More foreign enterprises are using the Shanghai Financial Court, which was established in 2018, to handle commercial disputes. The first court in China to specialize in financial disputes has gained increasing credibility and influence among foreign businesses and individuals, court officials said. One recent example was a dispute concerning a contract of guarantee that it helped solve. The two parties involved were the Singapore branch of an international bank and a domestic enterprise from Shandong province.
The court’s improved international standing is the result of continuous efforts to improve professional foreign related financial adjudication. “We have stepped up efforts to ascertain foreign laws when dealing with disputes involving foreign parties,” said Zhao Hong, President of the Court. “Also, last month, we published a trial guide for use when dealing with disputes involving foreign enterprises and individuals as well as those from China’s Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.”
The court said it has been using a smart interpreter system since December 2019, when it became the first in China to do so. The system provides voice-to-text conversion in real time, with Chinese and English versions shown on a screen in the courtroom. Dozens of experts in financial justice have been invited to join the Court’s expert panel to boost its authority in dealing with disputes in various fields. The latest batch of 15 experts from home and abroad joined in June. The Court said that this year it has been putting typical examples of concluded cases in international legal databases. They have been retrieved more than 360,000 times and been downloaded and cited 11,000 times by users at home and abroad. Statistics from the Court showed that it had accepted more than 21,700 financial disputes of various kinds, involving nearly CNY547 billion. It has concluded 20,050 cases.The court said it has been visited by more than 20 delegations from foreign countries and regions, including the United Kingdom and Singapore, as well as international organizations, such as the World Bank. By communicating with those visitors, the Shanghai Financial Court learned from their best practices and introduced its own financial justice innovations to them, the China Daily reports.
