9 - The Aims of Tort Law across China and the West

Summary

The Chinese Civil Code, approved on 28 May 2021, is an important code for several reasons: it is a synthesis of the Roman legal system, a privileged place collecting institutions and dogmatic systems through categories, institutes and principles that provides a careful and balanced synthesis of the matter it regulates. Besides the well-known and peculiar concepts of the civil law system encompassed by the Chinese Civil Code, socialism with Chinese characteristics and custom as source of law in the absence of statutory provisions set the Code between past and future with its own identity and the ability to adapt to the continuous and future changes of the surrounding reality. The only certainty in this continuous evolution of the surrounding reality, is that the Code belongs and is open to the system in a process of continuous and mutual enhancement and complementarity. The typical and distinctive patterns of Roman tradition are endorsed and combined with Chinese legal tradition for their interpretative value, both individually and in the context of the Code as a whole, to give certainty and solidity to a regulatory system meant to last over time.