Legal Study On Japan’s Protection Of Financial Consumer

Since Chinese legislation has a long tradition of stressing much more attention to the criminal liabilities and administrative penalties than civil liabilities, the protection of consumer’s private rights and interests has always been ignored in Chinese financial legal system. However, financial consumer issues appear gradually with the development and deepening of China’s financial liberalization reform, which dispose the serious lag of financial legislations. Thus, it is a significant work to make a pioneering research in the legal protection of financial consumer. This thesis is the first study in China on the legal issues of Japan’s financial consumer protection, and is also the first attempt of to study the financial legal system as a whole from the angle of consumer protection.The Britain’s Big Bang launched in1986has started a worldwide unification storm in financial regulations and legislations. Then in1999, the US Financial Service Act replaced the Glass-Steagall Act. In2002, the Britain’s Financial Services and Markets Act was enforced instead of the Financial Services Act of1986. All this measures have accelerated the worldwide trends of financial legal system changing from separated legislation to combined and unified legislation.In1996, the Japanese Big Bang financial reforms started based on its similarity to Britain’s1986Big Bang. However, the financial deregulation measures came along with a large number of consumers victimizations, which seriously hindered the "from savings to invest" turning of personal assets. Thus Japanese reformers realized that consumer protection is an important part of financial legal system, and legislations should give this special group tilt but proper protections. These years, a substantial increase in consumer protection rules has been seen in Japanese financial legislations. The major rules include discrimination of experts and amateur customers, statutory interpretation duties, promotion rules, cooling-off rules, civil liabilities etc. What is more, in order to eliminate the existing legal gaps and conflicts, Japan’s financial consumer rules have shown a growing unification trend currently.Since China has many similarities with Japan not only in financial legal system but also in the reforms of financial regulation, it is extremely necessary for China to learn from Japan’s experiences and lessons. This thesis exhibits its analyses on the basis of such methodologies as historic study, empirical study, comparative study and literal interpretation study, and focuses its discussions on the three aspects: fundamental theories of financial consumer protection, Japan’s legislative practices and its representative rules of financial consumer protections. In order to establish a preliminary framework of financial consumer protection theory and to contribute to China’s current financial reforms, this thesis attempts to answer the following questions:Can we regard persons involving in financial activities as consumers? How can we apply consumer protection theory to financial areas? Why did financial consumers suffer large-scale damages after Japan’s financial Big Bang? What are Japan’s legislations and representative rules to protect financial consumers? How can China learn from Japan’s experiences and lessons?This thesis is just a beginning study in the field of financial consume issues, and the significance of this first step is to provide a convenient platform for the further research in this subject.