Publish time: Fri Oct 21 17:17:51 CST 2016
From Oct 6 to 8 2016, the 6th Asia Pacific Regional Arbitration Group (APRAG) Conference was hosted by the BANI Arbitration Center in Bali, Indonesia. This Conference was themed “the Rise of International Commercial Arbitration and Developments in Investment Treaty Arbitration: Asia’s Response”, aiming at studying issues newly arisen in arbitration practice in the Asia-Pacific region, exchanging new situations of arbitration, sharing new developments of leading arbitration institutions within the region, and thereby promoting the furtherance of regional cooperation on arbitration. More than 200 legal and arbitration experts, scholars and lawyers from all over the world attended this event. The delegation of the Beijing Arbitration Commission / Beijing International Arbitration Center (the “BAC”) headed by its Deputy Secretary General Dr. Chen Fuyong attended the Conference where Dr. Chen delivered a keynote speech.
On the afternoon of Oct 6, a meeting of APRAG member delegations representatives was held before the official conference, where the Chairman of the BANI Arbitration Center Mr. M. Husseyn Umar was elected the next Chairman of APRAG, and Dr. Chen Fuyong the next Vice Chairman.
On Oct 7, the Conference was officially convened. In the opening ceremony, the APRAG Chairman, the ASEAN Secretary General, the Chief of Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic Indonesia made keynote addresses respectively. In the following one and a half days, the Conference was conducted with five subjects in focus: “Diversity and Unification of Arbitration Practices in Asia”, “Third Party Funding and Costs in Investment and Commercial Arbitration”, “Investment Arbitrations in Asia”, “Prospects for harmonization of commercial and investment arbitration within the new ASEAN Economic Community” and “Members Update and Collaboration Perspectives”. Around these topics, speakers had exchanges and discussions on issues such as the new trends of international arbitration rules, the difference and uniformity of international arbitration cultures under different legal systems, third party funding, costs of commercial arbitration, investment arbitration, the prospect of arbitration within the new ASEAN Economic Community.
Opening address by Mr. M. Husseyn Umar, Chairman of BANI Arbitration Center
Opening address by Dr. AKP Mochtan, Deputy ASEAN Secretary General, on behalf of Mr. Le Luong Minh, ASEAN Secretary General
Opening address by Prof. Dr. H. M. Hatta Ali, SH, MH, Chief of Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic Indonesia
During the Conference, Dr. Chen Fuyong delivered a speech entitled “Recent Developments of Arbitration in Mainland China” (the slides attached below). With an overview of the national arbitration caseload, the overall amount in dispute and the caseload of foreign related arbitration of the past ten years in mainland China, and a thorough analysis and interpretation of such figures from the perspective of judicial supervision, he presented the status quo of commercial arbitration in China. Meanwhile, he also shared the up to date figures and growth of the BAC, such as: from its establishment in 1995 to the end of 2015, the BAC has accepted 26,991 arbitration cases in total, with an overall amount in dispute of 163.58 billion RMB and 633 international cases, as well as significant changes in the BAC Arbitration Rules 2015. As a powerful icon of arbitration institutions in mainland China, the BAC’s increasingly internationalized development has well reflected the constant development of the Chinese commercial arbitration as a whole. At the end of his speech, Dr. Chen concluded that “the growing number of arbitration cases and amounts in dispute reflected in the statistics point to a clear increasing demand for arbitration in mainland China”, “the Chinese judiciary has assumed a highly supportive position on arbitration and created an arbitration-friendly environment”, and “with the revision of Arbitration Rules, top Chinese arbitration institutions such as BAC will further improve their ability to provide dispute resolution services that meet and surpass international standards”.
Keynote
speech by Dr. Chen Fuyong
The BAC’s experience sharing has attracted
extensive attention from the attendees. With the continuous furtherance of the
Belt and Road Initiative, China actually has been extending huge influence in
the Asia-Pacific region and even globally based on its huge investment amount. This
is echoed by the fact that quite a few arbitration institutions in mainland
China have spared no effort to adopt the international practice of commercial
arbitration, to adjust their internal management and structure, and to improve
their capacity of dealing with international disputes, and it is the sustained
efforts of such institutions that are increasingly improving the overall
arbitration environment in China and the international competitiveness of Chinese
arbitration.
Closing Remarks by Dr. Michael Pryle
BAC
delegation with renowned arbitrator Mr. Philip Yang