Professor Petra Butler, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Canterbury, was invited to give a lecture on Creating a Cross-Border Commercial Dispute Resolution Framework for SMEs to the students on Haidian Campus on the evening of 10 May, 2024.
The lecture was moderated by Associate Dean of the College Prof. Liu Chengwei. Director of the China-Japan Law Institute of the College Prof. Mou Xiankui, Deputy Director of the China-America Law Institute of the College A/Prof. He Qihao, Senior Counsel of the RayYin & Partners Law Firm Mr. Liao Ming and Partner of the Jingtian & Gongcheng Law Firm Zhang Guanglei attended the lecture.
At the opening of the lecture, Liu welcomed Prof. Butler and introduced that Prof. Butler is the Director of the Institute of Small and Micro States (ISMS), a Barrister of the High Court of New Zealand and a fellow of the Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand, and that her academic interests are human rights and international commercial contracts. He then introduced and emphasised the situation and the significance of small and medium-sized enterprise business dispute settlement mechanism in the comparative law prospective.
In the lecture, Butler discussed empirical research undertaken how SMEs actually manage their contract risk when trading cross-border. According to her, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the drivers of economies world-wide. Despite their importance for the (global) economy SMEs are not getting the attention in the legal discourse they deserve. She analysed in-detail how a legal dispute resolution framework taking those realities into account would look like.
During the Q&A, He and Bulter discussed the difficulties in solving the foreign-related economic disputes and merchants' right protection in the field of commodity economy in Yiwu, China. Students who are studying Chinese-American law also raised questions like the enlightenment of cross-border e-commerce dispute resolution solutions to China’s small and medium-sized enterprises. Butler answered the questions and the audiences said they benefited a lot.
