The parties’ freedom is enshrined as a fundamental doctrine in substantive private law, especially the law of contract.Footnote¹ The corollary of this doctrine’s extension is that party autonomy should generally be recognised at the conflicts level.Footnote² Recent decades have witnessed the great expansion of party autonomy in private international law from one jurisdiction to the other and from the national to the international level.Footnote³ It has taken hold not only in the field of jurisdiction but also that of choice of law.Footnote⁴ Within the latter, it has been accepted not only for contractual matters but also tortious obligations, and even quite a few issues in the area of family law.Footnote⁵

Since the adoption of the “Opening-up Policy” in 1978 and the introduction of the market-oriented economy in 1992, especially with its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China has been striving to produce a system of laws that would modernise its regulatory framework and bring itself into line with global trends.Footnote⁶ To have economic intercourse with the outside, private parties do have to contract with foreigners frequently. Chinese laws did provide for foreign-related contracts at quite an early stage as indicated in the book currently under review, Party Autonomy in Contractual Choice of Law in China (the Book).Footnote⁷ Consistently with the famous Chinese saying “Ten years’ lessons, Ten years’ gathering”,Footnote⁸ it is timely to look at how Chinese laws have performed in the past four decades (from 1978 to 2018), including its law on contractual choice of law. The current Chinese ambitions of claiming greater global presence and the development of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative mean the study of contractual choice of law in China is of growing importance and practical relevance both within China and to many outsiders. The construction of the “Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area” makes this topic inter-regionally attractive and interesting because contractual conflicts will undoubtedly arise more frequently among the three regions.Footnote⁹ Focusing on party autonomy in contractual choice of law, Jieying Liang’s book is a timely work that deals with an increasingly important area of Chinese law.