[Purpose/significance] The public lending right is used to compensate the author for the potential losses incurred by the public in providing the work of the library for public lending, or as the governmental support for the arts, to finance books, music or other works of art. Germany authors originally came up with the idea of this right, which is due to the combination of the awareness of copyright owner and the economy and cultural development. The external regime of this right consists of administration system, evaluation system and etc., the internal structure including subjects, objects, content, relief etc. The legitimacy of this system is based on encouraging creation and accelerating the utilization and transformation of knowledge production capacity. [Method/process] This system is functioning as the encouragement of cultural production and the reallocation method of economic interests. The empirical data on comparative studies show that this right does little harm to the public libraries’lending activities with only a few exceptions. In the era of the digital economy, more chance of application of this right keep showing up. [Result/conclusion] It is necessary to transplant it to China according to China’s development of economy, culture, and society. Ruling it in copyright law is applicable.