China's Civil Code informed consent rules create practical dilemmas for cliniciansNew Rules for Informed Consent in Chinese Medical Practice

China's Civil Code (2021) consolidates patients' right to informed consent and tightens the duty of disclosure owed by medical staff. In clinical practice, however, the substantive provisions of the Civil Code have not dissolved the persistent gap between statutory rule and everyday medical activity. This Policy and Practice Review diagnoses four interlocking practical dilemmas in the operation of the Code's informed-consent rule—covering defensive formalism, ambiguity over the decision-maker, the evidentiary architecture for consent and refusal, and the open-textured “inappropriate to explain” exception—and proposes a corresponding reconstruction along legal, cultural and technological dimensions, drawing on the reasonable-patient standard articulated in Canterbury v. Spence and Montgomery v. Lanarkshire Health Board (1, 2) and reaffirmed by the American Medical Association (3), the doctrine of therapeutic privilege as theorized by Faden and Beauchamp (4), and international guidance on informed-refusal documentation (5). By examining the institutional, cultural and technical factors contributing to these challenges, the article articulates implications for patient safety, equity for vulnerable populations, system-level trust and the dispute burden borne by clinicians and institutions, with a view to harmonizing legal compliance with humanistic, patient-centered care.