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Guanxi and Litigation in the Current Chinese Market: A Perspective from Law and Society Scholarship

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Mentoring Comparative Lawyers: Methods, Times, and Places

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 77))

Abstract

This chapter aims at addressing the role of informal contract law in the current Chinese society; its main focus is to provide an analysis of the role of “guanxi” (so called “relations”) in the phase of negotiations of a “B2B contract” involving a foreign company on one side and a Chinese company on the other. After an overview of the main characteristics of guanxi (Sect. 1), this contribution continues with an examination of the Chinese contracting mechanism using the “lens” of law and society scholarship (Sect. 2); it then provides some recent trends noticed by business players acting within the Chinese market. Section 3 is focused on what happens when “things go wrong” and guanxi is no longer useful as a tool to resolve or “amicably consult” (using a Sino-English expression) a potential claim or a potential dispute arising between the contracting parties. The conclusions drawn could be used as a “trans-cultural” instrument to analyze the current Chinese market and its possible future trends.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/18/xi-jinping-speech-five-things-you-need-to-know.

  2. 2.

    See https://data.oecd.org/china-people-s-republic-of.htm.

  3. 3.

    For an overview of the draft of the Civil Code: www.booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004216631. See also www.economist.com/news/china/21718878-party-will-remain-final-judge-china-finally-starts-write-proper-civil-code.

  4. 4.

    See www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2015/indexeh.htm.

  5. 5.

    See www.ecovis-beijing.com/en/blog-en/articles/887-smes-in-china.

  6. 6.

    See www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-party-congress.html.

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  1. Partners4Innovation, Milan, Italy

    Piero Bologna

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  1. Piero Bologna
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Correspondence to Piero Bologna .

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  1. Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies (IUSLIT), University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Francesca Fiorentini

  2. Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies (IUSLIT), University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Marta Infantino

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Bologna, P. (2020). Guanxi and Litigation in the Current Chinese Market: A Perspective from Law and Society Scholarship. In: Fiorentini, F., Infantino, M. (eds) Mentoring Comparative Lawyers: Methods, Times, and Places . Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 77. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34754-3_4

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