Brentwood Industries v. Guangdong Fa Anlong Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd.–A third way to enforce China-seated arbitral awards made by foreign arbitration institution

by Jingru Wang

Wuhan University Institute of International Law

Background

Nationality of an arbitral award marks the source of the legal validity of the award. Most countries generally divide the awards into domestic awards and foreign awards, and provide different requirements for their recognition and enforcement. It is a common practice to determine the nationality of the arbitral award by the seat of arbitration, which is the so-called “territorial theory”. However, Chinese law adopts the “institutional theory”, which raises controversy concerning the nationality of the arbitral award made by foreign arbitration institutions located in mainland. After long-term debate in practice, the Brentwood Case[1] finally confirmed that China-seated arbitral awards made by a foreign arbitration institution shall be regarded as Chinese foreign-related awards.  Read more...