This book is the first book focusing on the Chinese law of unjust enrichment in English and introducing it to Western jurisdictions. Unjust enrichment is currently one of the most controversial areas of law in many jurisdictions and rife with academic debate. This book analyzes the historical evolution, current doctrines, and relationships of unjust enrichment with other areas of private law in China​. It also provides insights into judicial practice. In May 2020, China promulgated its first-ever Civil Code since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, which is a milestone in the history of Chinese law. Before the Civil Code, there was only one legal provision regulating unjust enrichment, which requires a person obtaining benefits “without a legal basis” to return such benefits. However, the new Civil Code contains a separate chapter regulating unjust enrichment. This book analyzes and evaluates those new provisions in the Civil Code to provide a most up-to-date analysis of ​the Chinese law of unjust enrichment.

This inter-disciplinary volume brings together scholars from across the globe to challenge the dominant position of unjust enrichment and suggest more satisfactory alternatives. Rethinking Unjust Enrichment includes a broad range of voices from the UK, US, Australia, Canada, China, Singapore, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and South America. The book includes voices of sceptics who think that the current unjust enrichment doctrine must be seriously qualified and others who think that it should be eliminated altogether. The contributions cast doubt on the various parameters of unjust enrichment from an analytical standpoint, representing four interrelated perspectives: history, sociology, doctrine, and theory. The four-limb structure of the book provides readers with a clear understanding of the current problems of unjust enrichment at the deepest levels of its history, sociological forces, doctrinal fallacies, and normative deficiencies. This treatment of the subject serves as the basis for a comprehensive reform across jurisdictions. Comprehensive and multi-faceted, Rethinking Unjust Enrichment is interesting to both sceptics and supporters of the unjust enrichment. It facilitates a critical and constructive dialogue between the two.

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.

The area of conflict of laws in China has undergone fundamental development in the past three decades and the most recent changes in the 2010s, regarding both jurisdiction and choice of law rules, mark the establishment of a modern Chinese conflicts system. Jointly written by three professors from both China and the UK, this book provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of Chinese conflict of laws in civil and commercial matters, covering jurisdiction, choice of law, procedure, judgment and awards recognition and enforcement, and interregional conflicts in China.

This book argues that there are three dividing lines regarding modes and consequences of property transfers which should not be conflated by comparative lawyers, namely, intent alone versus intent plus, unitary approach versus separatist approach, and causality versus abstraction. Unlike Chinese law, English law takes a non-unified approach not only in the stage of transfer but also in the stage of restitution, where the consequence in relation to the property right transferred under a flawed underlying basis can be purely causal, purely abstract, and abstract in common law but causal in equity. Nevertheless, abstraction is normatively more justifiable than causality.

In The Limits of the Rule of Law in China, fourteen authors from different academic disciplines reflect on questions that have troubled Chinese and Western scholars of jurisprudence since classical times. Using data from the early 19th century through the contemporary period, they analyze how tension between formal laws and discretionary judgment is discussed and manifested in the Chinese context. The contributions cover a wide range of topics, from interpreting the rationale for and legacy of Qing practices of collective punishment, confession at trial, and bureaucratic supervision to assessing the political and cultural forces that continue to limit the authority of formal legal institutions in the People’s Republic of China.

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.

The widely held view of the Asian Financial Crisis is that it had no substantial impact on China. In fact, the country was far more vulnerable than most people realized, due to the high possibility of financial contagion entering the system from Hong Kong through Guangdong province. This book analyzes the severe policy challenge that it presented for China’s leaders. The crisis in Guangdong’s financial institutions provided a forewarning of the difficulties that lay ahead as China’s integration with the global financial system deepened. The experience of Guangdong in the Asian Financial Crisis provided a profound lesson for China’s policy-makers as they planned the country’s strategy for financial reform in the following years. China was able to avoid disaster by astute and difficult policy choices, in the face of fierce pressure from outside the country, as well as from different domestic interests at many different levels. The successful resolution of the crisis provided a breathing space for the leadership. It gave it time to undertake necessary reforms in the country's financial system in the decade that followed the crisis.

A Restatement of the English Law of Unjust Enrichment represents a wholly novel idea within English law. Designed to enhance understanding of the common law the Restatement comprises a set of clear succinct rules, fully explained by a supporting commentary, that sets out the law in England and Wales on unjust enrichment. Written by one of the leading authorities in the area, in collaboration with a group of senior judges, academics, and legal practitioners, the Restatement offers a powerfully persuasive statement of the law in this newly recognized and uncertain branch of English law. Many lawyers and students find unjust enrichment a particularly difficult area to master. Combining archaic terminology with an historic failure to provide a clear conceptual structure, the law remained obscure until its recent rapid development in the hands of pioneering judges and academics. The Restatement builds on the clarifications that have emerged in the case law and academic literature to present the best interpretation of the current state of the law. The Restatement will be accessible to, and of great practical benefit to, students, academics, judges, and lawyers alike as they work with this area of law. The text of the Restatement is supported by full commentary explaining its provisions and roots together with its application to real and hypothetical cases. The Restatement appears as European private law takes its first steps towards harmonization. In providing an accessible survey of the English law, the Restatement will offer an important reference point for the English position on unjust enrichment in the harmonization debates. Also appearing shortly after the United States Third Restatement on Restitution and Unjust Enrichment, this Restatement offers an interesting contrast with American law in this area.