Enforcement of Foreign Judgements

There is still a long way to go for the Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters (the Judgments Convention) , since at the current stage, most of the countries has not complete the signatory on such treaty.

There are two official ways to enforce foreign judgments in China, either through a bilateral treaty or ‘reciprocity’. China has bilateral treaties in place with the UK, France, Russia and Vietnam and other certain countries but some of its largest trading partners, such as the United States of America and Japan, do not have a bilateral treaty in place. Thus totally rely on judgments being recognized and enforced by a Chinese court on the basis of ‘reciprocity’ which, to date, has only happened on a handful of foreign judgments.