China’s market regulator has unveiled stricter rules for online food delivery and e-commerce food sellers that will force platforms to verify merchant credentials, conduct periodic on-site checks and prominently display licensing information to consumers. The regulations, published by the State Administration for Market Regulation and taking effect on June 1, are aimed at eliminating “ghost” delivery merchants that operate without real premises or valid permits and at making platforms legally accountable as the “gatekeepers” of food safety.
The measures require platforms to carry out substantive checks of merchants’ food business licences and to verify that listed addresses and operations match reality. Platforms must perform a full re-verification of merchant addresses and licence details at least once every six months, convert static entry checks into continuous lifecycle management and cross-check their records against provincial regulator databases to prevent fake or expired licences from slipping online.
The rules also clarify duties for merchants themselves: sellers must operate from a real, fixed storefront, ensure that their advertised business scope matches their licences, keep raw-material control and facility maintenance up to standard, and in the case of no-dine-in outlets, display a clear sign indicating that they do not offer on-site consumption. Platforms will be required to publish merchant qualification information conspicuously, set up complaint channels, deploy intelligent monitoring and rapid-response mechanisms, and include merchant data in risk-control lists.
Penalties for non-compliance have been substantially increased. Fines for platforms and merchants can reach up to 200,000 yuan; in aggravated cases where a platform leader intentionally breaks the law and causes severe consequences, individual fines may be imposed at between one and ten times the person’s prior-year income. The rules will also subject food-delivery services to the broader e-commerce regulatory framework, tightening obligations on data reporting, sharing and consumer protection.
Regulators framed the rules as a response to pervasive problems discovered during inspections: false addresses, doctored photos and falsified licences that allow unvetted operators to masquerade as legitimate businesses online. The delivery market has become central to China’s catering industry — annual market size is projected to top 1.4 trillion yuan and now accounts for roughly a quarter of restaurant sector revenues — making the integrity of delivery channels a material public-health and consumer-confidence issue.
For platforms, the new standards mark a turning point from traffic-driven aggregation to duties-laden operation. Regulators explicitly warned platforms that collecting commissions is no longer a sufficient role; they must undertake real oversight of merchant quality, from admissions checks to ongoing inspections. The rules aim both to break down data silos between platforms and provincial regulators and to make platforms the first line of defence against unsafe operators.
Implementation will present practical challenges. The requirement for regular on-site checks and cross-jurisdictional data verification will impose significant operational costs and logistical complexity, especially for platforms with millions of merchants and for vendors in smaller towns. There is also a risk that stricter entry and ongoing compliance will accelerate consolidation in the sector, favouring large platforms and better-capitalised chains while squeezing small independent operators.
Internationally, the policy signals Beijing’s continued push to reshape platform governance and to place public-interest obligations on digital intermediaries. Observers will watch how strictly the rules are enforced and whether the outcome is a measurable improvement in food-safety incidents, or unintended consequences such as reduced market choice and higher prices for consumers.
Overall, the regulations convert long-standing enforcement gaps into concrete operational and legal demands on platforms and merchants. If effectively implemented, they could reduce the incidence of unlicensed sellers and raise baseline standards across China’s vast food-delivery market; if implemented unevenly, they could disproportionately burden smaller vendors and complicate access for consumers in lower-tier cities.