Adjusting to internet arbitration cases

The oral hearings of arbitration cases in mainland China were cancelled after the spring festival due to social distancing measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, arbitration institutions have been seeking an alternative to hear cases while complying with the epidemic prevention policy.

The China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) has constructed its CIETAC online hearing platform at kt.cietac.org, and successfully held an oral hearing via the platform on 9 April 2020. Online hearings provide an alternative to onsite oral hearings and documents-only examinations. This article introduces the online oral hearing procedure of CIETAC and the application of the internet in CIETAC arbitration cases.

Online hearing procedures

First and foremost, the arbitral tribunal considers whether it is appropriate to have an oral hearing online. According to the CIETAC Guidance of Promoting the Arbitral Procedures during COVID-19 Pandemic released on 28 April 2020, the decisive factors of whether to have an online oral hearing include the parties’ opinions, the complexity of the case, the amount of evidence, the witnesses, etc.

Taking the arbitral procedure of the above-mentioned case on 9 April as an example, the tribunal considered the circumstances of the case and resolved to hold an online oral hearing. Subsequently, the secretary of the tribunal asked for parties’ consent, and forwarded a confirmation of the online oral hearing to the parties.

After attaining the confirmation, the secretary sent a notice of oral hearing, a notice of hearing representatives, and a detailed technical guidance. The parties shall complete the notice of hearing representatives with information (including name, identity number, location of joining the online oral hearing, etc.) of all the hearing representatives, and submit it to the Arbitration Court of CIETAC.

After this, the secretary opens accounts for the hearing representatives on the platform according to the power of attorney, witness’s application to attend hearing, notice of hearing representatives, etc. Hearing representatives shall test the equipment on the platform on the time specified in the notice of hearing. Before the hearing, parties may upload their evidence to the platform at any time.

According to the guidance, if the hearing representatives are in different jurisdictions, or the language of the oral hearing is not Chinese, the online oral hearing could be held via other venues agreed by the parties and approved by CIETAC, or via the co-operative platform between CIETAC and foreign arbitral institutions.

The hearing representatives shall obey the CIETAC rules of online hearing. Before the beginning of the hearing, the representatives shall pass the identity check via facial recognition and read the rules of the oral hearing on the screen put forward by the secretary. The video recording starts when the hearing begins, and the speech recognition feature of the platform saves a transcript of the dialogue among all participants of the hearing.

Compared to the onsite hearing, it is important to confirm that the parties have no objection to the hearing representatives of the other parties, that the oral hearing takes place by means of online video, and the need to examine the original evidence. All the participants of the hearing have access to the uploaded evidence. The arbitrators can further put the evidence on the screen of all the participants and make annotation.

After the oral hearing, the parties examine the hearing records and ask the secretary to make corrections before signing the record on their smart phones. Meanwhile, the tribunal can deliberate together on the platform.

Wang Yi is a case manager at China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC)