Arbitration Governance in Transition: Contractually, Institutional Control, and Judicial Review in China

Arbitration is generally acknowledged as a contract-based procedure driven by the principles of party autonomy, procedural flexibility, and minimal judicial intervention. In the Chinese case, the governance of arbitration is placed within a regulatory arena driven by administrative supervision, judicialization of arbitration procedures, and deep judicial review, causing a tension between contract principles. In this study, a legal and development orientation is adopted to examine the Chinese arbitration system, arguing that the above tension is part of a broader challenge faced by transitional approaches to harmonize dispute resolution practices and market governance and rule of law aspirations. It proposes an institutional reform led by a conceptual map of three core principles: decreasing administrative supervision over arbitration governance in terms of market reform principles; adjusting the adversary practices of litigation within arbitration governance in terms of empowerment and personal legislation; and evolving a judicial supervision approach featuring a teamwork scheme and preferential procedural analysis over deep judicial interventionism. The analysis offers a contribution to a discourse on international comparisons of arbitration governance and development.