• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.3-25
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• 2016

Lately each country tends to provide neutrality and ease of enforcement in order to settle disputes related to international trade through commercial arbitration. In order to expand the use of arbitration systems, most countries accept arbitration agreements as an effective tool agreed between parties that express their intent to settle disputes by the arbitration. It is applied equally to selective arbitration agreements and parties can select either arbitration or lawsuit to settle disputes based on the contract intent for selective arbitration agreements. However, China does not admit the effectiveness of selective arbitration agreements. Chinese courts regard selective arbitration agreements as not valid because the contract of a selective arbitration agreement between parties is not a definite expression to only use the arbitration and there is no exclusion of court jurisdiction. Therefore, the study attempts to consider effective conditions for selective arbitration agreements in the Chinese arbitration act and other relevant regulations, and also verifies the judgment by Chinese courts on relevant disputes. As a result, the study explores some problems and implications of Chinese selective arbitration agreements and suggests some precautions in case Korean companies pursue selective arbitration agreements with Chinese enterprises and investors.