Registration of Chinese Trusts: Lessons from English Trust Law

Abstract

<p>The registration of the trust property (RTP) requirement was introduced in 2001 with the enactment of Article 10 of the Trust Law of the People’s Republic of China (Chinese Trust Law). However, over the past two decades, neither legislators nor courts have issued any instructions guiding the implementation of the RTP requirement. This has led to difficulties implementing it, considerably hindering the development of real estate trusts in China. In 2016, the China Banking Regulatory Commission established China Trust Registration Co., Ltd. (CTR), to register Chinese trusts. However, the CTR system centres on registering trust products rather than trust property; as such, it cannot implement the RTP requirement under Article 10. With the imminent promulgation of the Real Estate Registration Law, questions regarding whether trust registration is necessary and how to implement it have been intensively discussed recently. Against this backdrop, this article explores the underlying rationale of the RTP requirement from a comparative law perspective and offers suggestions for its implementation. This exploration has two purposes: first, to better understand the behind rationale of the RTP requirement and its unique role under the Chinese Trust Law; second, to furnish comparative law scholarship with broader insights into rule transplantation and reconciliation.</p>