China's International Commercial Court: A Dispute Settlement Mechanism for the Belt and Road Initiative

In 2018, China introduced a one-stop dispute-settlement regime: the China International Commercial Court (CICC) regime, to keep its Belt-and-Road Initiative attractive. The CICC mission is to improve the professionalism of judges and mediators, and to support international commercial arbitration and mediation processes. An overview of the powers the CICC delegates is witness to China's efforts to centralise dispute resolution, and to interpret uniformly the review standards of international commercial disputes of relevance to China. The extent of the success of such centralisation can be assessed only once its governance is clearly established. However, the CICC innovations are few: the regime fails to invite foreign lawyers and judges to litigation process, and has not resolved China's problems with the enforcement of judgments. To date, the CICC regime is still in its infancy. It is still unclear whether, and to what extent, it will play an essential role in resolving international commercial disputes of relevance to China. There are a number of outstanding matters in need of further study.