An Empirical Study of Reforming Commercial Arbitration in China

This paper examines recent reforms to the regulatory and institutional framework of commercial arbitration in China, based on an empirical study conducted between 2018 and 2019 of semi-structured interviews with over 80 actors, including Chinese lawmakers and policymakers, judges, arbitration institutions, legal practitioners, academic researchers, and companies and users of arbitration. The author has also consulted a variety of primary materials including publicized laws, regulations and policies, official reports, data and statistics, and internal guidelines and policy documents of the various actors that were interviewed for this study.