On 26 Nov. 2020, the Supreme People’s court (SPC) and the Hong Kong government issued the Supplementary Arrangement Concerning Mutual Enforcement of Arbitration Awards between the Mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“the Supplementary Arrangement”, 关于内地与香港特别行政区相互执行仲裁裁决的补充安排).

In the Supplementary Arrangement, Article 2 (3) of the previous Arrangement Concerning Mutual Enforcement of Arbitration Awards between the Mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“the Arrangement”) is amended as: “If the party against whom the application is filed is domiciled or has property in both the Mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) which may be subject to enforcement, the applicant may file applications for enforcement with the courts of the two places respectively. The courts of the two places shall, at the request of the court of the other place, provide information on its status of the enforcement of the arbitral award. The total amount to be recovered from enforcing the arbitral award in the courts of the two places must not exceed the amount determined in the arbitral award.”

In the Supplementary Arrangement, the following paragraph is added to Article 6 of the Arrangement as Article 6(2): “The applicable court may, before or after accepting the application for enforcement of an arbitral award, impose preservation or mandatory measures pursuant to an application by the party concerned and in accordance with the law of the place of enforcement.”

On the same day, 10 Typical Cases of Mutual Enforcement of Arbitral Awards between the Mainland and the HKSAR were released to the public. This is the first time for typical cases regarding judicial assistance in civil and commercial matters to be published in the two regions, which will help to further improve the judicial assistance system of the two regions.