Weixia Gu on China's Arbitration Modernisation Under Judicial Efforts and Marketisation Waves (new book chapter)

"China's Arbitration Modernisation Under Judicial Efforts and Marketisation Waves"

Weixia Gu

in Anselmo Reyes and Weixia Gu (eds), The Developing World of Arbitration - A Comparative Study of Arbitration Reform in the Asia Pacific (Hart Publishing, January 2018), pp. 17-38.

Introduction: Since 1978, China's drive towards economic modernisation and marketisation in its policy of 'reform and opening up' has led to increased foreign trade, investment, and as a natural corollary, commercial disputes. Arbitration, the preferred means of settling business disputes in China, plays a significant role in providing foreign cooperative partners with the confidence and reassurance that are necessary to encourage trade and investment.

     China's Arbitration Law, promulgated in 1994 (effective in 1995) forms the cornerstone of the modern Chinese arbitration regulatory framework. However, there has been little legislative improvement afterwards towards meeting the changing needs of the past two decades. Instead, top-down judicial efforts by China's Supreme People's Court and bottom-up institutional initiatives by Chinese arbitration commissions have played their role in further refining and internationalising the Chinese arbitration system. Arbitration commissions in particular have proliferated int he years following the promulgation of the Arbitration Law, and their rising competition for independence and professionalism in recent years has pushed the formation and flourishing of the Chinese arbitration market...