*Web extra: Interview with Yu Jianlong

Do you think the PRC Arbitration Law, which was promulgated in 1994, should be revised?

Yes, the Arbitration Law should be revised to recognise the role of online arbitration, because in the current law there's not any provision about it ... It doesn't prohibit it, but it doesn't say yes.

In online arbitration, there may be concerns about the legal weight of electronic evidence or documents submitted purely online with electronic signatures. What's your feeling on that?

I think with online arbitration, the major factor hindering the development of online arbitration is related to evidence – whether online evidence could be accepted or not. I think this would call for legal support. And it also calls for revision of relevant laws and regulations in other countries as well so we have uniform, consistent practice where everybody accepts the standard, otherwise it's going to be a little bit difficult.

When we have the arbitration proceedings, it's not possible for us to do everything online – at least at this point. While we primarily use the online method to conduct proceedings, we should also adopt the traditional method as a secondary means of communication. Probably some of the evidence would be submitted for cross-examination via mail, because people wouldn't accept that online.

Is Cietac actively lobbying the government about revision of the Arbitration Law?

We've been very active lobbying the relevant departments in China to revise the Arbitration Law – we've been doing this for a few years already. Actually the Chinese departments are thinking about revising the law, and some meetings have been held to discuss this. I think within a few years the Arbitration Law will be revised.

Cietac in general is well-regarded and people have said it is quite liberal, reasonably priced, and fast. But with such a large panel of arbitrators, how does Cietac maintain quality?

In the first place the arbitrators are carefully chosen – we have a very good process of selecting the arbitrators. When a person qualifies to be an arbitrator, they must have a very good reputation, a strong sense of responsibility, and would like to make contributions to arbitration.

Once the arbitrators are chosen, we have a very close scrutiny system in Cietac to safeguard the quality of arbitral awards. When a case is settled, arbitrators submit the drafts of the award to Cietac. We have experts to review the award; we can provide opinions with regard to substantive and procedural matters. If the arbitrators accept the opinions, they can redraft their award. If they say: “Your opinions are not acceptable and we want to adhere to our opinions”, then that's up to the decision of the arbitral tribunal.

Also over the past year at Cietac we adopted a system of cross-supervision. Once a case is settled, we supply an inquiry form to the parties involved. They can rate the performance of both the arbitrators and the secretary from Cietac. Also the arbitrators would supervise the performance of the secretary in Cietac, and the secretary also has a kind of supervision over the arbitrators to see whether an arbitrator is pro one party – if he's shown some bias. This kind of cross-supervision helps us to maintain the quality of the arbitral awards. People would be very careful in dealing with the cases. This is a very effective way of supervising the arbitrators and trying to ensure the quality of Cietac arbitration.

What is the structure of Cietac?

In March we established the southwest sub-commission of Cietac in Chongqing. We also have sub-commissions in Shenzhen, Tianjin and Shanghai.

We are just one commission. The headquarters and the Cietac sub-commissions use the same panel, and we use the same rules. When they have the arbitral awards ready, they have to provide the drafts of the awards to Beijing for final scrutiny. In terms of the staff [and] the financial matters, Shanghai and Shenzhen are independent whereas with Chongqing and Tianjin, we have total control of those two offices. The headquarters in Beijing send people to Chongqing and Tianjin.

When the sub-commissions submit the drafts to the head office, we appoint experts to review the arbitral awards. When a person reviews the arbitral awards, he or she would give some opinions, and then the opinions would be given to the sub-commissions, the sub-commissions would provide the opinions to the arbitrators and the arbitrators can re-draft the arbitral award.

The Beijing head office is in charge of the quality of the arbitral awards.

It has been said that sometimes the arbitrators can be a little bit paranoid about getting it wrong, and therefore slow to make decisions.

This is probably because the arbitrator is not sure what to do – is not sure about what kind of conclusion he could reach. In this sense I think if the arbitrator is hesitant to make the arbitral awards, he would often ask the commission to convene an expert committee meeting to give some opinions. It's not because he's afraid of running into trouble.

