Understanding the Law of Torts in China: a Political Economy Perspective

In this paper, I connect the text of the Chinese tort law with the institutional context of lawmaking in China from a political economy perspective. Two determinants, political influence and populist pressure, were identified for the tort law legislation in China, and a simple spatial model is presented to demonstrate the mechanism through which these determinants might have affected the text of the law. In particular, my research suggests that when tortfeasors’ political influence is kept constant, the populist pressure on the tortfeasor group tends to make tort law rules more favorable toward victims. In contrast, with similar populist pressure, the politically influential tortfeasors could mold legal rules to their advantage. Even within a particular type of tort, the subgroup of tortfeasors who were better organized to exert political influence would be rewarded with more favorable tort rules than their less organized fellow tortfeasors, especially where populist pressure was moderate. Hopefully, this research will inspire more efforts among students of Chinese law to explore the operation of law at the microscopic level against the macroscopic institutional backdrop of China.