In 2008 the Supreme People's Court (SPC) has promulgated the "Regulations on the Cause of Civil Action". The promulgation of the Regulations has significance in various regards. It clearly signals a new approach of the SPC to systemize and compile the status quo of the Chinese civil law system. With the Regulations the SPC aims to help lower courts and parties of legal actions to correctly apply the law. It further wants to collect accurate statistical information about court decisions and to gather these court decisions. The SPC ultimately intents to build a systematic collection of court decisions, which shall provide the people's courts with a reliable data base for reference in deciding cases in the future. This new approach of the SPC has deep impact on the understanding of the application of law in China as it undoubtedly reminds of the concept of writs in traditional English common law (i.e. types of action). The research compiled in this book is therefore going to the roots of the notion of law in China and to the relationship between claims arising from substantive law and the procedural arrangement to enforce these claims in civil procedure law.