Cietac arbitration is quite efficient. According to the rules of Cietac, an arbitral tribunal is required to render an arbitral awards within six months of its composition when dealing with a foreign-related case, four months for a domestic case, and three months for a summary procedure. Generally speaking, the Cietac arbitration cases are handled very fast – unlike some other arbitral institutions in the world where a case might drag for many, many years. That's a rare case at Cietac.

For foreign parties who are used to a common law system where witness testimony is given a lot of weight, they may feel that within Cietac too much weight is given to physical evidence over witness testimony. How do you adapt when parties want to rely on witness testimony?

China is a country under the civil law system; hearings are conducted under an inquisitorial approach. When we revised the arbitration rules of Cietac in 2005, we introduced the common law system as well. Nowadays the arbitral tribunal is free to make a decision on what approach to take – whether the inquisitorial or adversarial approach. Once the parties have agreement on this, the arbitrators would respect their choice. Even in the absence of such an agreement, the presiding arbitrator could make a decision on that.

Witnesses are called in Cietac. We don't prohibit witnesses from being present at hearings … In China, we attach more importance to written witness statements, so, that being the tradition in China, we're trying to change it a little bit so as to pay more attention to witnesses.

There is still a perception among foreign companies who are new to doing business and resolving disputes in China that they won't get a fair trial at Cietac. What kind of re-assurance can you give to those kinds of foreign parties?

I think their worries come mainly from the negative image depicted by foreign media of China. Once they have an experience of Cietac arbitration, they'll change their original image of China.

I think Cietac has won a very good reputation in terms of impartiality. Cietac is quite famous for its impartiality. The fact that we handle more than 1000 cases every year signifies impartiality; otherwise the parties would not choose Cietac arbitration. Over the past 50 years, we've handled more than 15,000 cases – the great majority have been foreign-related cases and the foreign parties are generally very satisfied with Cietac arbitration.

Compared with other arbitral institutions in the world, we are one of the most impartial bodies. In Cietac, whether it's a Chinese party or a foreign party, we never try to protect the rights and interests of the Chinese company – we treat the parties equally – because we know, deep in the heart of Cietac, that we should provide a very satisfying investment environment to foreign investors, otherwise they'll not come over to China to do business.

When I talk to Chinese companies that have experience in dealing with arbitration at foreign arbitral bodies, they told me that they were treated unequally or even very badly in some of the cases – a lot of complaints. But we never do that – we try to treat every party equally.

In 2008, Hong Kong and mainland China introduced a reciprocal arrangement for enforcement of arbitral awards (and court judgments). How is that going?

I think the two sides are co-operating very well. Hong Kong arbitral awards can be smoothly enforced in mainland China, and mainland China arbitral awards, including Cietac arbitral awards, have been well enforced in Hong Kong. According to some statistics, 99% of Cietac arbitral awards have been actually enforced in Hong Kong.

Last year, you were heard to defend the mainland Chinese courts' record in upholding foreign arbitral awards. You said only 12 awards were denied over a few years leading up to 2007. But some lawyers have responded by saying they would prefer to see no denials at all.

The vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, Mr Wan [Wan Exiang, vice-president from 2000], gave a figure saying that 10 foreign awards were denied between 2000 and 2007. About four of these were cases were parties that did not have an arbitral clause in the contract; there is one case where there was not any asset to enforce upon; the other five were turned down because of some procedural matters, such as one party was not notified of the composition of the arbitral tribunal or was not given an equal opportunity to state the case.

Mr Wang also mentioned that China has the best enforcement record of foreign arbitral awards in the world. The enforcement record in China is improving and we're doing a lot of work in this regard. I think the court system in China is very pro the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards.

Yu Jianlong

1965: Born in Beijing

1986: Obtains Bachelor of Art, majoring in American and British literature, from Beijing Capital Normal University