VillageasanExample.PDFVIP

Freedom of Contract and National Regulation over Real Estate Transactions in Villages —Taking Dispute over Sales of Houses in the Artist Village as an Example* Zhu Qingyu ** TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction 59 II. Facts and Holding of the Ma Haitao v. Li Yulan Case 59 III. Freedom of Contract in Courts’ Rulings 61 IV. Freedom of Contract Under the Institutional Framework 65 A. Freedom to Contract 65 B. No Restriction on the Content of Contract 67 V. Conclusion and Reflections 68 * This paper has been published in Archiv für chinesisch -deutsches Privatrecht (pages 35–42, volume 7, 2011, Peking University Press). It has been under minor adaptations and republished by Peking University School of Trans- national Law Review. The author is especially grateful to Li Mengshi and Zheng Xinjia, students at Peking University School of Transnational Law, who trans- lated the article from Chinese to English. ** Zhu Qingyu now is a Professor at Guanghua Law School, Zhejiang Univer- sity. © 2016 Peking University School of Transnational Law 2016 Freedom of Contract and National Regulation 59 I. INTRODUCTION reedom of contract as a fundamental principle of civil law Fhas been well known to those who study the law. However, in Chinese legal society, the principle has only been taught in textbooks and developed at a theoretical level. A closer look at the construction and operation of the Chinese legal system in real practice reveals that freedom of contract is not even aspired by the public authorities, including the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive. This paper takes the dispute over sales of houses in the Artist Village as an example, and demonstrates and analyzes the intense