The meeting was held on the initiative of SHAC following an invitation from PAA.

SHAC is the largest arbitration court in China. It was established by the Chinese government in 1995 and has considered 14,000 cases to date. The court has been receiving more than 1000 cases per year since 2005; it received 1890 cases in 2014, including approx. 400 related to cross-border trade, in which the trading partner has a local representative office or a subsidiary (“foreign-related civil and commercial disputes”) and approx. 50 cases which are typical international disputes. It has a list of over 700 arbitrators, including foreign arbitrators from the USA, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Korea, Australia, Belgium, Norway and others.

The objective of the conference was to provide a more detailed presentation of the parties and the basic principles of functioning of arbitration in Poland and in China. China is aware of the increasing need to effectively implement arbitration in disputes with foreign partners. Chinese expansion of entrepreneurship is generating increasingly numerous trade disputes, which the state courts are unable to efficiently handle.

The discussions focused on the practical aspects of arbitration in Polish-Chinese relations. As a result, concrete arrangements were made on the mutual promotion of international commercial arbitration, exchange of experiences, publications, rules of arbitration and mediation and joint conferences. The Association undertook to provide a list of recommended arbitrators to consider Polish-Chinese cases before the SHAC, while the Chinese delegation was asked to prepare a similar list of recommended Chinese arbitrators to be presented to the Polish arbitration courts.

The culmination of the meeting was the signature by the chairmen of the delegations of a Memorandum of Understanding Between Shanghai Arbitration Commission and Polish Arbitration Association, as a declaration of intent to enhance the cooperation.