Arbitration and the Other Routes in Resolving Poland-China Commercial Disputes
Before the seminar, we asked what happens when a Poland-China commercial relationship goes wrong.
On 1 September, at our Warsaw office, we spent an afternoon answering it.
“Arbitration and the Other Routes in Resolving Poland-China Commercial Disputes” was organised jointly with the European Arbitration Centre of CIETAC and supported by the Polish-Chinese General Chamber of Commerce (SinoCham) – an official overseas session of China Arbitration Week 2026, held in the year of CIETAC’s 70th anniversary.
Arkadiusz (Arek) Rumiński, Partner at SSW, opened the seminar, followed by remarks from Zhixing Fu and keynote speeches from Prof. Marcin Asłanowicz and Wang Jupeng, Secretary General of the Polish-Chinese General Chamber of Commerce (SinoCham), on Poland-China business and legal cooperation.
The panel then compared litigation, arbitration and mediation on enforceability, cost, timing and confidentiality, and turned to how parties actually choose – the seat, the language of proceedings, the governing law, and where negotiations between Chinese and Polish counsel tend to deadlock, with particular attention to CIETAC arbitration following the revised PRC Arbitration Law.
A warm thank you to Zhixing Fu, Assistant Secretary-General of the CIETAC European Arbitration Centre, for moderating the panel, and to our panellists for such a rich exchange:
- Monika Hartung – Partner at Wardyński & Partners and Chair of the Arbitral Council of the Court of Arbitration at the Polish Chamber of Commerce;
- Jin Liyu (Denning) – Founder and Managing Partner of Jin Partners and Member of the CIETAC Panel of Arbitrators;
- Dr Heiko Heppner – Partner at Bird & Bird LLP and Member of the CIETAC Panel of Arbitrators;
- Dr Alice Meissner – Partner at Fieldfisher and Member of the CIETAC Panel of Arbitrators;
- Marcin Asłanowicz – President of the Court of Arbitration at the Polish Confederation Lewiatan, Partner at SSW and Dean of the Faculty of Law at SWPS University.
For SSW, hosting this event was part of something broader: international arbitration develops not only through cases, rules and awards, but through dialogue between jurisdictions, institutions and legal cultures.
