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‘If any person causes damage to other people by engaging in operations that are greatly hazardous to the surroundings, such as operations conducted at high altitude, or involving high voltage, combustibles, explosion, highly toxic or radioactive substances, etc., he shall bear civil liability; however, if it can be proven that the damage was deliberately caused by the victim, he shall not bear civil liability.’
This Article applies not only to the damages caused by products but also to the damages caused by hazardous operations or process of production in certain sectors.
The GPCL outlines the basic principles relating to products, but the term ‘product’ had not been defined until the promulgation of the Product Quality Law of P. R. China (PQL). Article 2 of the PQL defines the products as those ‘processed or manufactured for the purpose of marketing.’ The crucial term in this Article should be the ‘purpose of marketing’. It reflects the similar meaning as ‘stream of commerce’, which is an element of constitution of product liability in the US product liability law. Nevertheless, the differences between two terms as well as the spirits are obvious. The standard applied to determine a product in question is somewhat subjective in the former, while it seems to be an objective one in the latter. Indeed, under the PQL in China, the product quality is often controlled or supervised before the product goes into the market. Based on this understanding, a US producer will not be confused by the reality that product liability in China is not only referred to civil liability but also and more often referred to administrative liability. The administrative management and control may intervene products before entering into the ‘stream of commerce’, just because of the ‘purpose of marketing’. According to Article 2 of the PQL, this law applies to all sorts of product except construction projects that are governed by specific law, as well as all producers and sellers undertaking their business in the territory of China.
In the year of 2000, the PQL was amended. Added a specific Chapter of Damage Compensations, the law became the main source of product liability law in China, but it is still named as Product Quality Law. The product liability law has not been distinguished as a certain division of law in China, for example, the term of ‘product liability’ cannot be found in Chinese law school textbooks, instead, this subject is called a sort of ‘damage compensation’ as a very small part in the law school’s Civil Law class. Chinese lawyers commonly interchange the term of ‘product quality liability’ with ‘product liability’. This conceptual confusion gives rise to the different understandings on the classifications of product liability. As a result, when a Chinese lawyer uses the term of ‘product liability’ (or product quality liability), he often refers to the taxonomy used by the Product Quality Law that divides the liability into three categories, namely administrative liability, civil liability, and criminal liability (discussed below).
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