Nowadays litigation often involves highly professional issues, which usually go beyond the knowledge of judges, lawyers, and the parties themselves. In order to solve these problems, the judge can refer to expert opinions, while the parties can engage expert assistants(专家辅助人) — or “China’s expert witness” as dubbed by some people — to help them express opinions on professional issues. Although the relevant rules of expert assistant need to be improved, the parties can give…

  Today, 15 Oct. 2020, the International Commercial Dispute Prevention and Settlement Organization (ICDPASO, 国际商事争端预防与解决组织) has been established in Beijing, China. As a non-governmental international organization, ICDPASO will provide legal services such as commercial arbitration, commercial mediation, investment arbitration and dispute prevention for countries/regions around the globe. I. Background: innovation of the international commercial dispute settlement mechanism The Opinions on Establishing Belt and Road Dispute Settlement Mechanism and Organization (关于建立“一带一路”争端解决机制和机构的意见) (hereinafter referred to as…

   “The burden of proof lies with the party asserting a proposition” (谁主张，谁举证) is a primary rule of burden of proof in China’s judicial proceedings. Only under exceptional circumstances can the parties request the court to assist in obtaining evidence or the other party to present evidence. The burden of proof is not unchangeable, which can shift from one party to the other during the trial. The judge has some discretion on the distribution of…

China’s Guiding Cases (指导性案例) refer to cases selected by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) from the effective judgments of courts nationwide through specific procedures, and should be referred to by courts at all levels when hearing similar cases. Setting out some basic requirements, the Rules on Guiding Cases (关于案例指导工作的规定) were issued by the SPC in November 2010 as a first step towards establishing the Guiding Case system. 1. Who can issue Guiding Cases? The Guiding…

  On 17 Aug. 2010, the Shanghai Second Intermediate People’s Court (hereinafter “the Shanghai Second Intermediate Court”) rendered two rulings to recognize and enforce the judgments made by the October District Court of Minsk City, the Republic of Belarus (hereinafter “the Belarusian Court”) (Dogancay Irina v. Dogancay Metin (2020) Hu 02 Xie Wai Ren No. 4 ((2020)沪02协外认4号), and (2020) Hu 02 Xie Wai Ren No.5 ((2020)沪02协外认5号)). For the full text of court decisions, please read…

  On 8 May 2020, Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan Province of China (hereinafter “the Chengdu Court”) rendered a ruling to dismiss the application for recognizing and enforcing a civil judgment made by a United Arab Emirates court, due to translation errors in the Chinese version of the application. Please click here, for the full text of the court decision in Chen Shijun (or Middle East Formwork Scaffold Company) v. China Metallurgical Chenggong…

  China’s current judge system began to take shape after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1978), and the judicial reform initiated in 2014 has accelerated its evolution.  Two judges of China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) Lin Wenxue (林文学) and Zhang Lei (张磊) published an article entitled “Development and Expectation of the Judge Administration System in China for 40 years Since the Reform and Opening-up” (改革开放40年来我国法官管理制度的发展与展望) in “People’s Judicature” (人民司法) (No.34, 2018), summarizing the development…