The relevance of the OECD and UN Model Conventions and their Commentariesfor the interpretation of Chinese tax treaties

As of May 2010, the People's Republic of China has ninety-one income tax treatiesin effect and one treaty pending, making the country one of the mostwell-connected members of the international tax treaty network. As a relativelatecomer to the use of treaties – its first tax treaty, with Japan, tookeffect barely a quarter of a century ago – China has relied heavily onthe OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (OECD Model), as well ason the United Nations Model Double Taxation Convention between Developed andDeveloping Countries (UN Model) (jointly, the Models) to negotiate thisimpressive set of agreements. Being the approximate templates for China's taxtreaty negotiations, the Models have had an impact on China's treaties that isall too obvious and should cause little surprise. One could try to more finelycalibrate this impact by studying the many departures in substantive provisionsand wording in China's treaties from the Models (which will be done to a certainextent in this chapter), but the details of such an exercise can only beexpected to pale beside a basic fact: as China had started from a virtualtabula rasa insofar as tax treaties are concerned, howeverselective it has attempted to be, its borrowings from the Models inevitably tookon a wholesale character.