The Supreme People's Court ("SPC") has recently issued the Opinions on Providing Judicial Services and Guarantees for Fully Deepened Reform and Opening-up in Hainan (the "Opinions").
The Opinions put forward 22 concrete measures in seven aspects, including "giving full play to judicial functions and promoting the formation of the law-based, internationalized and facilitated business environment and the fair, open and unified market environment in Hainan". Further, the Opinions call for efforts to intensify trials of intellectual property cases, support the setup of the intellectual property court in Hainan, and endorse the building of the China (Hainan) International Intellectual Property Exchange. In addition, the Opinions explicitly state that, where subjects of civil and commercial cases arising within pilot free trade zones or free trade ports agree that any disputes arising shall be submitted to an extraterritorial arbitration institution for arbitration, it is improper to identify such agreement invalid in that no foreign factors are involved. Furthermore, the Opinions stipulate that where a cross-border e-commerce platform operator enters into an arbitration agreement comprised of standard clauses with a consumer and fails to take reasonable actions to have the consumer note these standard clauses, the people's court shall uphold the request of the customer for identifying the invalidity of such arbitration agreement.