Yiding jianhu (意定监护, voluntary guardianship)

Yiding jianhu — voluntary (or “appointed”) guardianship — is the mechanism in Article 33 of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China: an adult with full legal capacity may, in advance and in writing, agree with a willing person or organization that they will serve as their guardian. The arrangement activates if the person later loses capacity, fully or partially. First established in the 2017 General Provisions of the Civil Law, it carried over into the Civil Code that took effect in 2021.

The crucial feature is choice: the guardian need not be a relative — it can be anyone you trust, including a same-sex partner. In a mainland China that has no same-sex marriage and no partnership registry, this makes it one of the few clearly available legal tools. It gives your partner legal standing to act if you are unconscious or incapacitated — handling medical matters, daily care, and property — instead of being turned away as a legal stranger.

In practice couples usually have the agreement notarized. Notarization is not legally mandatory, but a notarial certificate makes hospitals and banks far more likely to accept the guardian’s authority, and notary offices handling such arrangements for same-sex partners have been publicly reported.

Register note: formal legal vocabulary. Know its limits: it takes effect only upon incapacity, and it creates no spousal status, no community property, and no inheritance rights — inheritance requires a separate will. The two together are often described as the baseline legal package for same-sex couples on the mainland.

Common misreading: calling it “marriage in disguise” or “China’s same-sex marriage.” It is a guardianship arrangement, not a relationship status — distinct from both marriage equality and civil union. But dismissing it as merely symbolic is wrong too: in a genuine crisis, it confers real decision-making power.