Guangzhou upgrades arbitration service system

The Guangzhou Arbitration Commission (GZAC) has recently adopted multiple measures to upgrade its arbitration and mediation service system, in a bid to help resolve cross-border commercial disputes in an effective way.

In recent years, the GZAC has actively responded to the major national strategy of the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), and has taken the lead in removing legal barriers.

On the basis of the China Nansha International Arbitration Center, it has made collaborative efforts to establish the GBA arbitration alliance and promoted the integration of rules and mechanisms in GBA, so as to continuously provide and upgrade online arbitration services with a series of innovative features.

To boost its international influence, the GZAC has strengthened communication and cooperation with the Small and Medium Law Firms Association of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators, and the commercial mediation committee of the Hong Kong Chinese Enterprises Association to provide services for parties in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) as well as in Commonwealth nations.

The GZAC has also learned from and exchanged experience with the Macao Arbitration Association, the World Trade Center Macau Arbitration Center (WTC Macau Arbitration Center), and the International Trust Arbitration Organisation (Macau) to reach out to parties in Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) and Portuguese-speaking countries and regions, and establish contact with legal organizations in countries and regions along the Belt and Road. As a result, the "3+N" arbitration model has been formed.

In the future, the GZAC, catering to foreign-related arbitration development, will promote its "3+N" model across the globe, which is based on the legal systems of the Chinese Mainland, the HKSAR, and the MSAR and integrates rules in different regions, in a bid to provide more targeted arbitration services in cross-border disputes.

In the meantime, based on the first APEC Collaborative Framework for Online Dispute Resolution of Cross-Border Business-to-Business Disputes (APEC-ODR) in the world, the GZAC has developed a universal ODR mechanism to jointly build the GBA arbitration center for international business and the digital economy, providing all parties with a "one stop" online legal service that is highly efficient, accessible and economical.

The Online GZAC was officially listed as one of the three ODR providers of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and has been displayed on its official website as recommended service provider for its 21 members.

To further promote the integration of arbitration legal services among the Yangtze River Delta region and the GBA, the GZAC has led cooperation between arbitration institutions in both regions to create an arbitration coordination mechanism that features shared arbitration standards, courts, lists of arbitrators and service windows.

Since 2022, the GZAC has, through the shared list of arbitrators, attracted nearly 200 arbitrators from 23 countries and regions who are familiar in international economics and trade rules. Among them, the number of arbitrators from the HKSAR has doubled year on year, and the number of cases they arbitrated saw a fourfold increase year on year.