Private Law in China and Taiwan Legal and Economic Analyses

Past research and literature suggest that legal institutions drive economic development. Yet China has grown for decades without the fundamental legal infrastructure that was once considered necessary. This is called the 'China puzzle' or the 'China myth'. By carefully comparing the four key branches of private law in China and Taiwan - a jurisdiction that grew with modest legal institutions and shares similar legal and non-legal culture - this collaborative and novel book demystifies the 'China puzzle'. Top scholars in the field use an economics-focused analytical approach to explain how and why the laws have taken such paths over the past four decades. Comparing property, contract, tort, and corporate laws in China and Taiwan, these authors delve deeply into key doctrines to provide a meaningful account of the evolution of private law in these two jurisdictions.

Introduction Yun-chien Chang; Part I. Foundation: 1. Concentrated and distributed law: observations on legal evolution from China and Taiwan Saul Levmore; 2. Economic of harmonization and legal convergence Bruno Deffains; Part II. Application: 3. The evolution of contract law in China: convergence in law but divergence in enforcement? Jing Leng and Wei Shen; 4. The evolution of contract law in Taiwan: lost in transaction? Wen-Yeu Wang; 5. The evolution of the law of torts in China: the growth of a liability system Wei Zhang; 6. The evolution of the law of torts in Taiwan: a doctrinal-economic interpretation Tze-Shiou Chien; 7. The evolution of property law in China: stick by stick Shitong Qiao; 8. The evolution of property law in Taiwan: an unconventional interest group story Yun-chien Chang; 9. The evolution of company law in China: mission possible to reform SOEs? Ruoying Chen; 10. The evolution of company law in Taiwan: a focus on the blockholder-centric model Ching-Ping Shao.

Comparing the four key branches of private law in China and Taiwan - property, contract, tort, and corporate law - this collaborative and novel book demystifies the 'China puzzle'. Top scholars in the field use an economics-focused analytical approach to explain how law has evolved over the past four decades.

Yun-chien Chang is Associate Research Professor and Director of the Center for Empirical Legal Studies at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and elsewhere. He has (co-)authored and (co-)edited eight books and more than seventy journal articles and book chapters, in English and Chinese.
Wei Shen is a Dean and Professor of Law at Shandong University Law School, and Global Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He is the author of five books and over 100 journal articles in English and Chinese.
Wen-yeu Wang is a law professor at National Taiwan University and has authored over 100 academic books and papers in Chinese and English. These include 'Corporate versus Contractual Mutual Funds: An Evaluation of Structure and Governance' (1994) and 'The Best of Both Worlds? On Taiwan's Quasi-Public Enforcer of Corporate and Securities Law' (in The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, 2015).