Twelve members of the Qingdao Arbitration Commission (Shandong) visited the School of Law (SLW) on 13 May to receive an insightful lecture by Professor Peter Malanczuk on the WTO dispute settlement system.

Professor Malanczuk is Chair Professor of Law and Director of CityU’s World Trade Organization Research Centre (WTODR).

 

Invited by the Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators (HKIA), the delegation spent four days in Hong Kong, with the CityU visit as their final stop before returning to Qingdao. The President of the HKIA, Mr Samuel Chat Chor Wong, requested the lecture from Professor Malanczuk for the ten Qingdao Arbitration

Committee delegates: Mr Yuan Guanghui (Section Director); Ms Wu Songhai; Mr Jia Qingwen; Ms Yu Ling; Ms Gao Jie; Mr Chen Shibin; Mr Gao Jian; Mr Zhang Zijun; Mr Wang Jiuhu; Mr Jiang Renshuang; and the two delegates from the Qingdao Industrial and Commercial Administration office, Mr Han Jinbo (Associate Section Chief) and Mr Zhang Zhaoyu. SLW Lecturer Dr Zhao Yun, who also attended, assisted with translation from English into Putonghua.

 

Visitors from the WTO

Professor Malanczuk's lively lecture, interspersed with cases in point, began with the amusing observation that the WTO's representative building, as pictured on the official website is, in fact, the League of Nations building, while the WTO's actual home is smaller and located somewhere off to the right and behind the edifice depicted. The lecture spanned the history of the WTO and entered into detail on the Dispute Settlement Body, the appointment of Panels, the litigation

process, and the Appellate Body, one member of which, Professor Giorgio Sacerdoti, visited CityU in February this year.

 

The WTODR Centre, established in January 2002, has already achieved a reputation for excellence and received numerous special guests and visitors such as Mr Pascal Lamy, European Union Commissioner for Trade, H.E. Mr Shotaro Oshima, Permanent Representative of Japan to the International Organizations in Geneva, and Ms Amina Mohamed, Ambassador of Kenya and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the WTO. The WTODR Centre is the first university based center, not only in Hong Kong and China, but in the whole of the Asia-Pacific Region, that is dedicated to the study of the interaction amongst globalization, legal development (especially in the field of international economic law) and international dispute resolution mechanisms.