Hong Kong's Secretary of Justice Elsie Leung was in Beijing yesterday attempting to woo domestic and foreign businesses in a bid to tempt them to consider arbitration services in the special administrative region (SAR) as a major option to solving business disputes.
With an relatively matured legal system and a multinational group of legal professionals who have a good command of both Chinese and Western laws, the territory is determined to develop into a commercial arbitration center in the Asia-Pacific region.
"As China joins the World Trade Organization, cases involving business disputes with foreign companies look likely to increase greatly in the mainland. But the number of mainland lawyers specializing in this area is still too small," said Leung at a seminar on Hong Kong arbitration services in Beijing.
There are currently about 110,000 lawyers in the mainland, but only some 5,000 provide foreign-related, legal services.
Hong Kong will share the burden of a surge of demand for arbitration services, as it will be difficult for the mainland to train a large number of lawyers in international legal practice in such a short period of time, she said.
Leung said the region already has a great number of lawyers and arbitrators who have plenty of knowledge on different languages and cultures as well as on different laws.
In fact the mainland laws for joint ventures and foreign-invested companies stipulate that both parties that have signed a contract are able to choose not only mainland arbitrators, but also others, including those in Hong Kong.
However, some mainland arbitral officials have expressed their doubts about Hong Kong's ambitious plans to build itself into an arbitration center.
The majority of overseas-invested companies in the Chinese mainland still prefer to have their economic and trade disputes arbitrated locally, said Gu Yan, an official with the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission and Trade Arbitration Commission.
(China Daily December 19, 2001)
