Routledge Dispute Resolution in China: Litigation, Arbitration, Mediation and their Interactions

China's ever-expanding commercial influence has attracted global attention on how its civil and commercial disputes are resolved. This compelling new book, Dispute Resolution in China, offers a detailed examination of the elements in the Chinese legal system and the relevant reforms to the multiplicity of approaches to civil and commercial disputes in China today. This book reveals how civil litigation, commercial arbitration, mediation, and their hybrid dispute resolution have distinctly responded to, reformed, and developed in the context of China’s transformational economic growth, societal development, and international interaction in the last two decades. It situates these developments and continued experimentation within a unique hybrid of empirical, contextual, and comparative analytical framework, while paving productive pathways towards the future. This book argues that, rather than being a legal project, China’s civil and commercial dispute resolution system is essentially a social development project, which distinguishes the Chinese approach to civil justice reform from contemporary civil justice movements elsewhere. Among the primary methods of dispute resolution, commercial arbitration in China today uniquely transcending the traditional socio-political constraints, its reform has developed in favor of market-oriented considerations and shaped by China’s socio-economic dynamics and internationalization needs. By contrast, civil litigation and mediation being more instrumentalist in nature, their reform is socio-politically embedded and continues to prioritize social stability. This book also shines a fresh light on comparative assessments of top-down and bottom-up changes in China’s dispute resolution discourse, as well as on how China speaks to international dispute resolution systems. Original and rich in its analysis, this book will be essential reading and invaluable reference tool for scholars with a focus on Chinese law, comparative and international dispute resolution, and on broader legal, institutional, economic, social, political and cultural dimensions of dispute resolution development. Review Professor Gu’s wonderful study of dispute resolution processes in China explores important issues of procedural law, including the substantial reforms attempted in recent years in response to the economic transformation and social changes that have been taking place in China. The insightful analysis offered by Professor Gu locates developments in the legal and institutional framework of civil litigation, arbitration, mediation and mixed dispute resolution in their social and cultural contexts. Among other key themes, this important book argues that the system which has emerged is more a project of social transformation than it is of legal development, especially in areas of dispute resolution that are less directly linked to the functioning of the economic system. Michael Palmer, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS); Senior Research Fellow, University of London Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS). "One of the best works on dispute resolution in China, this timely and insightful study offers an unrivalled account of the changing landscape of commercial dispute resolution in China. Against the background of China's ever-expanding commercial influence, it offers an invaluable and impressively informed guide to the multiplicity of approaches to civil disputes in China, formal and informal, and shines a fresh light on topics which often seem mysterious, and are often misunderstood. Original and rich in its analysis, it is stimulating reading for anyone interested in comparative law, civil procedure, and in how legal institutions are shaped by their social, political and economic context. The author deserves congratulations on a fascinating work, which is scholarly and absorbing and assured of its place in the lite