China’s first specialised financial court has unveiled plans to become an international centre for the judicial processing of financial cases.
On 21 February the Shanghai Financial Court publicly released the “Shanghai Financial Court Five Year Development Plan Outline (2019 – 2023)” (上海金融法院五年发展规划纲要（2019-2023）).
The Plan calls for the court’s establishment as an “internationalised court of law that possesses a comparatively high level of international credibility and influence,” as part of efforts to make Shanghai the “location of choice for the resolution of international financial disputes.”
“The Shanghai Financial Court will also “push for the formulation of standardised provisions for the resolution of externally related financial disputes; explore and improve the optimisation of procedures for externally related cases, extraterritorial service and the remote confirmation of cross-border evidence and foreign law clarification mechanisms; raise the convenience of externally related litigation procedures and the predictability of judgments, and create a location of choice for financial lawsuits.”
The Shanghai Financial Court will also “actively fulfil its duty of international judicial assistance, improve its mediation of financial civil and commercial disputes, and judicial review work for foreign court decisions.”
Xiao Kai (肖凯), deputy president of the Shanghai Financial Court, said that the court was making preparations for application to establish a Chinese Legal Court International Financial Judicial (Shanghai) Centre (中国法院国际金融司法（上海）中心), which will play an active role with regard to “dispute resolution, theoretical research and foreign interactions.”
“We will work hard to create a ‘Chinese plan’ and ‘Shanghai practice’ for financial dispute resolution, and raise China’s right to speak with regard to rules for international financial markets,” said Xiao.
