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China’s Supreme People’s Court Calling for Judiciary to Facilitate Building of “Two Zones”

Source：Organizing_Committee          Date：2021.04.02

The Supreme People’s Court recently released a guideline on people’s courts providing judicial services and support for Beijing’s endeavors to develop the Integrated National Demonstration Zone for Opening up the Services Sector and the China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone (“two zones” in short).

The guideline stresses that people’s courts in Beijing should strengthen intellectual property protection and judicial protection in finance and other key fields of the services sector, with a focus on sci-tech innovation, opening-up of the services sector and the digital economy. The goal is to serve Beijing’s endeavors to build a global innovation hub, Integrated National Demonstration Zone for Opening up the Services Sector and a digital economy pilot zone, thus setting an example for other parts of the country. The guideline proposes to set up intellectual property circuit tribunals in key industrial parks and launch a pilot program allowing some basic-level courts to have jurisdiction over first-instance cases of software agreement disputes.

Taking into account the characteristics of Beijing, the guideline calls on courts in Beijing to resolve disputes and problems at source and at the primary level if possible, so as to create a safe and stable legal environment in the capital city. They should fully exploit Beijing’s advantages in foreign-related legal research to help improve Beijing’s role as a center for international exchanges and adjust the scope of jurisdiction over foreign-related cases in light of the needs for building the “two zones”. They should bring in well-known international commercial arbitration institutions and commercial mediation organizations from home and abroad and draw upon internationally recognized dispute resolution rules and the management experience of world-class dispute resolution institutions to build a first-class center for international commercial dispute resolution.

The guideline also proposes to develop a “Beijing model”, such as experimenting with the system of allowing people from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan to serve as people’s assessors in trials and encouraging foreign mediators and those from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan to participate in dispute resolution.

The 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), themed “Global Services, Shared Prosperity”, was held in Beijing from September 4 to 9, 2020. At the Forum on Emerging Trends in the Opening-up and Development of Trade in Services held during the fair, Chen Jining, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee and Mayor of Beijing, said that Beijing will focus on the business environment reform to improve the environment for trade in services, implement the policy measures for the version 4.0 of the reform, leverage blockchain, AI, big data and other cutting-edge technologies to improve government service efficiency, optimize the multilingual version of the municipal government’s official website (beijing.gov.cn), and create enabling institutional and service environments in alignment with international rules.

At the International Symposium on Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanism for Intellectual Property Cases, Pan Xinsheng, Deputy Director of Beijing Municipal Intellectual Property Office, said that as a pilot city for building a national integrated demonstration zone for greater openness in the services sector, Beijing has developed an intellectual property protection pattern encompassing administrative law enforcement, judicial trial, alternative mediation, commercial arbitration, legal services, public supervision and industrial self-discipline. Key breakthroughs have been made in IP dispute resolution mechanisms, especially in the field of mediation. Currently, there are 14 people’s mediation organizations for intellectual property disputes in Beijing, covering ten high-end industries. They serve as important channels for enterprises to safeguard their rights and to access public service resources in an efficient, convenient and cost-effective way, providing strong backing for the development of high-end industries in the capital city.

At the 5th Belt and Road Services Capacity Construction Forum held during the 2020 CIFTIS, Wang Li, Chairperson of the Belt and Road Service Connections and Director of the International Commercial Mediation Center for Belt and Road Initiative, introduced that the center and its online mediation system were launched in Beijing in October 2016. Over the five years, the center has achieved fruitful results in terms of platform construction, expansion of services, institutional building, theoretical research, medication practices, international promotion, social responsibility performance and evaluation. It has put in place effective collaboration modes, set up 61 mediation offices within and outside of the Chinese mainland and signed cooperation agreements with over 100 courts, tribunals, free trade zones, chambers of commerce, associations and legal service agencies at home and abroad. By doing so, it is capable of online-offline integrated mediations in over 180 cities across 80 countries.