The Belt and Road Forum on Commercial Legal Environment held in Xi’an to advance the development of the open economy on all fronts

On May 11th, the Belt and Road Forum on Commercial Legal Environment was held in Xi’an by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and the People’s Government of Shaanxi Province. Themed around the security of the commercial legal environment of the “Belt and Road”, the forum discussed three topics: “establishment of prevention mechanism for international trade disputes”, “international arbitration and legal cooperation” and “building legal environment in pilot free trade zones”.

In the forum, legal research achievements in Israel, Syria, Poland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine and Bulgaria were officially released. CCPIT Shaanxi Sub-Council and the Northwest University of Political Science and Law jointly undertook the legal research in Kyrgyzstan Republic. The Legal Affairs Department of CCPIT signed a cooperation framework agreement with the School of International Law and the China Arbitration Institute of the Northwest University of Political Science and Law. According to the agreement, the three parties concerned will all have in-depth cooperation on talent training, project research, sharing a resource exchange platform and other aspects to make use of complementary advantages and promote common development.

In his speech, Du Hangwei, a member of the Standing Committee and the Secretary of the CPC Politics and Law Committee of Shaanxi said: “As the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, Shaanxi is dedicated to constructing the ‘Belt and Road’ with continuous effort and has made a series of achievements in the commercial, cultural and trade cooperation with the ‘Belt and Road’ countries and regions. Legal environment is the basic guarantee for economic, trade, cultural and people-to-people communications. With the advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative, it has been more important to accelerate the building of a legal system and the deepening of international legal cooperation. These missions shall be jointly undertaken by the ‘Belt and Road’ countries and regions.”

It was learnt that this forum is one of the parallel forums of the 3rd Silk Expo keynote forum and a concrete move to implement the decision of the CPC Shaanxi Provincial Committee and the People’s Government of China for improving the business environment in Shaanxi and realizing Shaanxi’s plan under the “Belt and Road” initiative in 2018. The forum is also an important action point for the CCPIT Shaanxi to expand its commercial legal service functions and to boost the healthy development of an open economy. The forum will help Shaanxi to improve trade facilitation, build a stable, transparent, predictable business environment that is law-based, internationalized and facilitating, push forward with its open economy, and forge an inland platform of reform and opening-up. (Reported by Yang Xing and Sun Xiaoyu)