By Xiahong Chen (China University of Political Science and Law)
The modification of Enterprise Bankruptcy Law of the People’s Republic of China in 2006 had been announced to be in legislative organ’s amendment procedure for years. As there is no further progress in 2020, the slow process must not catch the urgent needs of economic community for corporate rescue after breakout of coronavirus epidemic. Consequently, the Supreme People’s Court of P.R.China was playing an active role in policy-making from judicial perspective concerning civil disputes resolution. From April to June 2020, the Supreme People’s Court of P.R.China had issued 3 judicial guidance in series to direct judicial hearing of civil case in all level of courts during and after the epidemic, with purpose to guide judicial hearing of civil cases relating to disputes caused by coronavirus. Among them, the second one, published on 19 May 2020, contains 7 important guidelines for judicial hearing of bankruptcy cases relating to COVID-19, aiming to improve possibility of corporate rescue and enhance viability of those financial-distressed companies further.
Changes of bankruptcy policy in above-mentioned guidance include: (1) Court-supervised negotiation between the insolvent debtor and those creditors before the opening of bankruptcy proceeding; (2) Distinguishing real causes of insolvency when examining bankruptcy criteria; (3) Further promoting the link between civil execution proceedings and bankruptcy proceedings; (4) Extending the reorganization period from maximum of 9 months according to EBL 2006 by another 6 months; (5 ) Highlights of effective protection of creditors’ substantive rights and procedural rights in bankruptcy proceedings;(6) Maximizing the debtor’s ability to continue operations and the value of property disposal; (7) Promoting the efficient hearing of bankruptcy cases.
In this short note, the author Xiahong Chen, fellow of Bankruptcy Law and Enterprise Restructuring Research Center of CUPL, was invited by the INSOL Europe, introduces the main points of adjustments of bankruptcy policies relating to epidemic in detail. According to his observation, like the global legal and policy changing trends in bankruptcy area all over the world recently, the changes concerning judicial hearing of bankruptcy cases in China is expected to be helpful for survival of those financial struggling companies.
The full article is available here.