Courts ponder platform for overseas suits

Chinese courts are exploring an online platform and a wider application of internet technologies to offer more effective, convenient and low-cost services for overseas litigants amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Technologies such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence should be better used in hearings involving overseas litigants, and rules for online litigation procedures of cases involving overseas litigants will also be improved to standardize such trials, according to a guideline released by the Supreme People’s Court on Friday.

Therefore, the guideline also called for a streamlined litigation process, a broader panel of the top court’s International Commercial Expert Committee, and the participation of well-known overseas commercial arbitration and mediation institutions in the international commercial dispute resolution mechanism.

The guideline is aimed at offering better legal service for the country’s further reform and opening-up.“President Xi Jinping has said repeatedly that China will not close its door but only open up wider. The guideline requires courts nationwide to be fully aware of the new opportunities and challenges brought by the country’s further opening-up and actively engage in it,” Yang said at a news conference on Friday.

The guideline requires courts to better handle cases involving overseas litigants such as those involving international sales of goods, carriage of goods by sea and financing guarantees, as well as intensify protection of intellectual property in key areas and core technologies.

News from Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China.