Jinan accelerates building new highland for foreign-related legal services

As a key city in the Yellow River Basin and a vital pivot for the Belt and Road Initiative, Jinan in East China's Shandong province is leveraging the Shandong (Jinan) Central Legal Services District to build a global one-hour legal service ecosystem. The system delivers one-hour response time, targeted matching, and full-chain services for cross-border legal needs, bolstering the city's high-level opening-up through foreign-related rule of law.

Launched in 2023, the district's service network now covers 199 cities across 104 countries and regions. The district hosts more than 500 legal and related institutions and has handled nearly 80,000 legal cases, emerging as a landmark platform for foreign-related rule of law development in Shandong.

Building an integrated foreign-related legal service network

Centered on the Shandong (Jinan) Legal Service Center, Jinan has developed three sub-districts focused on business and finance, government services, and scientific and technological innovation. The core center provides one-stop, comprehensive services, including notarization, judicial appraisal, mediation, and legal consultation.

A range of foreign-related legal service platforms have been established within the center, including the province's first comprehensive foreign law ascertainment center, the Shandong-ASEAN Legal Service Center, the Jinan Mediation Office of the International Commercial Mediation Center for the Belt and Road, and the Jinan Secretariat of the China-Japan-South Korea Commercial Mediation Center.

Jinan has also developed a comprehensive digital legal service platform integrating five modules: a resource library, service desk, toolbox, training zone, and real-time monitoring dashboard. The city has built eight specialized service bases covering foreign-related legal services, financial and commercial mediation, and the cultivation of foreign-related legal talent. It has also carried out five major projects on policy support, institutional attraction, infrastructure development, brand building, and cultural development.

Among these bases, the foreign-related commercial legal service base has formed a 22-member professional team to provide one-stop services for enterprises, including compliance consulting, case representation, and dispute mediation. It has completed legal risk assessments for eight key enterprises going global and regularly holds foreign-related legal salons and training on the issues enterprises care about most in their overseas expansion, such as overseas anti-sanctions, cross-border e-commerce and risk control for overseas projects, serving more than 400 enterprises.

Developing a full-cycle service chain for enterprises going global

Jinan has integrated legal, commercial, financial and university think-tank resources to form a full-cycle foreign-related legal service system for businesses. Through regular initiatives such as Hundreds of Law Firms Serving Hundreds of Enterprises and a legal service framework for industrial chains that combines one coordinating mechanism, 13 key sectors, and multiple supporting services, it has provided free legal check-ups to more than 2,200 enterprises, helping them recover losses exceeding 15 million yuan ($2.25 million).

For major projects, including overseas bond issuance and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Jinan provides integrated legal and business support services. Since 2025, it has supported more than 30 large enterprises engaging in cross-border projects and handled over 60 foreign-related cases, recovering about 1.5 billion yuan ($22.53 million) in overseas losses. The city has also established Shandong's first industry-university-research consortium for legal services and launched eight industry legal service bases to align talent cultivation with industrial needs.

To resolve cross-border payment arrears and international trade disputes, Jinan has innovated diversified mediation mechanisms and successfully settled 345 international commercial cases. It has opened green channels for administrative reconsideration involving enterprises and set up 193 enterprise service outlets, cutting the handling time for enterprise-related disputes by 40 percent and resolving over 90 percent of such cases at the reconsideration stage.

Boosting institutional and talent support

Jinan regards talent and institutional development as twin engines for advancing foreign-related rule of law and continues to strengthen service delivery capacity in this field.

The city has issued Shandong's first catalogue for high-level legal talent accreditation, incorporating outstanding legal professionals into municipal talent policies that offer housing subsidies of up to one million yuan ($150,200). Through a tiered talent cultivation program, a youth lawyer development fund and training camps for leading foreign-related legal professionals, Jinan has built a full-cycle talent ecosystem covering introduction, cultivation and incentives. The city now has 350 foreign-related lawyers.

Jinan has also launched a three-year action plan to attract legal service institutions, drawing high-end resources from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The country's first representative office of a Malaysian law firm and Shandong's first representative office of a law firm from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region have been established in the city. Meanwhile, leading local law firms have expanded overseas, opening branches in South Korea and Malaysia.

In addition, the city has deepened cross-regional and cross-border cooperation. It has led nine provincial capitals along the Yellow River to sign a strategic agreement, co-hosted high-end forums with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, and held more than 100 exchange events on foreign-related rule of law.

At the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), Jinan will transform the central legal service district from a physical cluster of institutions into an integrated business hub by focusing on digital empowerment, institutional support, and industrial integration. The aim is to build a nationally influential new highland for foreign-related legal services and provide solid rule-of-law safeguards for developing a modernized provincial capital.