It is controversial that the Civil Procedure Act of the PRC and the Judicial Interpretation define representative action in Article 54 of the Act as joint action.

However,class action has its unique institutional value and advantage than traditional joint action.

An important one of those reasons is that some cases, which should be or can be handled in joint action, were separated into single cases which results in repeated work of courts, expansion of litigants\' legal cost and inconsistent judgments.

The author has,from the situation of China medium and small shareholders rights damages,analyzed the main reasons for and the situation of medium and small shareholders rights damages in Company Law and Securities Law,and compared China direct action and derivative action,individual action,joint litigation and representative action.

The article analyzes the reasons of the Supreme People s Court of China s non-adoption of American class action from legal,economical and political perspectives,and suggests that there are three limitations in the application of joint litigation to tort action of securities.

To do so,it is essential that test litigation,co-litigation and alternative dispute resolutions be adopted to replace the current repre.

This article argues that there are three limitations for co-litigation s application in civil tort case of securities, namely it s difficult for co-litigation to expand its scale; co-litigation has no way to solve the problem of free-rider, the system of representative of action is not wholly fit for such case.