Constructing the Adjudication Standard for Interest Attribution under the Accelerated Maturity System for Subscribed Capital Contributions: An Interest-Balancing Analysis of the "Storage Rule" and the "Direct Settlement Rule"

Article 54 of China's Company Law as revised in 2023 establishes a system of accelerated maturity for subscribed capital contributions, yet it does not specify how the resulting interests are to be attributed once shareholders have paid their contributions ahead of schedule, which has given rise to major controversy in both theory and judicial practice. Judicial interpretations and judicial practice have not yet produced uniform adjudication standards on this point, instead, the matter is largely left to the judge's discretion in the light of the circumstances of each case. In the absence of a unified adjudicative framework, divergent judgments readily emerge. This paper therefore undertakes an in-depth balancing and comparison of the interests involved in the "storage rule" and the "direct settlement rule." Proceeding from the principles of the independence of legal-person property, the equal protection of creditors, and the prohibition of the abuse of rights, it constructs an adjudication standard whose principal factors are the company's bankruptcy status, the exercise of rights by other creditors, and the recovery rate. It ultimately advocates clarifying, through systematic adjudication criteria, the attribution of the relevant interests in contributed capital once shareholders have paid their contributions in advance.