Towards A Chinese Civil Code

Currently, China is drafting its new Civil Code. Against this background, the Chinese legal community has shown a growing interest in various legal and legislative ideas from around the world. "Towards a Chinese Civil Code" aims at providing the necessary historical and comparative legal perspectives. The book addresses the following topics: property law, contract law, tort law and civil procedure.

This contribution provides the important and timely bilingual version of the Chinese Civil Code and the Supreme People’s Court’s Judicial Interpretation of the Temporal Effect of the Civil Code. Providing translations by a diverse group of esteemed legal scholars, on Contract Law, Tort Law, Marriage, Family and Succession Law, General and Personality Provisions and Property Law, this unique resource will be important for all those with an interest in Chinese Law.

This book is an English translation of the Draft Chinese Civil Code prepared by the Legislative Group of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences headed by Prof. Liang Huixing, which is officially mandated by the Legislative Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China.

This book is the first attempt in the English language to study and evaluate the new Chinese Civil Code.

This volume offers a unique, comprehensive view of the contents, context and potential of the Civil Code that in 2021 entered into force in the People’s Republic of China. The twenty-three essays herein collected, authored by distinguished Chinese and non-Chinese scholars, describe inner and outer perceptions about the Chinese Civil Code and analyze its likely impact within and outside the country. In so doing, they shed light not only on the comparative origins of current Chinese rules, but also on the potential influence that these rules may have in comparative terms in the future.

In modern times, the codification of the entire civil law has become a rare phenomenon. Nevertheless, the Chinese law-maker has decided to create the first Civil Code in the history of PRC and set out an ambitious timeline to achieve this goal. In the process of construction, the future Chinese Civil Code will principally follow the Pandectist System and, in particular, contain a General Part. On 15th March 2017, the General Part was enacted, as scheduled, in the form of a single statute for the time being. By 2020, the other books covering the law of personality, obligations, property law, family and estate law, should be codified as well. These books, together with the General Part, will form the future Civil Code. The purpose of this book is to provide a concise and in-depth practical guide to this new statute, namely the General Rules of Civil Law (GRCL). To this end, it seeks to deliver a general picture of the GRCL and to explore the important provisions in more detail. In addition, it strives to provide answers to the question of which laws apply in the case of conflict between the GRCL and other statutes. What is also equally important is to provide the readers with information about the origin of legal concepts in the GRCL and the process in which Chinese lawmakers decided to adopt or reject certain foreign legal concepts

A unique comparative analysis of Chinese contract law accessible to lawyers from civil, common, and mixed law jurisdictions.

China is a major civil law jurisdiction. Since the end of the 1990s great efforts have been made in China to codify the entire civil law. With the major statutes governing contracts, property, torts and conflict of laws promulgated in 1999, 2007, 2009 and 2010 respectively, the most crucial steps have been taken towards the creation of a Chinese Civil code. This book attempts to shed light on both the theoretical and the practical aspects of Chinese civil law, while extensive footnotes and a detailed bibliography and index allow for further study of specific areas and facilitate systematic research. The book addresses the following topics: Part I General, Part II Contracts, Part III Tort Law, Part IV Property Law, Part V Conflict of Laws. Main features: Combination of an overall picture of the specific field of law at issue and thorough analysis of fundamental issues. Combination of black letter law and law in action. Selected bibliography of publications in English, information on English translations of Chinese regulations available in the public domain, lists of the relevant statutes and judicial interpretations, as well as cases.