Consumers shop at the food section of a supermarket in Huaian, East China's Jiangsu Province, on December 31, 2025. Photo: VCG

China's market regulators nationwide handled 43.866 million consumer complaints, reports, and inquiries through the 12315 platform, hotline, and other means in 2025, and recovered 4.35 billion yuan ($630.1 million) in economic losses for consumers, effectively safeguarding their legitimate rights and interests, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said on Sunday, the World Consumer Rights Day, also known as "3.15" in China.

The "3.15" activities act as a deterrent against illegal activities while also heightening public awareness of consumer rights. After "3.15," both industry players and authorities usually move fast in their responses, signaling the enormous stakes tied to regaining market credibility and defending consumer rights, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the online dispute resolution mechanisms have expanded, involving 279,000 enterprises and handling 12.325 million disputes at the source, making the protection of consumer rights more convenient and efficient, according to a statement released by the SAMR on Sunday.

Overall, the figures for 2025 demonstrated stronger consumer awareness, improved regulatory efficiency, and targeted progress in high-growth areas such as e-commerce, food delivery, and intelligent products - while highlighting ongoing challenges in after-sales service, contracts, transparency, and realistic marketing in emerging sectors.

In total, the 12315 platform handled 20.366 million complaints in 2025, exceeding 20 million for the first time, reflecting rising consumer rights awareness, said the SAMR.  

Top issues included after-sales service, with 5.347 million cases, accounting for 26.3 percent of the total, 3.972 million cases of quality problems, accounting for 19.5 percent and 2.385 million cases of food safety, accounting for 11.7 percent, according to SAMR data.

The SAMR also pointed out that complaints involving service issues grew at a faster pace. Commodity complaints totaled 13.2 million, up 8.1 percent year-on-year, accounting for 64.8 percent of total complaints, while service complaints reached 7.166 million, up 11.7 percent year-on-year, showing faster growth.

As online shopping has become an important part of consumption, accounting for about 30 percent of total retail sales in 2025, online shopping complaints and reports to the 12315 platform also increased, SAMR statistics showed.

The 12315 platform handled 15.067 million online shopping complaints and reports in 2025, up 14.3 percent year-on-year, accounting for 56.9 percent of total complaints and reports. 

"The online consumption regulatory environment in 2026 will become stricter, fundamentally promoting healthy industry development and safeguarding consumers' legitimate rights in the digital era," Cao Lei, a member of Zhejiang Consumer Council and director of the China e-Business Research Center, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Food delivery was also in the spotlight, as there were ongoing regulatory efforts to curb disorderly competition in the sector. On December 4, 2025, the SAMR issued the national standard of basic requirements for food delivery platform service management.

On January 9, the anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition body of China's market supervision authority formally launched an investigation into market competition conditions in the food delivery platform sector to curb cutthroat "rat race" competition.

According to the SAMR's Sunday statement, food delivery complaints and reports reached 505,000 cases in 2025, up 14.1 percent year-on-year. In the third quarter, intense "subsidy wars" drove surges in orders but strained service capacity, pushing complaints up 23.8 percent year-on-year - the year's peak. 

Meanwhile, complaints in intelligent consumption showed fast growth as the smart consumption era arrived, with intelligent features as a key selling point for many products, the SAMR said.

The 12315 platform received 152,000 smart device complaints and reports, up 26.6 percent year-on-year. Complaints and reports involving drones grew 45.5 percent, while those of smart bands were up 39.4 percent, and those of smart glasses rose 37.7 percent.

Complaints and reports involving smartwatches, smart home devices, drones, smart accessories, and smart robots accounted for 87.5 percent of the total. Common issues included overhyped "smart" features, software glitches combined with hardware faults and lack of unified standards and quality norms in emerging categories, said the SAMR.


Global Times