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5 J. World Investment & Trade 81 (2004)
Fostering and Rating Arbitrators' Efficiency - The View of the Appointing Authorities

handle is hein.journals/jworldit5 and id is 81 raw text is: Fostering and Rating Arbitrators' Efficiency The View of the Appointing Authorities Guiguo WANG* I think that the Chinese International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) is the biggest arbitration body in the world. This morning, when I took the Swiss flight from Zurich to Geneva, it was full, and I said to a crewmember: Well, you have good business She said: No. I said: Why, it must be good business because it is full. She said: Well, it depends on how much you charge. So, from that point of view, yes, the CIETAC is very busy, but if you look at the nature of the cases they handle most probably it is not an arbitral body which handles the most important cases or the largest of the cases in the world. So the number does not count. At the same time, I have to say that I am not talking about the efficiency of arbitrators from the point of view of the CIETAC. Even though I have been with the CIETAC for more than 15 years, as an independent academic I cannot control myself from criticizing what I see as not good. First, I think that when we talk about efficiency, we also need to keep in mind the quality of arbitration. If we just look at efficiency, most probably we will overlook the quality. That, in particular, is very important for CIETAC arbitration. Yes, the CIETAC does have about 1,000 cases per year, and it has a variety of people on the list as arbitrators, ranging from Americans, French, Italians and Swiss to Chinese, Japanese, and so forth. Yet if you look at the arbitrators who have actually handled cases, they are quite concentrated among a small group of people. In that way, it requires improvement. In particular, if we look at today's practice, a lot of staff of the Secretariat of the CIETAC serve as arbitrators very frequently, and they do not only serve as arbitrators but also as chairmen of arbitral tribunals. That may jeopardize their position and may do more harm than good to the CIETAC. This has a lot to do with the system itself, and I also think about the three Ls: the location, the language and the law. Previously, the system required that arbitration be done at the localities of the CIETAC, meaning Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, and therefore, in the case of arbitrators appointed from other cities or countries, the arbitrating parties had to bear the cost. * Chair, Chinese and Comparative Law, University of Hong Kong; Chairman, Hong Kong WTo Research Institute; arbitrator with the Chinese International Economuc and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC). The author may be contacted at: <wwgg@cityu.edu.hk-.

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