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.

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.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, various attempts have been made by legal scholars to draft a Civil Code in China. However, only since the 1980s, when the ‘open-door’ policy was implemented, has Chinese Civil law become the basis for the development of a socialist market economy. Since the adoption of Chinese contract law (1999), property Law (2007) and tort Law (2009) in recent years, the basic construction of a socialist civil law system has been formulated. For the completion of a systematic civil law structure, a Civil Code has now been further advocated by society. The Draft Civil Code, prepared by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences headed by Liang Huixing, is the first Draft Civil Code since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The English translation of this code aims to provide a source for western scholars to provide some knowledge on recent developments of Chinese civil law. Also available as a Paperback edition (978-90-04-17915-8).

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

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

This contribution provides the important and timely bilingual version of the Chinese Civil Code and the Supreme People's Court's Judicial Interpretation on the Temporal Effect of the Civil Code, which is purported to keep the global community of lawyers interested in Chinese law informed and updated.

The opening of local archives to Western scholars in the 1980's has provided the basis for this reexamination of civil law in Qing and Republican China. This pathbreaking volume demonstrates that, contrary to previous scholarly understanding, Qing and Republican courts dealt extensively with such civil matters as land rights, debt, marriage, and inheritance, and did so with striking consistency and in conformity with the written code.