On September 25, 2024, China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (“CIETAC”) held a press conference in Beijing, at which Mr. Wang Chengjie, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of CIETAC, released the Annual Report on International Commercial Arbitration in China (2023-2024) (“Annual Report 2023-2024”) and the Selected Cases Regarding Cross-Jurisdictional Recognition and Enforcement of CIETAC Awards (Selected Cases on Enforcement). Mr. Xu Yanbo, Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy Secretary-General of CIETAC, presided over the press conference.

To better implement the important directives of the Party and the State on arbitration work, as well as the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on fostering world-class arbitration institutions, to timely and comprehensively summarize and showcase the latest achievements in the construction of the rule of law in international commercial arbitration in China, further promote the improvement of China's arbitration system, industry development and information exchange, enhance China's credibility and influence on the international commercial arbitration stage, and help build China into a new destination for international commercial arbitration, CIETAC decides to continue the tradition of annually summarizing the development of international commercial arbitration in China, which began in 2015, and continue to prepare and publish the tenth Annual Report 2023-2024, and set up a special research group to prepare the Selected Cases on Enforcement.

At the press conference, Secretary General Wang Chengjie first released the Annual Report 2023-2024. He said that the Annual Report 2023-2024 was commissioned to Renmin University of China to form a research group to prepare, and the main members of the group included experts and practitioners from the Supreme People's Court, Ministry of Justice, universities, enterprises and law firms. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the data of China's international commercial arbitration cases in 2023 and the development of China's arbitration rule of law practice from 2023 to June 2024, the Annual Report 2023-2024 synchronously tracks the dynamics of domestic and international commercial arbitration theory research, the progress of China's international commercial arbitration education and training of reserve talents. It continuously explores the legal issues involved in the judicial review of China's international commercial arbitration, and comprehensively sorts out the current emergency arbitrator procedures and its practice in China. The Annual Report 2023-2024 focuses on how to reasonably respond to the challenges posed by insolvency proceedings to arbitration proceedings under different circumstances. It also reflects on and explores the key legal issues of energy disputes and the prospects of the use of arbitration from the perspective of industry development.

In the release of the Selected Cases on Enforcement, Secretary General Wang Chengjie pointed out that this was the first domestic study focusing on the status of recognition and enforcement of awards of Chinese arbitral institutions abroad. Led by senior arbitrators of CIETAC, the research group comprises a number of scholars from universities and practical lawyers. The research specifically selects ten representative countries and regions, including the United States, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia and Hong Kong (China), and carefully choses 15 cases from CIETAC's recent awards that have been recognized and enforced in the aforementioned jurisdictions in recent years for systematic research. It sorts out and introduces the legal frameworks and procedural requirements for enforcing extraterritorial arbitral awards in different jurisdictions, summarizes the good practice in the procedural management of CIETAC arbitration cases, analyzes in-depth the attitude of courts in different jurisdictions towards the application of the New York Convention and the standards for reviewing awards of CIETAC, and pays special attention to the impacts of special provisions in different jurisdictions on the substantive rights of the parties particularly. The results of the research show that arbitral awards of CIETAC are highly recognized and widely enforced in different jurisdictions around the globe. Only from the known cases, it can be seen that courts in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Argentina, Singapore, India, Vietnam, Hong Kong (China), Taiwan (China) and other countries or regions have widely recognized, endorsed and enforced CIETAC's arbitral awards. In early 2024, a court in Saudi Arabia recognized and enforced an arbitral award of CIETAC in the amount of RMB240 million. This not only set a record for the highest amount of Chinese arbitral awards recognized and enforced by the courts of Saudi Arabian, but also signified that Chinese arbitral awards had successfully withstood the test of Shariah law. Recently, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Canada recognized and enforced a CIETAC arbitral award involving RMB1.2 billion in payment obligations, which set a new record for the highest value of an award of a Chinese arbitral institution to be enforced extraterritorially.

Secretary General Wang Chengjie said that the above two research results showed that international commercial arbitration, as a globally accepted dispute resolution method, was increasingly playing an important role in properly handling international economic, trade and investment disputes. It has become an important means for countries to optimize the business environment and enhance the soft power of the rule of law. At the same time, the business data of Chinese arbitration institutions represented by CIETAC increases significantly, and the degree of internationalization of cases continues to improve. In 2023, CIETAC accepted 5,237 cases, a year-on-year increase of 28.17%, with a disputed amount of RMB151.023 billion, a year-on-year increase of 19.01%, and the average disputed amount of each case was RMB28.8377 million, which was a historical high in terms of the number of cases and amount in dispute. Among them, there were 645 foreign-related cases, with a total disputed amount of RMB52.765 billion, and an average disputed amount of RMB81.8055 million for foreign-related cases. The cases involved 88 countries and regions. Since its establishment in 1956, the total number of countries and regions from which the parties to cases handled by CIETAC had reached 165, covering all the countries along the Belt and Road. Compared with the International Chamber of Commerce International Court of Arbitration (“ICC”), the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (“SCC”), and the London Court of International Arbitration (“LCIA”), Singapore International Arbitration Centre (“SIAC”), Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (“HKIAC”) and other internationally renowned arbitration institutions, over the past five years, CIETAC has been ranked among the world's top three arbitration institutions in terms of the number of cases, the amount in dispute, the number of countries of the parties, and other major indicators. Especially since 2023, the growth in many aspects has been particularly remarkable. China's arbitration institutions, represented by CIETAC, have made repeated achievements on the road of internationalization and specialization. The international credibility and influence of China's arbitration have continued to rise, expanding its global reach. Arbitral awards have been widely recognized and enforced in various jurisdictions around the globe. The construction of China's international first-class arbitration institutions has taken a solid step forward, and the construction of the international commercial arbitration center has demonstrated a strong impetus.

Thirty-nine news media, including Xinhua News Agency, CCTV, China News Service, China Reform Daily, China Youth Daily, Legal Daily, Economic Daily, Guangming Daily, Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Daily, China Trade News, Economic Information Daily, and Hong Kong Commercial Daily, attended the press conference. The press conference was synchronized with the online live broadcast, and more than 2,000 viewers watched the live broadcast online. Principal members of the research group of the Annual Report 2023-2024, including Arbitrator Du Huanfang, Secretary of the Party Committee and Vice Dean of the Law school of Renmin University of China, Arbitrator Jiang Hong, Partner of Global Law Office, and Arbitrator Cui Qiang, Partner of Commerce & Finance Law Offices, as well as  Arbitrator Chen Jianling, Associate Professor of University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) and leader of the research group of the Selected Cases on Enforcement, answered questions from the media on relevant situation.