Although notoriously sceptical of European initiatives to unify private law, the idea to create a model bill on civil liability law arose when I served as a legal consultant to the Standing Committee of the Eleventh National People's Congress in China from 2006–9. The Committee was engaged in drafting an Act on civil liability law as book viii of the new Chinese Civil Code. In the meantime, Dr Zhu Yan from Renmin University, Beijing, spent one year under my mentorship as German chancellor fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. His research project involved modelling a Draft Bill of a Chinese law of delict: so, I was dragged into it! We organised a one-year international seminar at the law faculty of Bremen University. I drafted a continental European law-based model bill on liability law, which drew extensively on the legal experiences of Western industrial societies during the last century. Zhu Yan added the Chinese aspects. We published this Draft Bill, together with a commentary and translations of the Bill's text in other languages, in Germany (Entwurf für ein chinesisches Haftungsgesetz (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) and in China (中国侵权责任法––学者建议稿及其立法理由，北京大学出版社，北京 2009). In December 2009, the Standing Committee passed the Act on the Law of Delict of the People's Republic of China; and it came into force on 1 July 2010.