Civil code is an important component of modern legal system. In the 50 years between the establishment of the People’s Republic, Chinahad made four attempts to codify the civil law, in 1954, 1962, 1979 and 2001 respectively, each of them had failed.In May 2020, the draft Chinese Civil Code was finally submitted to the National People’s Congress for approval. Recently, three members of CASS Academic Committee, Professor Sun Xianzhong, Professor Liang Hui Xing and Professor Chen Su, recalled great contributions made by scholars of the CASS Law Institute to the compilation of the Chinese civil law in China in a series of books and articles.

According to Professor Sun Xianzhong, China made the first attempt to draft the civil code in the early 1950s. The first Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, which contained several provisions on the protection of civil rights, was adopted in 1954. The civil law-making work began in the same year. A research office was established under the General Office of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress to be responsible for the drafting of the civil code. Some researchers of the CASS Law Institute were invited to participate in the drafting work. However, the ownership system provided in the Constitution was not yet recognized by law at that time and the drafting work was forced to stop as a result of political movements.

In early 1960s, China gradually realized the negative consequences of ignoring the law and began to make policy adjustments. Against this background, new progresses were made in civil legislation. A working group was established to draft of the civil code, and Professor Sun Yaming, the then director of CASS Law Institute, was appointed as one of the two leaders of the working group. In 1964, a draft civil code, consisting of three parts, 24 chapters and 262 articles, was completed. However, because of the change of political environment, the codification work again failed.Professor Liang Huixing pointed out that the root cause of the failure of the first two civil code drafting attempts was the planned economic system implemented at that time.

In December 1978, the policy of reform and opening-upwas adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committeeand the socialist commodity economy was established, creating a favorable condition for civil legislation.The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress began the third attempt at drafting the civil code in November 1979. However, because of the lack of consensuses on such major issues as the reform of state-owned enterprises and the ownership system, the drafting work stopped after the completion of the fourth draft in May 1982.

Later Mr. Peng Zhen, the then chairman of the National People’s Congress, put forward the strategy of “retail first and wholesale afterwards”, namely adopting separate civil laws first and codifying the separate laws into a civil code afterward.On April 12, 1986, the General Principals of the Civil Law, which was referred to as the “quasi-civil code”, was adopted at the fourth session of the Sixth National People’s Congress. An advisory group consisting four leading civil law scholars at that time, including Professor Wang Jiafu from CASS Law Institute, participated in the drafting of this law.

In January 1998, Mr. Wang Hanbin, the then vice president of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, invited nine leading civil law experts in China at that time, including three from CASS Law Institute, namely Professor Wang Jiafu, Professor Wang Baoshu and Professor Liang Huixing, to form Civil Code Research Group to participate in the drafting of the civil code. The draft Civil Code, which consisted of over 1,200 articles, was submitted to the 31st meeting of the Standing Committee of the Nineth National People’s Congress for deliberation on December 23, 2002. However, because this draft was only a collection of the existing civil laws, including the General Principles of the Civil Law, which contained many mistakes, contradictions and loopholes, it was subjected to many criticisms and was set aside after onlyone deliberation by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. Professor Sun Xianzhong pointed out that, while the first three attempts failed mainly because economic and political conditions at that time, the fourth attempt failed mainly because of the lack of jurisprudential research.

On December 23, 2014, against the political and economic background of deepening reform in a comprehensive way, the CPC adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of its Eighteenth Central Committee the Decision on Major Issues Pertaining to Comprehensively Promoting the Rule of Law, in which a major decision was made to compile the civil code. In March 2015, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued the Plan for Major Measures Division among Relevant Departments under the CPC Central Committee in Implementing the Decision Made at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, authorizing the Legislative Affairs Commission under the Standing Committee of the NPC to coordinate the compilation of the civil code and appointed five organizations, including CASS, to participate in the drafting of the code. Professor Chen Su recalled that, to implement the decision, the CASS established a working group on the compilation of civil law, with Professor Li Penglin, the then vice chairman of CASS, as the head and Professor Chen Su as the deputy head of the work group. The concrete work of the working group was mainly carried out by members of the Civil Law Department of CASS Law Institute under the guidance of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

At the late stage of the drafting of the General Provisions of the Civil Law, the CASS Working Group on the Compilation of the Civil Code mainly carried out the following two aspects of work in preparation of the compilation of various parts of specific provisions of the civil code: firstly, to compile a list of issues in various parts of specific provisions of the civil code by taking the Marriage Law, the Succession law, the Property Law, the Contract Law and the Tort Law and other civil law norms as the basis. The list was completed and submitted to the Legislative Affairs Commission under the Standing Committee of the NPC in the beginning of 2017.

Secondly, to draft an expert proposal on various parts of the specific provisions of the civic code, including the parts on property law, contract law, tort law, marriage and family law and inheritance law. After the completion of drafting work was completed in May 2017, the working group held several seminars to solicit opinions from experts and scholars from all over the country on the proposal and revised the proposal on the basis of the opinions solicited and submitted the revised proposal to the Standing Committee of the NPC. The draft Chinese civil code, which formulated by taking the CASS proposal as reference, was adopted at the Fifteenth meeting of the Standing Committee of the Thirteenth National People’s Congress on December 24, 2019 and was submitted to the Thirteenth National People’s Congress for deliberation in May 2020.