ABSTRACT
One of the principal themes of this book has been how Chinese real estate professionals operate against a legally uncertain background. Part II offered numerous examples of lawyers who needed to represent their clients in settings in which there was no law or no unambiguous law. They devised new legal structures with the hope that the law would later be construed in a way that ratified the approach they had already taken on their clients’ behalf. Sometimes other lawyers would imitate an earlier deal, figuring that a technique that had already been tried once without challenge was less likely to be questioned in the future. Over time, a tentative method would develop into a more common course of doing business. Perhaps no problems would ever arise. Or perhaps if problems ever did arise, a court deciding a case in which a lawyer followed this increasingly common practice would simply endorse it, thereby giving judicial approval to those professionals who might wish to mimic it in the future.
