Abstract: The defaulting party's right of rescission can solve real contractual deadlocks where nonpecuniary obligations fall into impossibility. Its normative value is to clarify that no matter whether the impossibility is attributed to the parties or not， the obligee who shall receive the nonpecuniary performance cannot release automatically from his own debt， but has to resort to the right to rescind instead. That the obligee who shall receive the nonpecuniary performance refuses to do so and hopes to rescind his own debt is the so-called fake contractual deadlock， which has unfortunately been confused with its real counterpart by theory and practice as well. Expanding the rules for real contractual deadlocks to the fake ones has invited a lot of doubt and opposition. Where a fake deadlock happens， the obligee who wants to escape from the binding force of the contract may urge the obligor to rescind the contract initially according to the mitigation rule. To this extent， the mitigation rule can be regarded as the functional replacement of the defaulting party's right of rescission.

Key words: contractual deadlock; impossibility of performance; the defaulting party's right of rescission; contract settlement; mitigation rule