UNT
its position
and there is far less room to manoeuvre in talks.
[d] To these points I should like to add another. The PRC's legal authorities are at present making something of an effort to improve their handling of shewai cases, that is, cases with a foreign element. Early last month (December 1990), at the Fifth National Meeting of Civil Adjudication Work (Diwuci Quanguo Fayuan Minshi Gongzuó Huiyi), MA Yuan, a Vice-President of the Supreme People's Court, apparently advocated the creation of special collegiate benches in order to deal with shewai cases, encouraged people's courts to pay great attention to such cases, and asked judges to study foreign civil codes, important cases and so on. These comments are most welcome from Hong Kong's point of view. For many purposes cases with a Hong Kong element will be treated as 'foreign related' by the PRC courts.
3.
We might also note in this connection that in 1990 the Chinese authorities promulgated a series of legislative measures designed Lo improve the investment environment, to furnish new areas for foreign investment, and to give greater support and protection to foreign investment. These moves included Accession to the (Washington) Convention on the Resolution of Investment Disputes. Thus in future any foreign investor in China who has a dispute with the Chinese government on investment-related matters will have the right to bring the dispute for arbitration to the World Banks' ICSID (International Centre for the Solution of Investment Disputes). This would seem to be an important step, indicating a concern on the part of the PRC's authorities to adopt internationally-accepted ways of handling commercial disputes.
Une argument in favour of talking about this again in the not too distant tuture with the Chinese authorities is very strong.
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