SHEN Sibao

President of the China Society of International Economic Law under the China Law Society

Distinguished leaders and dear colleagues,

On this topic, I would like to share the following observations.

I. International mediation rules are driving international commercial mediation practice toward greater standardization and integration.

The UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Conciliation, promulgated by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law in 2002, has served as a banner for the convergence and harmonization of mediation procedural rules across countries. The Singapore Convention on Mediation was opened for signature in 2019 and entered into force in 2020. As a counterpart of the New York Convention in the field of mediation, it is designed to establish a unified mechanism for the enforcement of cross-border settlement agreements worldwide. Countries and regions have successively enacted supporting legislation, pushing international mediation into a new stage of development. In 2026, China formally put into effect the Regulations on Commercial Mediation, an administrative regulation issued by the State Council, thereby laying a rule-of-law foundation for domestic commercial mediation. Meanwhile, Singapore, Hong Kong and many parts of Europe have set up professional international mediation centers, giving rise to a multi-tiered mediation ecosystem advancing in parallel across the globe.

II. Innovations in China’s mediation practice have added rich Chinese elements to international commercial mediation.

The one-stop mechanism for mediation, arbitration and litigation established by the International Commercial Court of the Supreme People’s Court has broken down the barriers among the three channels of dispute resolution, enabling commercial mediation to connect seamlessly with arbitration or litigation. Last year, the “headquarters-to-headquarters” initiative launched by the Supreme People’s Court and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade made commercial mediation more professional and targeted. In addition, drawing on its large-scale commercial mediation practice, China has distilled practical models such as “mediation with arbitration as a fallback option”, “court-annexed mediation” and “on-site mediation at trade-fairs”, while Shenzhen, Xiamen, Shanghai and other places have explored pragmatic approaches including commercial mediation in pilot free trade zones, third-party funded mediation and cross-border joint mediation, integrating the Eastern philosophy of “harmony” into international rules and paving a new path distinct from adversarial dispute resolution, thereby adding fresh Chinese elements to international commercial mediation.

III. Digital technologies are empowering innovation.

Cross-border mediation has become the norm, and blockchain-based evidence preservation that secures mediation records and settlement agreements effectively prevents unnecessary alterations. AI assists mediators in sorting out cross-border legal conflicts, retrieving international trade practices and anticipating negotiating divergences. Some disputes involving digital assets in cross-border e-commerce have begun piloting on-chain mediation combined with automatic performance of smart contracts, substantially reducing the time and financial costs of cross-border travel for parties from multiple countries and improving the efficiency of resolving disputes through mediation in the era of digital trade.

IV. The scope of commercial mediation is expanding steadily, and mediation concepts are being innovated continuously.

In the past, mediation centered on sales contracts, import / export business, and loan disputes. As international economic and trade activities become increasingly dynamic, international commercial mediation is expanding into new fields, especially cross-border mergers and acquisitions, equity disputes, the low-altitude economy, cross-border data flows and cross-border supply chain disputes. The concept of mediation is no longer merely about “smoothing things over”. It has prominently shifted toward the integration of law and business, risk prevention and control, and mediation as a first step. Many cross-border commercial contracts now directly incorporate mediation clauses, embedding mediation-first arrangements into international business transactions and shifting from purely ex post dispute resolution to ex ante risk prevention and control. This conceptual shift is bound to drive stronger innovation!

In short, I believe that the most brilliant aspect of commercial mediation is that the disputing parties, with the help of a third party, can reach a settlement agreement from start to finish in accordance with their own will. Its difference from arbitration lies in the fact that the autonomy of mediation may render both the process and the outcome of mediation unstable and uncertain. Therefore, the question is how to strike, in practice and in a more scientific manner, a balance between party autonomy and binding force that differs from the balance achieved in arbitration, so that parties in mediation can both give full play to their autonomy, and to a certain degree, confer binding force on the outcome, thereby reaching the most scientific equilibrium. This remains the question to be resolved in the theory and practice of commercial mediation.