The rise of party autonomy

China's first statute on conflict rules, PRC Law on the Application of Laws to Foreign-related Civil Relationships (中华人民共和国涉外民事关系法律适用法) (Application Law), was passed on October 28 2010 and shall be effective as of April 1 2011. This is an important part of China's civil law codification. Specifically, the Application Law consists of 52 articles that are divided into eight chapters aimed at establishing guidelines on the application of laws to civil affairs with elements relating to foreign countries. In addition, it covers a wide-ranging group of foreign-related civil relationships, including civil subjects, marriage and family, succession, real rights, obligations and intellectual property (IP). During the process of drafting, not only were some existing conflict rules that had been scattered into different statutes and judicial interpretations made by the Supreme People's Court been incorporated into this new law, but some entirely new ones were introduced as well.

Notably, party autonomy was significantly developed in this new law, and as one of the general principles laid down in the first chapter 'General Provisions', it has been explicitly employed in chapters II, V, VI and VII (chapters on civil subjects, real rights, obligations and IP, respectively). The discussion below will focus on the application of party autonomy and its limitations in the related chapters.