Since 2013, in cooperation with the Renmin University of China, an increasingly intense collaboration has been initiated for the organization of specialized Chinese language courses placed alongside the didactic initiatives on the Chinese language or as part of professional courses, particularly in legal and gius-economic fields. The Institute organizes workshops, conferences and seminars on these topics and since 2018 has supported the Law in Chinese (LAIC) project, conceived and coordinated by Professor Marina Timoteo, on the most recent developments in contemporary Chinese law, on the dialogue between this law and the Western Legal Tradition, on the legal aspects of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).
In collaboration with LAIC, in 2018 a Summer School entitled “Law in Chinese” was organised, in 2019 a Winter School "Chinese for Business" and an intensive course on Contract “Legal English & Legal Chinese” was organized and in 2020, a Winter School entitled “Chinese for Business Along the New Silk Road” was organised.
The Chinese civil code (中华人民共和国 民法典), the first in the history of the PRC, was approved on May 28, 2020 and it consist of 1260 articles arranged in 7 books: General part, Real rights, Contracts, Personality rights, Marriage and family, Successions, Torts. The code is the landing point of a long and complex regulatory itinerary which started in the early eighties of the Twentieth century, after the start of the new Denghist course, which sees the approval of the General Principles of Civil Law as a first step, a sort of mini -code intended to provide the regulatory and conceptual framework of the (re) rising Chinese civil system. Over the years, these have been joined by a series of large sectoral laws governing all civil matters: the last in order of approval are the Law on the Application of the Rules on civil relations with foreign subjects, the Law on Civil Liability and the Law on Real Rights, approved respectively in 2011, 2009 and 2007. These regulations, preceded by the Law on Contracts (1999), the Law on Marriage (1980, amended in 2001), the Law on Successions (1985), by the Adoptions Law (1991, amended in 1998), and by the Civil Procedure Law (1991, affected by two different ways which intervened respectively in 2007 and 2012), created the regulatory framework of private law of China of reforms.
The civil code represents the last act of a reform of the Chinese private system and stands as the cornerstone of a new China that wants to connote itself for an autonomy of the Chinese legal system from external models and creates its own model as an integral part of a national identity, also from a legal point of view.
The Law in Chinese project - LAIC - will dedicate a webinar to the civil code in September. Stay tuned!
