Beijing Arbitration Commission

On November 24, 2015, the 3rd International Arbitration Conference themed “Opportunities and Challenges for Dispute Resolution in the Next Century” was convened in Sydney jointly by the Law Council of Australia, the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Australia Branch as part of the Sydney Arbitration Week 2015. The Beijing Arbitration Commission/Beijing International Arbitration Center (the “BAC”) attended the event as the only invited arbitration institution from mainland China. Dr. Chen Fuyong, Deputy Secretary General of the BAC, delivered a speech.

During the event, experts from leading arbitration institutions, law firms, courts and colleges conducted extensive discussion in five sessions on “Emerging trends in international arbitration”, “Arbitration in the Asia Pacific – strength in diversity?”, “Opportunities and challenges presented by Australia’s new free trade agreements”, “Australia and New Zealand as seats for arbitration – opportunities and challenges”, and “The courts fight back?: the Hague Convention on court agreements and the establishment of regional international commercial courts”, respectively. Dr. Chen participated in the discussion of the second session on “Arbitration in the Asia Pacific – strength in diversity?” He specifically introduced the recent development of arbitration in mainland China from perspectives of an overall introduction of arbitration in mainland China, statistics of judicial review, and the improvement of arbitration rules by Chinese arbitration institutions. Apart from that, Dr. Chen highlighted the BAC practice. To better raise its global image, the BAC has started to use the alternate name the Beijing International Arbitration Center concurrently. To better meet the demands of international arbitration users and the needs in handling disputes of complexity, the newly unveiled BAC Arbitration Rules 2015 has widely adopted global practice in the provisions on seat, language and governing law of arbitration, consolidation of arbitrations, joinder of additional parties and so forth. In his conclusion, Dr. Chen stressed that the boom in both arbitration caseload and disputed amount as shown in the statistics clearly indicated that mainland China had an ever-growing demand for arbitration services, and the strong supports from judicial authorities provided Chinese arbitration institutions with an arbitration-friendly legal environment.

In addition to Dr. Chen, other speakers expressed their views as well on different subjects. Their different backgrounds of jurisdiction, education, culture and occupation led to their colorful speeches from varied perspectives, which contributed to an impressive discussion during throughout the one-day event.

As one of the closing events of the Sydney Arbitration Week of the year, a gala dinner was held by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Australia Branch on the evening to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The BAC delegation was invited to attend the dinner and had a further communication with other professionals within the international arbitral community.