Chinese Civil Law Tradition

The Chinese civil law tradition is a sub-family of the civil law legal family identified by comparative legal-origins scholarship as historically distinct from the French, German and Scandinavian traditions, built on a modern civil code shaped first by early-twentieth-century Japanese and German-influenced Republican-era codification, then substantially reworked under Communist Party rule after 1949, and most recently unified in the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China enacted in 2020. Countries whose modern civil codes are classified as following this Chinese line, rather than the French, German or Nordic models, are grouped under this sub-family in comparative legal-origins research such as La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny's widely cited legal-origins studies.