Abstract
Even though the Singapore Convention is recognized as a landmark in the history of the international dispute resolution area, it is still in its infancy. Given China's economic influence and Hong Kong's position in the Asia-Pacific commercial dispute resolution market, China's ratification would greatly enhance the Singapore Convention's impact in international commercial dispute resolution market and hence promote the use of commercial mediation. However, it remains uncertain as to whether, when and how the Singapore Convention would enter into force in China, even though China's one of the first signatories. Current commentaries within China towards Singapore Convention do not only reflect the potential benefits for China to ratify the Singapore Convention, but also difficulties that China might face and strategies to overcome these difficulties, which might form the basis for future decision-makings related to commercial mediation in China.
Highlights
On June 25 2018, UNCITRAL finalized the text of the United Nations Convention on International Conciliation Agreements resulting from Mediation, which was adopted by the 73rd United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 2018 (General Assembly, 2018)
The construction of a relief mechanism for international commercial mediated settlement agreements started from a proposal made by the United States government, in which the United States government specified that an obstacle to the use of mediation in international commercial disputes was that settlement agreements reached through mediation might be more difficult to enforce than arbitral awards, and that it was necessary to
The Chinese translation of the Singapore Convention describes the object of regulation as 'international settlement agreements arising from mediation', in the context of the Chinese civil litigation system, a settlement agreement refers to an agreement reached voluntarily by the parties to a dispute to resolve the dispute without the assistance of any third parties (Gao, 2020; Lian, 2021; Song & Xu, 2021)
Summary
On June 25 2018, UNCITRAL finalized the text of the United Nations Convention on International Conciliation Agreements resulting from Mediation (hereinafter referred to as the Singapore Convention), which was adopted by the 73rd United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 2018 (General Assembly, 2018). The Singapore Convention seeks to address the lack of enforceability of settlement agreements resulting from mediation by providing a direct relief mechanism for such settlement agreements, which is modelled on the New York Convention. The Singapore Convention, together with the New York Convention, the Hague Conference on Choice of Court Agreements and the Hague Convention on the Enforcement of Judgments, constitutes one of the three pillars in the field of international commercial disputes (Liu, Sun, Fu, & Sun, 2020). Compared to the 168 Parties to the New York Convention (UNCITRAL Working Group II, 2021) and the 32 Parties to the Hague Convention on Choice of Court (HCCH, 2021), the Singapore Convention is still in its infancy in the field of international commercial dispute resolution. It predicted China's consideration and intention to ratify the Singapore Convention, taking into account the above opportunities and challenges as well as possible strategies and solutions
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