Professor Susan Finder gave three speeches in Beijing during the week of September 4, each one to a very different audience. She spoke at the 2023 China Arbitration Summit Forum and the 3rd “Belt and Road” High-End Forum of Arbitration Institutions, held on September 6, as a hybrid event. Speakers at that event included representatives from International arbitration and mediation institutions, UNCITRAL, Chinese government institutions, as well as Chinese lawyers and in-house counsel. Among the many Chinese speakers included representatives from the Ministry of Justice, Supreme People’s Court, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and All-China Lawyers Association. China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC), Speakers from outside of mainland China included a representative of the International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration Court, Vienna International Arbitration Centre, Singapore International Arbitration Centre, German Arbitratiion Institute, Saudi Center for Commercial Arbitration, and the Cairo Regional Centre for Commercial Arbitration. Professor Finder spoke on the modernization of Chinese mediation law, drawing on her work related to the Singapore Mediation Convention. That event was attended by over 500 people offline, including legal professionals from Beijing and all over China and many more online. The official Chinese report can be found here and the English one here.
The day before, Professor Finder spoke at the Law School of the Capital University of Economics and Business, to a group of undergraduate and graduate students, on becoming a legal professional of the world. Professor Qu Xiangdong, Director of the Center on Law, Technology and Innovation hosted her presentation. She stressed the importance of students of “foreign-related rule of law” serving as a bridge between Chinese and foreign legal systems and professionals through their work, whether as lawyer, in-house counsel, or official. The Capital University of Economics and Business report can be found here.
On September 7, Professor Finder gave the closing remarks at In the Fourth Annual Conference of China Forum of Financial & Investment Disputes” b cosponsored by China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (“CIETAC”), Zhong Lun Law Firm and China Forum of Financial & Investment Disputes (“CFFID”). Numerous guests from domestic and foreign dispute resolution arbitral institutions, industry associations, financial and investment institutions, enterprises, law firms, universities and other institutions attended the conference offline. The language of the first session, on financial disputes, was Chinese, and the second session, on Belt & Road disputes was English. Professor Finder summarized in Chinese the discussions by the afternoon’s speakers. STL 4L student He Kejin, interning at Zhong Lun, provided technical and other support for the event. The official bilingual report can be found here.
