The Development of Chinese Civil Law

The history of legislation in China is marked by a reception of foreign law which can be documented back to the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). Yet it was only at the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) that efforts arose to fashion a modern civil code in the mould of the then-dominant industrial nations. Ultimately, this was accomplished with the enactment of the Civil Code of the Republic of China, occurring from 1929 to 1931. This law - revised in part - remains valid in Taiwan, the island to which the government of the Republic of China withdrew after the triumph of the communists.

The People’s Republic of China ranks among those countries where a market-oriented economy is emerging from the planned economy of a socialist system.  This development is being accompanied by the gradual build-up of legal structures supporting commercial interaction.  Chinese civil law is presently made up of various laws that collectively embrace the regulatory scope of the German civil code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, or BGB).  With the contract law enactments of 1999, China modernised their law of obligations.  After lengthy discussions shaped above all by ideology, the National People's Congress in 2007 passed the property law. In 2009 tort law was codified and 2010 witnessed the enactment of an amended private international law (PIL) regime on both the mainland as well as Taiwan (downloads of provisional German translations of the private international law codes are available below).

A comprehensive civil code, which will contain laws previously adopted in the People's Republic of China as well as a prefacing "General Part", is currently being devised by the legislature.

In the field of civil procedure, after a revision of the Civil Procedure Law in 2007, the Chinese legislature dedicated its efforts to alternative dispute resolution and promulgated a mediation law which entered into force at the beginning of 2011 (a download of a provisional German translation of this law is also available below).
 
The project is continually tracking the development of civil law in the People’s Republic of China through the systematic analysis of newspapers, magazines and legislative documents from China.  Significant legal implementations are translated into German and then published with an introductory commentary.   A number of project publications appear in the compilation Chinas Recht (China’s Law), edited by Frank Münzel and in existence since the end of the 1970’s.   The Chinese-German versions of selected legal enactments and longer essays are published in the Zeitschrift für Chinesisches Recht (Journal of Chinese Law), a collaborative effort of the Deutsch-Chinesischen Juristenvereinigung (German-Chinese Jurists' Association) and the Deutsch-Chinesischen Institute für Rechtswissenschaft (Sino-German Institute for Legal Studies) from Göttingen and Nanjing Universities.
 
Since 2008 Knut Benjamin Pißler, Institute fellow in charge of the China department, is editing together with the President and two members of the German-Chinese Jurists' Association Board of Directors, respectively, Professor Dr. Uwe Blaurock (Freiburg), Professor Dr. Ulrich Manthe (Passau) and Professor Dr. Christiane Wendehorst (Vienna), the Schriften zum chinesischen Recht (Gruyter).
Released thus far:
Volume 1
Jakob Riemenschneider
Das Darlehensrecht der Volksrepublik China
January 2008. 240 Pages.
Volume 2
Christoph Schröder
Der multimodale Frachtvertrag nach chinesischem Recht
November 2008. 242 Pages.
Volume 3
Raimund Christian Behnes
Der Trust im chinesischen Recht
August 2009. 186 Pages.
Volume 4
Simon Werthwein
Das Persönlichkeitsrecht im Privatrecht der VR China
Oktober 2009. 188 Pages.

Further Information

• Last update: 27 Jul. 2011
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