On April 18th and 19th 2016, the Sino-German Legal Cooperation programme together with the Civil law Department of the Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC) of the National People’s Congress hosted a symposium on civil law codification in Beijing. The German experts participating in the event were Prof. Dr. Peter Windel from the Ruhr-University in Bochum and Attorney-at-Law Dr. Justus Schmidt-Otto from Berlin. Topics of debate were the definitions of the legal object, the legal person, cooperatives, as well as time limitations and statutory prohibitions. The symposium took place against the background of the Chinese government’s plan to codify the entire civil law by 2020.