The book analyses the internal and external impact of the Chinese Civil Code (ccc) that entered into force in China in January 2021. The ccc, which covers the main pillars of Chinese private law – from personhood to personality rights, from property to succession and secured transactions law, from contract to tort law –, represents the final point of arrival of almost forty years of reforms of Chinese law. During this period, Chinese law developed as an original hybrid of norms inspired by selected foreign Western legal traditions and autoctonous rules consonant with historically-rooted approaches to law and legal institutions. The ccc is the civil codification with the largest personal scope of application in human history. Yet, the sphere of influence of the ccc will likely be wider, given the long-standing, historical influence of China in the East Asian region, and the growing economic, technological and cultural power of China beyond that region (as well as the many Chinese business communities operating abroad).
Against this background, the volume offers, we believe, a valuable contribution to the English-speaking literature on Chinese law, by assessing the gist of the provisions in the ccc and their broader impact within and outside China, and by investigating not only the comparative origins of current Chinese rules, but also the influence these rules may have on comparative law scholarship.
The volume is the outcome of a truly joint collaboration of distinguished Chinese and non-Chinese scholars, and it is divided in three parts. The three chapters in the first part (‘The Overall Framework of the Chinese Civil Code’) place the ccc within the broader historical and comparative perspectives of private law codifications. The fourteen chapters in the second part (‘The Inner Contents of the Chinese Civil Code’) survey the main contents and novelties of the seven books that compose the ccc. Each book is analyzed by a Chinese and a non-Chinese scholar, in order to provide readers with a reliable picture of inner and outer perceptions about the core features of the ccc. The six chapters in the third part (‘The Outer Significance of the Chinese Civil Code’), which are authored by scholars who are not based in mainland China, explore the potential impact of the ccc in Macao and Hong Kong (where the ccc does not apply), India, Russia, Europe, Africa and North America.
We leave the conclusions on this vast survey to the readers. But I cannot leave this page without thanking all the other editors and contributors for the time and energy they spent in bringing this book to fruition.
Mauro Bussani