China’s legislation on the Property Law of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter the Property Law) established a unified system for registration of immovable property, aiming to build a stable order for the disposition of real rights in immovable property based on the publicity principle, and to provide institutional support for the operation of the market economy and the protection of civil rights. Book Two Real Rights of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter the Civil Code) establishes the institutional framework for registration of immovable property from the perspective of substantive law, representing a significant innovation to the previous registration system. In terms of institutional positioning, registration of immovable property should highlight its core attribute as registration of real rights in immovable property, distinct from mere natural resource ledger management; in terms of the model of legal effect, the substantive registration model should be adopted, in line with China’s transaction practices and the legal doctrine distinguishing real rights from obligatory rights. Currently, in the discussion of legislation on registration of immovable property, there remain different understandings of its institutional positioning. Based on the practical needs of market economy development and rights protection, this article explains the jurisprudential basis and institutional logic for implementing the spirit of real right legislation in registration of immovable property, clarifies the functional boundaries of the registration system, and consolidates the theoretical foundation for China’s specialized legislation on registration of immovable property.

Book Three Contracts of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter the Civil Code) is structurally organized as an independent book and adheres to the legislative tradition of the integration of civil and commercial law. This represents an innovation in the history of the legal system and has laid a solid foundation for building China’s independent knowledge system of contract law. In terms of underlying values, Book Three Contracts has distinctive Chinese characteristics: It reflects the core socialist values and embodies both the principle of protecting weaker parties and the green principle. In terms of institutional rules, it introduces numerous innovations and actively responds to the needs arising from China’s social development and the lives of its people. In the five years since the Civil Code came into effect, legal scholarship and judicial practice have taken the provisions of Book Three Contracts as the basis of positive law and have promoted the evolution and further development of theories and concrete adjudicative rules, including the independence of claim-obligation contracts, the criteria for determining mandatory provisions, the identification and consequences of preliminary contracts, the validity and consequences of paying a debt in kind, and the conditions for contract rescission by the breaching party. To be sure, after the promulgation of the Civil Code, many issues remain contested and require further study and discussion, including causa, natural obligations, the criteria for selecting typical contracts, the differentiation between civil and commercial subjects in the application of legal rules, the construction of the internal system of quasi-contracts, and the coherence and distinction between default liability and tort liability.

The Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of the General Provisions of Book Three Contracts of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter the Interpretation on the General Provisions of Book Three Contracts of the Civil Code) contains a substantial number of commercial legal norms. These norms constitute an important component of the rule-of-law framework for the equal protection of market participants and reflect the technique for drafting judicial interpretations under the integration of civil and commercial law. The integration of civil and commercial law is a critical legal application methodology when resolving contract disputes pursuant to the Interpretation on the General Provisions of Book Three Contracts of the Civil Code. One may critically examine, under the Interpretation on the General Provisions of Book Three Contracts of the Civil Code, the integration of civil and commercial law in the contexts of company-shareholder relationships, company-creditor relationships, and company-director/supervisor/senior executive relationships, as well as the integration of civil and commercial law among the Interpretation on the General Provisions of Book Three Contracts of the Civil Code, the Securities Law of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter the Securities Law), the Insurance Law of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter the Insurance Law) and the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law). Drawing on these civil-commercial intersectional examples, the methods of legal application under the integration of civil and commercial law can be specified as the referential application, analogical application, supplementary application, and reverse referential application of civil law norms in commercial relationships. Commercial law is not self-sufficient when it regulates commercial relationships, nor can civil law norms be applied to commercial relationships in an undifferentiated and all-encompassing manner.