Intestacy and Inequality under China’s Revised Succession Law

This Article, forthcoming in the American Journal of Comparative Law, assesses how Chinese intestacy laws augment and redress wealth inequality. In 2021, China’s first civil code took effect, reforming among other things the decades-old Succession Law. Focusing on the intestacy rules (the “Intestacy Rules”) within the Revised Succession Law, we show how the prioritization of testamentary freedom and intrafamilial wealth preservation undercuts the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of curbing inequality, especially as espoused under common prosperity.Because China does not assess an estate tax, the Revised Succession Law stands as the body of law that most directly governs the intergenerational transmission of wealth. Further, because estate planning is still new in China, intestacy remains prevalent, so the Intestacy Rules have an outsized effect on wealth distribution. Yet only a small subset of the Rules effectuates redistribution; even then, wealth is primarily moved around within a household or kinship unit. Against this backdrop, we advance three modest proposals to enlist the Intestacy Rules in the effort to curtail the intergenerational stickiness of inequality, while recognizing that without an estate tax and other affirmative steps by the government, the prospect of impactful redistribution is slim