"Legendary Port of Call on the Maritime Silk Routes: Zayton (Quanzhou) is an introductory book for students of China study in the field of literature relating to the knowledge of Premodern Maritime History and cultural diversity of south Fujian in coastal China, the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Silk Routes. The maritime paradigm is therefore central to the understanding of the transcultural character of this legendary port and its enlightenment to the win-win cooperative solution to the bottleneck of globalization."
On 1 January 2021, the newly codified Civil Code (CC) came into effect in the People's Republic of China, having been high on the political and legislative agenda in recent years and approved by the National People's Congress on 28 May 2020. Since the founding of the People's Republic (1949), numerous attempts have been made to codify its civil law. The CC is undoubtedly a landmark in China's overall legal history, particularly with regard to civil law legislation, which, in contrast to the country's long and turbulent history, had only begun in the late Qing Dynasty (1911). Preceding the enactment of the CCL, the General Part of the Civil Law of the People's Republic of China, to which the CC's General Part is basically identical, had already been adopted and enacted in 2017. With this step, China's legislators succeeded in replacing the General Principles of the Civil Law of the People's Republic of China, which by then were already 31 years old, together with their supreme court interpretation, and finally set the course for the codification of the People's Republic of China's civil law. In view of the codificationhistorical and jurisprudential position of the CC's General Part in China's civil law and of the new codification as a whole, it is appropriate to present it to German-speaking and international legal experts, primarily in comparison with the General Part of the German Civil Code, which served or will serve as the most important foreign source of knowledge in the creation of the CC and in its application-related optimization. In this respect, this treatise, consisting of two parts, appreciates the renewal achievements of the CC's General Part and examines its regulations in a comparative legal manner, focusing on the legal subjects, civil rights, legal transactions (including representation) and civil liability in terms of legal doctrine, technology and concepts.
The imputation of liability for damages caused by kept animals found in China's Tort Law is a unique, synthetic, and multidimensional dual system. On the one hand, hazard-based liability is the dominant factor, and on the other is fault-based liability the auxiliary factor. The Tort Law on kept animals is oriented towards the types of liability for damages caused by kept animals, rather than towards categories of animal types, and it categorizes liability degrees under both normal and special circumstances. While underlining the merits achieved by this liability imputation system in terms of its structure (on the macro-level), this Article also probes into the problems and difficulties arising out of some key junctures (on the micro-level), especially as the system is put into practice and its operational complexity is revealed. Because of the strong affinity of the Chinese civil law, and especially tort law, with its German counterpart, this Article references the German tort law on animal keeper's liability for an historical and comparative legal analysis, bringing more light to the Chinese system of liability. The imputation of liability for damages caused by kept animals found in China's Tort Law is a unique, synthetic, and multidimensional dual system. On the one hand, hazard-based liability is the dominant factor, and on the other is fault-based liability the auxiliary factor. The Tort Law on kept animals is oriented towards the types of liability for damages caused by kept animals, rather than towards categories of animal types, and it categorizes liability degrees under both normal and special circumstances. While underlining the merits achieved by this liability imputation system in terms of its structure (on the macro-level), this Article also probes into the problems and difficulties arising out of some key junctures (on the micro-level), especially as the system is put into practice and its operational complexity is revealed. Because of the strong affinity of the Chinese civil law, and especially tort law, with its German counterpart, this Article references the German tort law on animal keeper's liability for an historical and comparative legal analysis, bringing more light to the Chinese system of liability.
The high degree of fragmentation and unsustainable exploitation patterns of forest resources have become prominent obstacles to the realisation of the economic and social value of China's forest resources. China's forest eco-bank (FEB) project was set up to achieve centralised utilisation of diffuse forest resources in an underdeveloped area. Analysing FEB projects is of great significance to countries with abundant forest resources aiming to benefit from the economic and ecological functions of such resources and achieve sustainable economic and social development. This study uses the actor-network theory framework to analyse cooperation among various actors in the implementation process of the FEB project in China. Our results indicate the following. First, the government was the principal actor playing a vital role in motivating the other parties and driving the project forward. Second, the diffuse nature of China's forest resources is a major obstacle to their utilisation. The centralised integration of forest resources is a prerequisite for their effective utilisation. Finally, it is necessary to improve the balance of interests of the various actors to promote a more stable actor network and attract more actors to participate in the FEB project.
