A Study on the Chinese Arbitral Award relating to a Documentary Credit - with a special reference to Inco. v. China XX awarded by CIETAC, Shanghai Commission -

중국 중재판정부의 신용장 관련 중재 판정에 대한 연구 - Inco. v. China XX (가칭) 사건의 중국국제경제무역중재위원회, 상해위원회 중재판정을 중심으로-

As the international commercial transaction has drastically grown up with the mainland China, commercial disputes that are required to settle through ADR have tremendously increased during the last decade. Since China has not been fully exposed to the Free World for a long period of time, there would have been a great amount of misunderstanding about their competency and integrity to deal with internationally oriented commercial transactions with a view to internationally acceptable manner. This arbitration case was related to the contract in dispute of C&A Inc. as the importer v. China XX Importation Co. as the exporter for the sale of Silicon Metal. But after the contract were formed, exporter(respondent) declined to deliver the goods under the contracts because the market price of Silicon Metal increased according to the argument of the importer(claimant). Importer had to purchase alternative goods from other companies to substitute for the goods subject to the contracts in dispute. Importer purchased silicon metal of the same quality as under the contracts from two other Chinese companies as the necessary measure to mitigate the loss, paying prices higher than the contract price. Since exporter had breached the contracts, importer's loss should be compensated by the exporter as the Arbitration Tribunal decided for supporting importer's claim of loss for the substitute goods. This study is aiming at analyzing the rationale of the arbitral awards made by the Shanghai Commission in terms of (l)Place of Arbitration, (2)Applicable Law, (3)Validity of the Contracts, (4)Doctrine of Frustration, (5)Responsibility for the Mitigation of Damage by the Importer.