Handbook on Chinese Civil Law

Knut Benjamin Pißler, Head of the Institute’s Centre of Expertise on China and Korea, is the editor of the just-published “Handbuch des chinesischen Zivilrechts”. The handbook is the first comprehensive German-language publication on the newly codified Chinese civil law regime. It features the contributions of renowned Chinese law scholars and practitioners who shed light on both statutory provisions as well as interpretations of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and lower court case law.

The Civil Code of the People's Republic of China has been in force since 2021. As a comprehensive codification, it was the culmination of a period development that lasted approximately 40 years. True to the principle formulated by Deng Xiaoping of “crossing the river by feeling the stones,” legislation was enacted from 1978 onwards for those areas of law that were prioritized in the transition from a socialist to a market-oriented economy. Parallel to the economic development and associated legal challenges of the following years, there developed a civil law system made up of numerous individual laws, which for their part were supplemented by various judicial interpretations issued by the Supreme People's Court. The new Civil Code brings all of these provisions together and thus clarifies and coordinates a number of matters that had arisen in consequence of the previous legal situation. Furthermore, the Code also includes novel substantive provisions, such as those on partnership contracts (previously unregulated) and personality rights.

Both the general and special parts of the Civil Code are dealt with in the handbook. Beyond the statutory provisions, the authors also examine the extensive academic commentary that has increasingly taken hold in the People's Republic of China. They pay particular attention to commentary of the SPC, as it is expected that this commentary will significantly influence decisions of the lower courts. Chinese-German versions of the most important judicial interpretations are included in an appendix.

Prof. Dr. Knut Benjamin Pißler, M.A. (Sinologie) studied law at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and studied law as well as sinology at the University Hamburg. He has been employed at the Institute since 2002. In 2013 he was awarded his post-doctoral degree (Habilitation) by the Law Faculty at the University of Göttingen, and in 2017 he was named professor of Chinese law. He has been a lecturer at the University of Cologne since 2011 and was visiting professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York in October 2015. In November 2017, he taught civil procedure at Nanjing University as part of a short-term lectureship. Since 2023 he has been serving a two-year term as the German Vice-Director of the Sino-German Institute for Law in Nanjing.

Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law