Abstract: In response to real life needs, the movable property security right in the Chinese Civil Code breaks the shackles of traditional civil law while bringing a challenge to the legislator in both the aspect of external system and the aspect of internal system. The main manifestations of the important institutional innovations in this area made by the Chinese Civil Code include: reserving a space for the unified registration system of movable property security rights in the future; unifying the rules on priority order of repayment in the competition for the security property; and alleviating the rigid effect of flow security. In the field of movable property mortgage, the Civil Code adds a mortgage right to the price claims and gives it a priority effect. It also expands the application scope of “buyers in normal business activities” from floating mortgages to all movable property mortgages. Although the Civil Code recognizes that the ownership right can reserve the guarantee function of such contract transactions as trading and financial leasing, it fails to unify the priority order for repayment and movable property security rights. It also fails to regulate the transferring security, thus leaving a broad space for judicial interpretation and application. In the post-Civil Code era, there is an urgent need for the theoretical and practical circles to reach a consensus, so as to fully release the reform dividend of the security property system.

Keywords:movable property security; movable property mortgage; PMSI; transferring security

The author of this article is the deputy director of CASS Institute of Law and a research fellow at the Center for Private Law of CASS Institute of Law. This article is published in the Journal of National Prosecutors College 4 (2020), pp. 3-19.