On The Necessity Of China To Develop "State Immunity Act"

With31years’ reform and opening up China has jumped to the position of theworld’s second largest economic entity.China’s comprehensive national strength hassignificantly enhanced. As China’s participation in international economic activitiesare getting more and more thorough, China is also difficult to avoid facing someproblems: the big increase of conflicts and contradictions in China’s economic andtrade exchanges with other countries, the Chinese government is also as a defendantfaced with more and more cases. However, the lack of specific legislation on StateImmunity will do harm to the settlement of disputes and the protection of China’snational interests and the personal interests. Whether China has the need to enact theState Immunity Act has become a hot discussion. In this paper, on base of the analysisof the state immunity’s definition,content,theory evidence and historicaldevelopment,it will introduce the content of the Absolute Immunity and the LimitedImmunity.And then it will make a comparison between their respective pros and consChina’ attitude to state immunity is mainly reflected on the legislative practice,judicial practice and diplomatic practice. It can be judged from those practices thatChina tends to take the Limited Immunity position on the issue of state immunity. Atthe same time, taking the Limited Immunity position is also in line with therequirements of the national conditions change and the economic developmentconditions. Legal certainty and guidance give the legislative way the advantages tosolve the state immunity problems.And the conditions of enacting the State ImmunityAct have been basically mature: the economic foundation has got ready; the practicalexperience has accumulated abundantly; the appeal and support of the community onthe State Immunity Act. Thus, there is a need to enact a State Immunity Act in order tomeet the needs of development, and to adapt to the international trend of stateimmunity legislation. In the final part, some legislative proposals for the StateImmunity Act are put forward in order to provide useful lessons for the formulation ofChina’s State Immunity Act.