Arbitration or a Chinese court? What each costs and what it can enforce

The dispute clause in a contract with a Chinese company fixes the price of a claim before anything goes wrong. A Chinese court charges RMB 4,300 to hear a RMB 200,000 claim; CIETAC charges RMB 20,000. An arbitral award is final and enforceable in 172 countries. A foreign judgment reaches Chinese assets only through a treaty or reciprocity.

You are about to sign with a Chinese distributor, licensee or customer, and the last clause says where a dispute would go. It settles three things in advance: what a claim costs to bring, whether the other side can appeal, and whether the result can be turned into money held in China. On a RMB 200,000 claim, fees at the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC, 中国国际经济贸易仲裁委员会) are a tenth of the debt. A Chinese court charges about a fifth of that.^⁠[1,2] This page sets out what each choice means in money, time and enforcement, and the contract checklist covers the other six checks.

What does each option cost for a claim of my size?

Both are set by published schedules, and both rise with the amount claimed. A Chinese court charges an acceptance fee on a sliding scale, and foreign companies pay the same scale as Chinese ones.^⁠[1] CIETAC charges RMB 10,000 to register a foreign-related case, plus 4% of the claim up to RMB 1 million, with a minimum of RMB 10,000.^⁠[2]

Amount claimed	Chinese court	CIETAC	CIETAC as a share of the claim
200,000	4,300	20,000	10%
2,000,000	22,800	85,000	4.3%
10,000,000	81,800	235,000	2.4%

The claimant pays the court fee up front, and the court puts it on the losing side unless the winner agrees to carry it. The fee is halved if the case ends in mediation or is withdrawn.^⁠[1] A CIETAC tribunal may order the losing side to compensate the winner’s reasonable costs, weighing the result, the complexity of the case and the work done.^⁠[3] Neither schedule covers lawyers, translation or travel.

How long before there is a decision?

CIETAC works to a deadline. A Chinese court, in a case with a foreign party, does not. A CIETAC tribunal must make its award within 6 months of being formed, which can be extended. Claims of RMB 5 million or less go to the summary procedure, where the limit is 3 months.^⁠[3]

A Chinese court must normally decide a first-instance case within 6 months. That limit does not apply to foreign-related cases (涉外民事案件) at all (Civil Procedure Law, Article 287).^⁠[4] The judgment can then be appealed once, and a party with no domicile in China has 30 days from service to do so.^⁠[4]

An award cannot be appealed. A party that wants it overturned applies to a court to set it aside, within 3 months of receiving it. The limit was 6 months until the revised Arbitration Law took effect on 1 March 2026.^⁠[5,6] Since that date the parties may also agree the seat of the arbitration in writing, and the seat decides which courts supervise it.^⁠[5]

Can the case be heard in English?

In arbitration, if the contract says so. CIETAC follows the parties’ agreement on language, and uses Chinese only where there is none.^⁠[3] A Chinese court always works in Chinese. It provides interpretation on request, at the cost of the party asking, and every document in a foreign language must be filed with a Chinese translation.^⁠[4]

So a court claim is also a translation job: the contract, the invoices and the correspondence the claim rests on. Which language version of the contract itself prevails is a separate question, answered in which language version of a bilingual China contract prevails.

Which result can be enforced against a Chinese company?

All of them can, through a Chinese court, but by different doors. The money is in China, so every route ends with a Chinese court’s enforcement division. For a Chinese judgment or award, the application is due within 2 years. The period runs from the last day the judgment or award allows for payment, or from the day it takes effect if it sets no such day.^⁠[4] The enforcement fee has its own scale: RMB 2,900 to enforce RMB 200,000, and RMB 22,400 to enforce RMB 2 million.^⁠[1]

Result	Route to enforcement in China
Judgment of a Chinese court	Application to enforce, within 2 years
Award of CIETAC or another Mainland commission	Application to enforce, within 2 years. The award is final
Award made in Hong Kong	Enforcement under the Mainland and Hong Kong arrangement. Since 19 May 2021 an applicant may enforce in both places at once, up to the amount of the award, and a court may preserve assets before or after the application
Award made in another New York Convention state	Recognition and enforcement by the intermediate court where the debtor is domiciled or has property
Judgment of a foreign court	Recognition only under a treaty or on reciprocity. Refused on five grounds, among them that the foreign court lacked jurisdiction, that the defendant was not properly summoned, or that the judgment harms China’s sovereignty, security or public interest

The last row is the difference that matters most. An award travels under the New York Convention, which has 172 parties, among them the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Singapore.^⁠[8] A judgment from a foreign court depends instead on whether a treaty or reciprocity links that country with China, and each application is tested on its own.^⁠[4]

Hong Kong has one more arrangement. Since 1 October 2019, a party to an arbitration seated in Hong Kong can ask a Mainland intermediate court to preserve property, evidence or conduct while the case is running. The arbitration must be run by one of the institutions on the arrangement’s list.^⁠[9] It is how a party to a Hong Kong arbitration can have a Chinese company’s assets frozen before any award exists.

Our Chinese customer simply has not paid. Is there a cheaper route?

Yes, if the contract leaves the courts open. Take a Danish homeware brand whose distributor in Hangzhou stops paying invoices totalling RMB 430,000, and does not dispute them. If the distribution contract names a Chinese court, the brand can apply to a basic-level court for a payment order (支付令). The fee is a third of the court fee: about RMB 2,600, against RMB 7,750 for a lawsuit.^⁠[1]

The route has two conditions: there is no other debt dispute between the two companies, and the order can be served on the distributor. The distributor then has 15 days to pay or object in writing. An objection turns the matter into an ordinary lawsuit.^⁠[4]

If the same contract has a CIETAC clause, none of this is available. A written arbitration clause in a foreign-related contract closes the courts to the claim (Civil Procedure Law, Article 288), and the brand files at CIETAC for RMB 27,200.^⁠[2,4] The clause chose the route before the invoice was ever sent.

What does a foreign company have to send to China to sue there?

A power of attorney, signed abroad and authenticated. One sent from abroad must be notarised where it is signed, then either legalised by the Chinese embassy or put through the procedure a treaty provides.^⁠[4] China has been a party to the Apostille Convention since 7 November 2023, so for a company in another member country that procedure is an apostille.^⁠[10] The steps are set out in how to get a document apostilled for China, and document notarisation and apostille handles them. Which of the other papers need the same treatment, and which need none, is in what a Chinese court needs notarised and apostilled from abroad.

The time to settle all of this is while the contract is still a draft. A contract commercial review sets the dispute clause out beside the payment and termination terms it would be used to enforce. The cost of a claim is then known before anyone signs.

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