Product Liability in China: What Happens When Your Product Injures Someone

A heating stove. A carbon monoxide leak. One victim in a vegetative state, one dead. A judgment of RMB 2.06 million against the manufacturer. And a second-instance appeal that turned on a single expert opinion. This is what product liability litigation looks like in China — and what every foreign manufacturer selling into the Chinese market needs to know.

The Case: One Stove, One Family, Two Million RMB

In a village in Shandong Province, a family of five used a coal-fired heating stove during the winter. The stove was manufactured by a company in Binzhou and sold through a local distributor. On a cold night, carbon monoxide leaked from the stove. Four family members were poisoned. One — an elderly woman — died. Another — the head of the household — suffered severe brain damage and entered a persistent vegetative state. He will require lifetime care.

The family sued the manufacturer. The trial court appointed a product quality鉴定机构 (expert appraisal institution) to examine the stove. The expert’s conclusion: the stove body had inadequate sealing, with smoke leakage observed at multiple points. The defect was a manufacturing defect — the stove, as produced, deviated from its design specifications in a way that made it unsafe.

The court held the manufacturer 70% liable and awarded RMB 1.12 million to the brain-damaged victim and RMB 936,000 to the deceased woman’s family — approximately RMB 2.06 million in total. The manufacturer appealed. Our firm represents the manufacturer in the second instance.

The Three Pillars of Product Liability in China

China’s product liability framework rests on three legal sources: the Civil Code (Book VII, Tort Liability), the Product Quality Law, and the Supreme People’s Court’s judicial interpretations. A plaintiff must prove three elements:

Defect: The product had a defect at the time it left the manufacturer’s control. A defect can be a manufacturing defect (the product deviates from its design), a design defect (the design itself is unsafe), or a warning defect (inadequate instructions or warnings).
Damage: The plaintiff suffered personal injury or property damage.
Causation: The defect caused the damage.

The critical feature of Chinese product liability: the manufacturer’s liability is strict. The plaintiff does not need to prove the manufacturer was negligent. The plaintiff only needs to prove the product was defective, the plaintiff suffered damage, and the defect caused the damage. The manufacturer can defend by proving that the product was not defective when it left its control — but the burden of proof on this point falls on the manufacturer, not the plaintiff.

The Expert Opinion: The Battlefield That Decides the Case

In the stove case, the trial court’s decision turned almost entirely on a single expert appraisal report. The expert concluded that the stove leaked smoke. The court accepted this conclusion. The manufacturer’s liability followed from it.

On appeal, the manufacturer challenged the expert opinion on multiple grounds, each of which is a standard argument in Chinese product liability appeals:

The item examined was not the item as manufactured. The stove had been in use for 18 months before the expert examined it. Wear, tear, improper maintenance, and user modifications during that period could account for any leakage. An opinion based on the post-accident condition of the product, without comparing it to the as-manufactured condition, is methodologically incomplete.
The expert’s testing method did not conform to the applicable national standard. GB/T 16155-2018 specifies testing procedures for domestic heating stoves. The expert’s methodology deviated from this standard in documented ways. Non-conforming methodology undermines the reliability of the conclusion.
The expert’s conclusion contained an internal contradiction. The opinion simultaneously found “negative pressure combustion” and “smoke leakage” — two phenomena that are physically inconsistent under the test conditions described.
The expert did not distinguish between design characteristics and quality defects. Some degree of smoke emission during startup is a characteristic of the stove’s design, not a defect. The expert treated all smoke emission as evidence of a defect without analyzing whether the emission was within the design specification.

These arguments illustrate a broader point: in Chinese product liability litigation, the expert opinion is the battlefield. The party that prevails on the expert evidence prevails on liability. Manufacturers defending product liability claims must engage their own technical experts — not just legal counsel — at the earliest possible stage to identify methodological flaws in the plaintiff’s expert evidence and, where appropriate, to commission a supplementary or counter-examination.

User Conduct as a Defense: Comparative Fault in China

China’s Civil Code recognizes comparative fault as a defense to product liability claims. If the victim’s own conduct contributed to the damage, the manufacturer’s liability may be reduced. In the stove case, the manufacturer identified five categories of user conduct that contributed to the accident:

Failure to clean: The user had not cleaned the stove’s ash and soot over an extended period, contributing to blockage and backflow.
Disabling safety features: The stove was equipped with a high-temperature warning device. The user had disabled it.
Continued use with known problems: The user had observed smoke emission and continued to use the stove without seeking repair or replacement.
Inadequate ventilation: The stove was used in a poorly ventilated space, contrary to the instructions.
Post-accident conduct: The family removed the brain-damaged victim from the hospital against medical advice, potentially exacerbating his injuries.

The trial court found the manufacturer 70% liable, implying a 30% reduction for the user’s conduct. On appeal, the manufacturer argues that the user’s conduct was the predominant cause of the accident and that liability should be reduced to 30% or less — a reversal of the allocation.

Practical Takeaways for Foreign Manufacturers

Product liability is strict in China. If your product is defective and causes injury, you are liable — regardless of whether you were careful. The best defense is a non-defective product. The second-best defense is documentation that proves it.
Preserve the as-manufactured standard. Maintain representative samples of each production batch, documented with date, production line, and quality inspection records. If a product is involved in an accident 18 months after manufacture, you need to be able to show what it looked like — and how it performed — when it left your factory.
Draft instructions and warnings for the Chinese market specifically. Chinese product liability law applies to products sold in China, regardless of where they are manufactured. Instructions drafted for a U.S. or European consumer may not be adequate for the Chinese market — particularly for products (like heating stoves) whose safe use depends on user behavior that varies across cultures and climates.
Engage a technical expert at the earliest stage of a claim. In China, expert evidence is often the only evidence that matters. Your Chinese counsel should have a network of qualified鉴定机构 contacts and experience challenging adverse expert opinions on methodological grounds.
Do not assume the first-instance outcome is final. Chinese appellate courts can and do reverse liability allocations based on challenges to expert evidence and comparative fault arguments. The procedural window for appeal is short — 15 days for a judgment, 10 days for a ruling — but the scope of review is broad.

Conclusion

Product liability in China is strict, expert-driven, and procedurally distinct from common law jurisdictions. Foreign manufacturers selling into China — whether directly or through distributors — need to understand that the legal framework imposes heavy burdens on defendants while the procedural tools for challenging the plaintiff’s evidence exist but must be deployed with technical precision. The difference between a RMB 2.06 million judgment and a substantially reduced award — or no award at all — often comes down to a single expert opinion and whether the manufacturer’s legal team can dismantle it.

This article is based on actual product liability litigation. Case details have been generalized and client identities protected. It is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

Author: Jianxing Pan
Partner, Beijing ChangAn Law Firm
Offices in Beijing and Shenzhen
lawyerpan@vip.163.com

Product Liability in China: What Happens When Your Product Injures Someone