Barriers to the application of the United Nations convention on contracts for the International sale ogf goods (1980) in the Peoples Republic of China.

Abstract

The meteoric growth in the economy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the success of the PRC’s increasingly vast participation in international trade and commerce could be viewed as resting at the intersection of three bodies of law: PRC Contract Law, the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), and the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (UPICC). If these three sources of law are not properly understood or correctly applied, their interplay can undermine uniformity goals that are at the heart of modern efforts to create an international legal regime on which buyers and sellers can, or must, depend. Further, these modern efforts often struggle against historical influences and biases of local law, courts and arbitration tribunals. These tensions are arguably felt most acutely in the PRC today, which, because of its burgeoning growth and enormous contribution as supplier of goods to the world’s developed and developing nations, stands to suffer if its internal law cannot be reconciled and applied consistently with international rules of law on contracts for international sales as reflected in the CISG and the UPICC. This research seeks to identify what barriers that the application of the CISG has faced and continues to face in the PRC. It examines those barriers arise from traditional understandings of contract law in the PRC and the attitudes of the PRC jurists and legal practitioners towards international uniform sales law instruments. It will put forward a number of proposals for overcoming those obstacles to the application of the CISG in the PRC, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (as part of the PRC since 1997) and Macau Special Administrative Region (as part of the PRC since 1999), and Taiwan, whose political and legal status remains contentious.