CIETAC Foreign-Related Arbitration Cases Rise for Fifth Straight Year

The steady rise in foreign-related cases signals that parties to cross-border contracts are increasingly willing to route disputes through a Chinese institution rather than defaulting to Western arbitral seats. For RWA and crypto projects with Asia-facing counterparties, that matters: arbitration venue is often the only enforceable remedy when tokenized-asset deals fray across jurisdictions. The open question is whether caseload growth reflects genuine institutional trust or simply more China-linked deal flow, and whether enforcement of those awards abroad keeps pace.