The Ambiguous Area Between Contract Breach and Contract Fraud

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_41How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Contract breach; Contract fraud; Judicial practice; Criminal-civilian intersection

Abstract

In modern market economic activities, the legal relationship of contracts, as the fundamental legal tool for regulating transaction behaviors, stability, and predictability is of crucial significance for maintaining transaction security and market order. The vague boundary between contract default and contract fraud often leads to disputes in the application of law and difficulties in judicial practice. Based on a review of the relevant legal documents and reports issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Supreme People’s Court, combined with the current status of academic research, this paper reconstructs the delimitation standards of contract breach and contract fraud, clarifies the ambiguous areas in judicial determination and proposes solutions to cross-cutting issues, and defines the concepts of contract breach and contract fraud. It discusses how to distinguish the two from the perspective of judicial practice, particularly emphasizing the core role of the subjective intent of the actor, the ability to perform the contract, and the purpose of illegal possession in the distinction. Based on the analysis of the types of unlawful acts, the ambiguous areas in practice mainly involve several situations such as the failure of the parties to fulfill contractual obligations, improper intervention of public power, criminal acts of third-party guarantees, and the legal positioning of “anti-counterfeiting” activities. After introducing a new perspective on the type analysis method and the theory of the composition of crime, it can provide guidance for judicial practice, standardize the judicial trial process, improve the fairness and consistency of judgments, protect the legitimate rights and interests of the parties, and maintain the order of the market economy.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhenyang Jin
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/07/10
TI  - The Ambiguous Area Between Contract Breach and Contract Fraud
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 11th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research（ICHSSR 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 351
EP  - 362
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_41
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_41
ID  - Jin2025
ER  -