On the Establishment of General Rules for Termination for Compelling Reasons in the Civil Code

The Civil Code lacks sufficient provisions regulating the termination of continuing contracts, thereby failing to address issues arising from continuing contract deadlock in practice. It is therefore essential to establish general rules for contract termination for compelling reasons in the Civil Code. Provisions such as Article 899(2), Article 933, Article 1022(2) of the Civil Code, and Article 45(3) of the Partnership Enterprise Law all contain principles for termination for compelling reasons, which are consistent with the principle of good faith stipulated in Article 7 of the Civil Code. As such, both juridical methods, overall analogy and the concretization of the principle of good faith, have their theoretical and normative bases when establishing general rules for termination for compelling reasons in the Civil Code. From the perspective of certainty, the method of overall analogy can be prioritized. To overcome the mismatch of this method and the overall professionalism of judges, guiding cases should be issued by the Supreme People’s Court to provide references for courts at lower levels in their adjudication