CONFIDENTIAL
- 3
law office. The court is nonetheless reluctant to allow these methods to be used in major lawsuits and has on at least one occasion prohibited a foreign consulate from directly serving a Chinese party. Furthermore, service of this type does not have the status of a 'legal act' within China and any resulting judgement will not be recognized by a Chinese court.
II. Questions of Jurisdiction
6.
The CPL establishes the basic principles governing the jurisdictional powers of Chinese courts. As a general rule a plaintiff in the P.R.C. must bring the action in the place of the defendant's residence or domicile. This rule does not, however, apply in several specified circumstances. For example, if the dispute concerns a contract, the action should be brought in the place where the contract is to be performed or where it was signed. In the event that the plaintiff has the right to bring the action in more than one court, jurisdiction is held by the court in which the action was first brought.
7.
In
The Supreme People's Court has also issued several directives which give detailed guidance to lower courts on the implementation of the principles set out in the CPL. some circumstances the application of these principles has resulted in conflicts of jurisdiction with foreign courts. In several divorce cases, for example, Chinese courts have relied on the principle that the plaintiff must bring the action in the defendant's place of residence or domicile (in these cases China) to disregard foreign divorce judgements.
8.
As a consequence of the widely acknowledged problem of judicial bias in China, jurisdiction is often the most important issue in any civil lawsuit. Chinese courts at every level are closely integrated into the corresponding level of party and government administration. As a result judges are often under strong institutional and personal pressures to protect the interests of their locality against Chinese parties from other localities as well as foreign parties. Therefore the party that is able to bring the suit in its own locality often has the best chance of success, particularly in major commercial lawsuits.
CONFIDENTIAL