Introduction

A legal person,also called juridical person or juristic person,is a legal entity through which the law allows a group of natural persons to act as if they were a single composite individual for certain purposes,or in some jurisdictions,for a single person to have a separate legal personality other than their own.For a typical example of the concept of legal person in a civil law jurisdiction,under the General Provisions of Civil Law of the PRC enacted in 2017 “[J]uristic persons are organs which possess the capacity for civil rights and the capacity for civil conduct,and in accordance with the law,independently enjoy civil rights and undertake civil obligations.”1

The establishment of legal persons is the consequence of social and economic development.Today,as the most important actors of commercial matters,legal persons play a vital role in international economic exchanges.Therefore,Chinese scholarship classifies legal persons and natural persons as the regular subjects of private international law.(https://www.daowen.com)

Before examining what law governs the capacities of legal persons,it is useful to realize that conceptions used in the case of natural persons,such as nationality,domicile and residence can be applied to legal persons only by way of analogy,as one English judge noted that,when dealing with legal persons,we ought to proceed as nearly as we can on the analogy of an individual.2