China Trade Commission Reaches Arbitration Milestone With 3,000 Cases Totalling $3.8Billion USD

Online, July 13, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Today Public Affairs Director Paul Zhang announced that the recent settlement between Phoenix Systems and Lucky 8 Export Company marks the 3,000th case settled by CTC binding arbitration since 1996.

"The case which arose from a contract dispute in 2010 involved a misunderstanding of one clause in their contract in which the wording was too vague and ultimately led to lost business of $3.5 million USD" explained CTC Executive Director Anthony DeMarco who further explained "Each side of the dispute failed to define the word "timely" in their contract and as a result, a heated argument and threats of lawsuits were exchanged."

The CTC intervened and was able to resolve the dispute and restore the 4 year amicable friendship after a 90 day arbitration review. "We do our very best to be fair, and evaluate the dispute from both sides of the fence" explained DeMarco, "But seldom is any dispute just black or white, and perhaps only 20% of the cases involve deliberate dishonesty".

Statistics kept by the CTC indicate that most cases are due to language misunderstandings or common negligence, since the concept of "Customer Service" is a relatively new one in China. In 179 cases, the disputes did not even involve money, but rather delays, product quality, reputations, etc. Cultural differences often cause misunderstandings - and lost business. Even worse, disputes can cause the loss of high value business connections known as "Guanxi" in China. One business owner was so irate of a perceived fraud, that he used his government contacts to get the other party deported and his business license revoked. But arbitration investigation by the CTC proved that the problem was really a bad translation job of two emails.

Since 1996, the CTC has arbitrated over $3.8 Billion USD of settlements with the average disputed amount of $157,500. Arbitration is growing popular in China due to the astronomical legal fees of International lawyers who are known to drag out proceedings since billing is typically by the hour. "In a case like this, each party might have paid over $120,000 in legal fees and gone through a tedious 2-3 year litigation. Instead they collectively paid a flat fee based on the disputed amount and had their settlement within 90 days that was acceptable to both parties" explained DeMarco.

The CTC has a staff of five bi-lingual arbitrators that receive an average of ten complaints a day for review. But with so many foreigners arriving in China to do business in recent years, it is expected this number will double within 18 months. Anyone who questions the integrity of the courts or cannot wait 2-3 years for a trial, may want to consider binding arbitration that is kept strictly confidential.

(Both Phoenix Systems and Lucky 8 Export Company, consented to basic disclosure for this announcement)