Mediation in China: Towards a Modernised and Harmonised Procedural Framework for International Commercial Mediation

Abstract

As China’s international trade in goods led the world in 2013 and ranked number two if trade in services was included, its economic activeness provides a fertile ground for cross-border commercial mediation. A comparative analysis of the mainland’s, Hong Kong’s and Macao’s dominant mediation rules in their respective legal context will suggest that intraregional cooperation could strengthen China’s position as an attractive forum to foreign parties for international commercial mediation than maintaining the status quo. This article first describes the rules and laws applicable to international commercial mediation in mainland China and its two special administrative regions. It then explains the extent to which such rules and laws address pressing procedural problems differently or whether they generate largely similar results under different labels. It concludes by arguing that regional resemblances and disparities prompt modernisation and harmonisation in light of the unformulated policies of keeping the parties’ freedom of action intact and maintaining the need for flexibility, and that the Conciliation Rules, the Model Law, recent deliberations of the UNCITRAL Working Group on Arbitration and Conciliation, and up-to-date mediation rules of global mediation service providers could provide helpful resources for improvements. [Abstract and keywords from SSRN]