China's Foundational Law Regulating the Labor Market

ABSTRACT.This study is grounded in the considerable body of scholarship examining the governance of contractual relations in China, the courts' willingness to progress towards a modern contract law system, and the implementation of the UCL into judicial practice. These findings highlight the importance of examining structural characteristics of the environment in which Chinese firms operate, China's current labor conditions, and the negotiation, formation, and performance of collective contracts.JEL Classification: F16, J21, J41Keywords: China's labor conditions, contract law system1. IntroductionI am specifically interested in how previous research investigated the Chinese response to labor hire as reflected in the labor contract law, the absence of contractual norms in Chinese labor law, and the reasons for the enactment of the labor contract law.2. The Governance of Contractual Relations in ChinaZhang maintains that the modern Chinese Law has a civil law origin and many of legal principles contained in the Chinese legislation are rooted in Roman The modem Chinese legal system is marked with the civil law tradition. The legal authority of precedent is a difference between Chinese legal system and the legal system in common law countries (courts decisions are the major legal sources). Case law is not an authoritative legal source in China because of its civil law tradition. Zhang emphasizes that the people's courts are granted an independent judicial power under the Chinese Constitution and laws, and must abide by law or statute, and the higher court decisions have no binding effect on lower courts (the issue whether the people's court may question the validity of local law and regulations is debatable under the Chinese Constitution). The general provisions may be used in the courts as the legal authority to render their decisions. Courts are granted no law-making power. Zhang writes that the parties may agree on the conditions upon which the effectiveness of contract is contingent. The law in China has a marked tradition of civil law, where statutes play a dominant role, the contract performance involves many rules that are typically civil-law-based, and the contract performance is prescribed in the Special Provisions of the contract law with respect to specific contracts.What is important here is that a contract, once it becomes effective, must be properly and completely performed. Zhang says that in China the concept of the rule of law normally refers to as the country by law. Under the umbrella of the principles, every provision in the law is integrated with all other provisions in the In China the obligation to return money paid mistakenly to a person to whom it is not owed is the obligation arising under the doctrine of unjust enrichment. In China, the law usually takes a formality of general provisions (containing the purpose and scope of the law, the principles under which the law is to be applied, and the rules of general application)1 and specific provisions (dealing with individual matters that the law is intended to cover).2 Thomas claims that the passing of the 1999 Uniform Contract Law (UCL) unified the legislation on contracts under one umbrella statute, adopted key contractual concepts from other jurisdictions as a consequence of drafting by legal professionals, and eliminated previous inconsistencies between foreign and domestic contracts and between economic and non-economic contracts. The UCL replaced the existing patchwork of legislation and regulations governing contract As Thomas puts it, the 1999 Contract Law blended elements of civil and common law to create a unified piece of legislation acceptable to both domestic parties and foreign investors. According to Thomas, judicial interpretations play an outstanding role in the Chinese legal system, Chinese legislation is frequently based on imported models and foreign concepts, and the 2009 judicial interpretation reinforces the importance of judicial interpretations in the Chinese legal system, despite the lack of firm constitutional justification. …