A Concordance of Chinese, American and European Contract Law

Program Director - Professor Ted Wright

Project Partner
Centre for Property Rights, Shandong University

Contract law is a fundamental element of national and international trade law. The Contract Law of the Peoples Republic of China (CLPRC) is a recent and modern statement of the Chinese law on this important subject. While in some ways distinctive, it also shares - at least at the level of general principles - many common features with the laws of "western" developed economies.

Foreign enterprises that do business in China need to understand the Chinese law of contract, and how it differs from American and European contract law. This project aims to produce a "concordance" of Chinese, European (based on the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL)) and American (based on the UCC Art 2 and the ALI Restatement of the Law Second - Contract) contract law. A concordance is the conventional means of summarising major commonalities and points of difference between legislation, using precise section references.

In addition to producing a tool of great practical value to business people and scholars alike, the concordance is an essential first step in a project being undertaken at Newcastle which seeks to demonstrate that at an appropriately chosen level of generality there exists a globally "harmonised" law of contract that can be stated in the form of general rules and be effectively used to regulate international trade contracts.