Sponsored by China Academy of Arbitration Law(CAAL)and co-organized by Wuhan Arbitration Commission,2018 Annual Conference of the CAAL&the 11th Arbitration and Justice Forum were successfully held in Wuhan Eurasia Convention International Hotel from November 16 to 18,2018.The conference gathered nearly 500 leaders from China Law Society,China Council for the Promotion of International Trade(CCPIT)and Ministry of Justice(MOJ)and representatives from the arbitration institutes,law colleges and scientific research institutes,law firms,companies and media.Lawyer Zhang Zheng,vice chairman of Beijing Lawyers Association and the founding partner of Gaopeng&Partners,was invited as the CAAL’s permanent council member to deliver a speech titled Two Thoughts on Revision of the Arbitration Law at the conference.

During 2018 Annual Conference of the CAAL,the Enlarged Meeting of Standing Council and 2018 Member Representative Assembly were held,deliberating several matters such as the revision of the articles of association,the management measures of income and expenditure of membership fees,work report of the council and financial report.

Arbitration and Justice Forum with the theme of“New Directions of Arbitration Service in New Era”focused on five topics under discussion,including“amendment of the Arbitration Law”,“interaction between arbitration and mediation and justice”,“full-time and part-time arbitrators”,“all aspects of arbitration fees”and“cultural factors and arbitration”.Lawyer Zhang Zheng gave a speech titled Two Thoughts on Revision of the Arbitration Law in the topic discussion of“amendment of the Arbitration Law”hosted by Director Liu Jingdong,a researcher from International Economic Law Department of Institute of International Law of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences(CASS).Based on his experience as an arbitrator,Lawyer Zhang pointed out that due to the ambiguity of legal provisions,there were two phenomena in commercial arbitration system at present,that is,casual to deal with the party’s application for the withdrawal of arbitrators and casual to handle the long-standing cases without adjudication.He proposed two suggestions on above mentioned phenomena.One was to add the hearing process for making decision on the withdrawal of arbitrators and the other was to set an option of ending the arbitration process for the cases with overdue time limit of trial and without adjudication.Besides,he also suggested that these contents should be mainly clarified,revised and improved as the Arbitration Law is revised.His speech aroused enthusiastic responses of the attendees.

This forum attracted the authoritative arbitration experts to actively participate.They gave the lectures and made in-depth discussion about the topics.The forum was successfully ended in a warm atmosphere.