors.The Anti-unfair Competition Law of People’s Republic of China,promulgated in 1993,begins with the legislative purpose of protecting competitors,consumers,and the public interest in Article 1.The legislation has a lagging nature,and with the innovation of technology and changes in social environment,there are inevitably some problems in judicial practice.To meet the needs of market economy development,the 30 th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 12 th National People’s Congress amended the Anti-Unfair Competition Law on November 4,2017.The protection of consumers’ rights and interests has been in the hot spot of controversy in the process of revising the law against unfair competition.From the existing research results,the mainstream view still regards consumer protection as an important symbol of the modernization of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.Scholars point out that the early unfair competition law is an extension of tort law in the field of market competition,protecting the interests of individual competitors;while with the rise of the consumer protection movement,the trend of socialization of unfair competition law has become increasingly obvious,and the modern unfair competition law protects not only operators,but also consumers and the public or overall interests of society represented by the competition mechanism.There is no doubt that the Anti-Unfair Competition Law should protect consumers’ rights and interests,but what is the status of consumers under this Law? What is the status of consumers’ rights and interests under this Law? The above questions are related to the scope and legal nature of the law.The core of anti-unfair is to judge the legitimacy of the behavior of the market,and the historical origin of the paradigm of behavior determination and its changes can most intuitively reflect the changes of the law.This paper returns to the essence of unfair competition and analyzes the role of the "protection of competitors" paradigm and the "protection of competition" paradigm in the determination of consumer rights and interests from the perspective of the paradigm change of unfair competition and considers the legislative changes and judicial practice in China.In the light of the legislative changes and judicial practice,we will discuss the status of consumer protection in the anti-unfair competition law.The "protection of competitors" paradigm at the beginning of the anti-competitive law is far from being applicable to the current complex competitive environment,and China is now in the process of gradually shifting to the "protection of competition" paradigm,with the protection of the undistorted competitive order as the core,in which the rights and interests of consumers should be directly protected.In this paradigm,consumer rights and interests should be directly protected,and can be used as an independent criterion in the determination of unfair competition.This paper is divided into three parts,except for the "Introduction" and "Conclusion".The first part of the paper is a review of the paradigm of unfairness recognition in the anti-unfair competition law and the role of consumer protection in the process.The first part briefly reviews the original intent and development of the unfair competition law by discussing the background of the protection of competitors in the early anti-unfair competition law and the profound influence of the consumer movement on the purpose of the legislation;secondly,introduces the paradigm of protecting competition in the modernization process of the unfair competition law by discussing the essence of the paradigm of protecting competition,and analyzing the rationality of the transmutation of the conduct paradigm;finally,discusses the protection of consumers’ rights and interests under these two paradigms and the controversies in our academic circles.The second part discusses the establishment,development,and challenges of the concept of consumer protection in our legislation and judicial system.The first part discusses the development of the protection of consumer rights and interests in the Amendment to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the PRC and analyzes the exploration of consumer protection in China’s judicial practice;from the confusion and challenges in judicial practice,it points out that the protection of consumer rights and interests under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the PRC needs to be further improved.The third part discusses how to improve the protection of consumers’ rights and interests under the anti-unfair competition law system in China.Firstly,the differences between the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests Law are clarified in terms of the definition,legal nature and protection mechanism of consumers;secondly,the necessity of adding new connotation of consumers’ rights and interests is analyzed from the objective basis of reality and legislative suggestions are put forward;finally,some ideas on the construction of the system of consumer public interest litigation are proposed from the perspectives of plaintiff qualification and burden of proof.