Which advertising words are banned in China?

Your English site probably says “leading”, “best in class” or “No. 1”. Those words are ordinary marketing in most countries, and they’re the first thing to check on a Chinese page.

The lists online are long, old and unofficial. So this guide starts from the legal text, then looks at what regulators did.

It’s part of our guide to the legal basics of a website in China.

Which advertising words are banned?

Article 9(3) of the Advertising Law bans three named terms and anything that means the same: 国家级 (national-level), 最高级 (highest-grade) and 最佳 (best).¹

There’s no official list beyond that. SAMR, China’s market regulator, wrote a 2023 enforcement guide that repeats the three terms, and Junhe notes it neither defines nor lists them.²³

So every list you find is someone’s reading of the law. Here is what we could trace to a real source:

Chinese term	Meaning	Where it comes from	Our reading
最佳, 最高级, 国家级	Best, highest-grade, national-level	The law 1	Named
最	Most, -est	Fang Linfu case 11	High
第一	Number one, first	Junhe, 2026 guide 34	High
首选	First choice	Sichuan case, 2025 9	High
第一品牌, 全国第一家, 十大品牌	First brand, first in the nation, top ten brands	Nanjing investigation, 2018 10	High
领先, 无与伦比	Leading, unmatched	Junhe: disputed, varies by region 3. 全国领先 also named in Nanjing 10	Contested
顶尖	Top-tier	Junhe: hard to substantiate 3	Needs proof

Article 9 lists 10 other items, such as the national flag, state agency names and discrimination.¹

Political and map issues belong to our guide on sensitive content.

Some sectors face word limits of their own:

• Medical, drugs and devices: no guaranteed efficacy or safety, no cure rates, no comparisons.¹
• Health supplements: no disease claims, no comparison with drugs.¹
• Other products: no treatment claims or medical terms.¹
• Education and training: no guaranteed admission, exam or certificate results.¹
• Investment: no promised returns, no “risk-free”.¹

When can you still use these words?

You can when the term doesn’t point at the product you sell, or when it states a provable fact. The 2023 guide sets out both groups, and each comes with conditions.²

This guide steers regulators and isn’t a statute. Its text says it’s for local regulators to consult.²

Plain company information usually isn’t advertising at all. Your name, logo, founding date and business scope on your site fall outside, if they don’t promote products.²

An absolute term in that information that you can’t prove can still be pursued under other laws.²

Junhe warns that promoting company strength can still count as indirect promotion.³

Situation	Guide article	Copy that fits
Service attitude, philosophy, culture, wishes	Art. 5(1)	“We treat every client as our most important one”
A goal you pursue	Art. 5(2)	“We strive to offer the best service”
Unrelated to product performance or quality, not misleading	Art. 5(3)	Depends on context, so take advice
Comparison within your own range	Art. 6(1)	“Our lightest model so far”
Usage tips	Art. 6(2)	“Best stored below 25°C”
Grades from official standards	Art. 6(3)	A grade name, with its basis
Product name, trademark, patent	Art. 6(4)	The registered name used to identify the product
Awards assessed under state rules	Art. 6(5)	The award’s exact title
Facts limited by time and place: order, sales, market share	Art. 6(6)	See the next section

The example copy is ours, for illustration only. It isn’t from the guide.

Two conditions apply. The Article 6 cases must not mislead consumers or belittle competitors. And if you can’t prove the claim, the exception falls away.²

Can you still say “No. 1” in China?

Rarely, and less often since June 2026. SAMR’s citation guide closes the main route, which was to shrink a market until you led it.⁴

The 2023 guide allowed sales or market-share facts limited by time and place.² Han Kun describes companies inventing tiny categories to claim first place.⁴

Article 13 of the new guide covers “highest” and “best” claims, and “first” in sales, revenue or market share. Any one of these cases now blocks the exception:⁴⁵²¹

• The area is smaller than a province.
• The category is narrower than China’s national industry classification or a similar standard.
• The product has no dedicated national or industry standard.
• Anything else outside the 2023 exception.

The third test can bite if your category has no Chinese standard. The text we read doesn’t say how foreign standards or regions count.

The guide’s rules reach beyond third-party data. Other requirements for a “No. 1” claim:

Requirement	Rule
Name your source	Law, Art. 11; web sources need the access path 15
Keep notes legible	Guide, Art. 10 4
No fine print that narrows the claim	Guide, Art. 11 4
Commissioned data counts as cited	Guide, Art. 17 4
Your own data can omit a source	But it must meet Arts. 9 to 13 4
AI-generated data is your own	You carry the proof 4

The announcement reads June 3, and ChemLinked lists June 12, so we say June 2026.⁴⁶²¹ Han Kun points out that the guide adds no new legal duties, since it details existing law.⁴

What your existing copy turns into

Translated marketing copy can carry these words onto a Chinese page. A note on the GALA advertising lawyers’ blog singles out companies using online superlatives similar to versions they’ve used elsewhere in the world.¹⁶

Translators render these phrases faithfully, and that’s the problem. Our guide to machine translation covers the wider risk.

Typical English claim	Likely Chinese	Problem	Direction for the rewrite
The best CRM for SMEs	最佳	Named in the law	State what it does, and for whom
Industry-leading	行业领先	Contested term	State the measure and the date
World’s No. 1	全球第一	第一, needs Art. 13 tests	Give a sourced, dated fact, or drop it
The only platform that	唯一	“The only” listed as high risk 14	Describe the feature
100% safe	100%安全	“100%” and “the safest” listed as high risk 14	Give the test and its result
Award-winning	获奖	Fine as a word, needs proof	Name the award and the year
Trusted by the top brands	顶级品牌	Top-tier claim, implied ranking	Name clients only if you can

Comparisons need the same care. Article 13 of the Advertising Law bans disparaging other businesses’ goods or services.¹

Does this reach a site run from outside China?

