A message from ICCA: New upload of materials for the 2021 volume of the Yearbook now available

Dear ICCA Members and friends,

Subscribers to KluwerArbitration enjoy access to the ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration.

A new upload of materials for the 2021 volume of the Yearbook is now available on the
KluwerArbitration website. This upload is entirely devoted to an update of court cases from the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the application of the 1958 New York Convention, with 14
decisions dating from 2003 to 2020. Three decisions are particularly interesting.

In a decision from 2003, the Supreme People’s Court took a restrictive approach to public policy
when it held that a dispute was arbitrable even though it concerned a futures trading contract. While the parties’
engagement in overseas futures trading without state approval contravened mandatory Chinese
law, this contravention did not per se constitute a violation of Chinese public policy within the
meaning of Art. V(2)(b) of the Convention.

In 2013, a majority of the Supreme People’s Court found that a clause for ICC arbitration in Shanghai
was valid, against the minority opinion that the clause was null and void, even though the ICC was not an arbitration
institution registered with the Chinese judicial administrative authorities as required by the
Arbitration Law of the PRC.

In 2020, the Intermediate People’s Court in Guangzhou rendered a decision on how to distinguish
between domestic and international awards in the PRC. It held that the New York Convention did not apply to an award
rendered by an ICC tribunal seated in Guangzhou, even though the arbitration was between a US
and a Chinese party, since the award’s nationality was to be determined by the seat of the
arbitration.