The issuance and enforcement of interim measures in international arbitration under Chinese law

Abstract

Abstract The issuance and enforcement of interim measures in international arbitration play a critical role for the parties to resolve the dispute and realize the final arbitral award. For arbitration seated in China, the power to issue interim measures traditionally vests exclusively in the Chinese Courts under the current Arbitration Law and Civil Procedure Law of PRC, except for limited types of arbitration. Aiming to align the Chinese arbitration law with international practices, the Ministry of Justice of China introduced the Arbitration Law of the People’s Republic of China (Amendment) (Draft for Comments) in July 2021 which for the first time empowers the arbitral institutions at the legislative level to issue interim measures. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current as well as the newly introduced legal framework in China for the issuance and enforcement of interim measures in foreign-related arbitrations. Although the Amendment recognises the power of arbitral tribunals to issue interim measures in arbitrations seated in China, whether measures issued in arbitrations seated outside of China could be enforced in China remains unclear and the existing Civil Procedure Law of PRC would need to be further clarified to synchronise with the latest reform in Arbitration law.