On The Identification Standard Of Situation Change In China

The principle of changed circumstances was first provided in China in Judicial Interpretation of Contract Law(II),whose content and provision seemed rather broad.As a result,judges oftentimes found it hard to accurately grasp the conditions for appropriate application of the principle,leading to such situations detrimental to judicial credibility as “different verdicts in the same kind of cases” and others due to confusion with force majeure,commercial risks and other ideas.In such a context,the author believed that we should have an empirical analysis on the elements of the principle of changed circumstances based on China’s judicial practice and referring to related theoretical research results.By doing this,we could point out recognition standards and key points in need of more attention for application of the system in the judicial judgment activities in China,thus facilitating our judicial practice.The body of the paper is divided into five chapters.In chapter one,starting from cases collected,the author summarized the present situation and existing problems related to the application of the principle of changed circumstances in China’s judicial practice from two perspectives,namely quantitative indicators on the macro basis and content analysis on the micro basis.Focusing on domestic and foreign legislative experience,and several common types of juridical viewpoints in the judicial application in China,chapter two and chapter three compare the principle of changed circumstances with two most confusing systems—force majeure and commercial risk respectively.Chapter four and chapter five provide interpretations of two consequential elements in the principle,“manifest injustice” and “frustrated purpose of the contract”,and make suggestions on considerations.In the end,by referring to the above theories,summary of the legislation and extraction of considerations under some common situations in judicial practice,this paper sorted out certain standards helping with the judicial recognition of changed circumstances in special cases in China.