HK, Chinese mainland up arbitration cooperation

The Chinese mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region jointly revised a 20-year-old legal assistance arrangement and issued it on Friday, in an effort to consolidate cooperation in resolving commercial disputes.

The revised legal assistance arrangement allows parties involved in commercial disputes to simultaneously apply for arbitral awards enforcement in courts on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong.

The new arrangement will accommodate increasing demand for more efficient handling and settlement in the judicial arbitration process. Closer business-to-business and people-to-people links between the mainland and Hong Kong in recent decades have put such an arrangement high on the grand regional development agenda.