5 - Contractual Consent in the New Chinese Civil Code

Summary

This chapter aims to identify and analyze Western influences – French, German and English – that played into the conception of contractual consent emanating from the PRC CC provisions on contracts. Looking to the Chinese treatment of contract formation, contract interpretation, mistake as to present or future facts, good faith and abuse of rights, contractual fairness in the context of standard form contracts and some aspects of contract remedies, it is determined that the Chinese code provisions on contract on the whole clearly motion to a continental (French/German) rather than English model, the only exception perhaps being with respect to the duty to inform, which the Chinese code refrains from explicitly endorsing. As between French and German influences, moreover, the PRC CC seems more heavily suffused with the latter, it coming closest to French law only with respect to mistake as to present facts and certain aspects of good faith – at least insofar as the Chinese conception of delictual liability can be analogized to the French, which remains to be seen.