Legal experts have hailed the nation's first draft civil code as creative and practical despite lingering concerns over some of its provisions.

"The draft civil code is creative because of its unique framework," said Wang Liming, a leading civil law professor with the Law School of Renmin University of China.

Each of the nine volumes of the draft has its own serial numbers, unlike most civil codes around the world, which are numbered from beginning to end.

"That will make it easy for legislators to revise the code to match new developments in social and economic life and the advancement of legal theories," Wang said.

He said the draft had also incorporated the most advanced provisions in current civil legislation and drawn on the experience of past judicial practice.

Many provisions in the draft on liability for infringements of civil rights come from judicial explanations issued by the Supreme People's Court.

The Court can release judicial explanations to guide judges when they face loopholes in current legislation, according to the nation's Legislative Procedure Law.

For example, the Court has issued a judicial explanation on how a wrongdoer should compensate a victim for emotional or mental suffering resulting from the infringement of a certain right.

That explanation has helped judges better handle such cases because provisions in the General Principles of Civil Law, which now serves as China's basic civil legislation, was too general in this regard, Wang said.

Now that the judicial explanation has been incorporated into the draft, judges will have a more powerful tool in the future, he said.

However, legal experts said the draft was far from perfect and needed further improvement.

Wang said the draft should improve the property registration system to make trade between individuals and corporations more secure.

Under the draft, several departments, instead of one single department, are responsible for registering properties.

But some believe that a single, unified body should be responsible for property registration.

Otherwise, an individual or a corporation may have to go to seven or eight registries to have their property transactions recorded.

"That not only causes inconvenience but also may lead to late disclosure of information, repeated registration or fraud, which is detrimental to trade security," Wang said.

"I hope the draft could draw on the wisdom of the masses and get improved bit by bit," he added.

Wang's views were shared by Liang Huixing, a civil law professor with the Law Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the country's top think-tank.

Liang complained that the draft was incomplete without a volume on the general principles of obligation.

(China Daily December 24, 2002)