Nobody we read settles this. Article 2 covers commercial advertising “within the territory” of the PRC, and Article 44 extends the law to the internet.¹ SAMR’s Internet Advertising Measures repeat the same territorial words.²² None of them mentions a foreign site.

Published views go further than the text:

Source	Position
Advertising Law, Art. 2 1	Advertising within the territory of the PRC
Internet Advertising Measures, Art. 2 22	Same territorial words, for websites and apps
AppInChina, August 2026 14	Applies to advertising activities in mainland China
AppInChina, July 2026 15	“Within or targeted towards” the PRC, no provision cited
GALA blog, March 2023 16	Takes no position on reach, flags online copy reused from elsewhere

The words “targeted towards” don’t appear in the Article 2 wording we read. Language, currency or a .cn domain may matter, but we found no official test.

Every case we read involved a business in China or a Shanghai company related to the brand. We found no case against an advertiser with no presence there. That’s an absence in our reading, not proof of safety.

Write your Chinese pages as if the law applies, and ask a local adviser about your own structure.

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What does a mistake cost?

The statutory fine for an advertiser is RMB 200,000 to 1 million, with an order to stop. In serious cases the business license can also be revoked.¹

The two website cases we could follow to the end closed without a fine. That’s two cases, not a rate.

The 2023 guide tells regulators to weigh content, context, harm and intent.² It offers two routes to no penalty:²

• First use (Art. 9): minor harm and prompt correction. Regulators may waive the penalty.
• Your own website (Art. 10): brief or low readership, no harm, prompt correction. Regulators are told to waive it. With minor harm, they may reduce it.

AllBright notes that the final text widened the second route to self-run websites.²⁰ Article 11 generally removes this comfort for health efficacy, investment returns and education claims.²

Article 12 lets regulators publish lists of minor violations exempt from penalty.² The Kaifeng decision relied on Henan’s.⁸

Case	Wording	Medium	Outcome
Yibin company, 2025 9	首选	Company website	No fine, wording deleted
Kaifeng company, 2024 8	最佳, 最理想	Product pages	No fine, correction order
Canada Goose related company, 2021 12	“Best and warmest”	Advertising	RMB 450,000
Nanjing websites, 2018 10	第一品牌, 全国领先	Company websites	Case opened, outcome not reported
Fang Linfu shop, 2018 11	最好吃, 最优秀	Shop signs, bags	RMB 200,000 cut to 100,000 by the courts

Both the Yibin and Kaifeng cases began with a tip-off, so someone reads these pages.⁸⁹

China Briefing cites Canada Goose as an absolute-terms case.¹³ China Justice Observer frames it as false advertising, tied to a claim the facts didn’t support.¹²

That’s the second risk. Junhe notes that an allowed word can still be false advertising.³

How common is enforcement? Junhe found over 4,000 penalties in one unnamed database in March 2023.³

For all advertising violations, SAMR counted 44,521 cases and RMB 252 million in fines and confiscations in 2025.¹⁹

DLA Piper reports a six-month campaign from March 2026 naming terms such as “No. 1”, “best” and “leading”.⁷ We haven’t seen its results.

How to review your Chinese pages

Check every text a Chinese visitor can read, then decide term by term. You can run this before you publish, whoever translated the site.

1. Collect the text. Include page titles, meta descriptions, headings, image text, PDFs and alt text.
2. Search for risky strings. Start with 最, 第一, 首, 唯一, 顶, 领先, 全球 and 国家级.
3. Ask what each term points at. Your product, or your attitude and goals?
4. Match it to an exception. If none fits, rewrite.
5. File your proof. Keep the source, date and scope for each claim you keep.
6. Send what remains to an adviser. A local adviser should clear every absolute term that stays.

1. Does it target your product?

   No: can stay if proven (art. 5).

2. Yes: art. 6 exception?

   No: rewrite.

3. Yes: proof on file and art. 13 tests for a No. 1?

   No: rewrite.

4. Yes

   Validation by a local adviser.

We found no source that deals with title tags or meta descriptions specifically. They describe your page in search results, so we’d treat them as part of it.

Our guide to translating your website shows where this review fits.

What about ads and keywords?

Paid ads pass a second filter, and a platform’s approval isn’t legal clearance. AppInChina makes that point, and adds that platform rules can be stricter than the law.¹⁴

Croud said in 2020 that Baidu and WeChat auto-reject copy containing 最.¹⁷ That’s one agency’s report, and we found no official Baidu page to confirm it.

The Internet Advertising Measures also require paid search listings to be labeled “广告” (advertisement) and kept apart from organic results. That duty sits with the ad publisher.²²

Our guide to advertising in China covers the channels.

SEO raises a harder question. Chinese buyers may search for 最好的 plus your product, the same word you need to keep off the page. We found no rule or case on this.

The bottom line

No official list exists, so don’t look for one. Search your Chinese pages for superlatives, and keep only what fits an exception and what you can prove.

“No. 1” claims got much harder in June 2026.

Whether this reaches a foreign site is unsettled, so write as if it does.

How Index in China can help

We translate your site into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer and work on getting it indexed by Chinese search engines.

We aren’t lawyers, so we don’t clear your claims, and we’ll tell you if your copy needs a local adviser. See what we do.

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