Legislation roundup: COVID-19 disputes, e-commerce and red-chips

May 21, 2020 | BY

Susan Mok

The Supreme People's Court has issued a second set of opinions guiding trials of COVID-19 disputes arising from change in costs, forex control is relaxed to facilitate e-commerce and measures are issued to welcome the return of red-chips to the China stock market.

Dispute Resolution

Supreme People's Court, Guiding Opinions on Several Issues Concerning the Lawful and Proper Trial of Civil Cases Involving the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Epidemic (2)

Where a party is unable to perform a sale and purchase contract by the deadline specified in the contract or the cost of performance has increased due to the epidemic or the measures taken to prevent and control the epidemic, continued performance would not affect achievement of the objective of the contract and a party requests termination of the contract, the people's court shall reject such request.

Where a sale and purchase contract can continue to be performed, but the epidemic or the measures taken to prevent and control the epidemic has/have caused the performance costs, such as for manpower, raw materials and logistics to markedly increase or the price of the products to markedly decrease, making continued performance clearly unfair for one of the parties, and the adversely affected party requests an adjustment of the price, the people's court shall adjust the price based on the principle of fairness and in light of the actual circumstances of the case.

Further reading

Trade

State Administration of Foreign Exchange, Circular on Supporting the Development of New Trade Forms

An enterprise that engages in cross-border e-commerce may carry out net settlement of warehousing, logistics, taxes and other such expenses incurred abroad in connection with export goods together with that for such export goods

Further reading

Capital Markets

China Securities Regulatory Commission, Announcement on Arrangements Relevant to the Domestic Listing of Innovative Pilot Red-Chip Enterprises

The market valuation requirement for an offshore listed red-chip enterprise is revised to either one of the following criteria:

(1)        a market valuation of not less than Rmb200 billion; or

(2)        a market valuation of at least Rmb20 billion and having own self-developed and world leading technology, relatively strong technological innovation capabilities and occupying a relatively advantageous position in the competition in its industry.

See the digest for more details.

Further reading

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