Environmental Protection as a Limitation of the Freedom of Contract

Abstract

With § 9 of the General Part of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China, an obligation to protect the environment was incorporated into Chinese civil law. Henceforth, when legal entities conduct legal transactions, they must contribute to the conservation of resources and protect the ecological environment. This article considers the extent to which § 9 limits the contractual freedom guaranteed in § 5 of the General Part of the Civil Code. For this purpose, the content and scope of the provision will be subject to a critical-constructive analysis with recourse to comparable provisions in German law.