Article 12 of the contract. Dispute resolution.
Most buyers don’t even read this clause when they sign. Then something goes wrong, they dig it out, and discover it either says “submit to a court with jurisdiction in China” (vague enough to be useless), or “arbitration or litigation” (which is actually invalid), or there’s nothing there at all.
During my years at CIETAC, I saw every kind of bad dispute resolution clause you can imagine. One contract read: “disputes shall be resolved through friendly negotiation; if negotiation fails, submit to arbitration or court.” One sentence, two landmines. First, a clause that says “arbitration or litigation” (或裁或诉) is generally considered invalid under Chinese law. Second, no arbitration institution was named, so even if the intent were valid, there was no way to actually execute it. That dispute was over $420,000. The two sides spent four months arguing about jurisdiction before anyone touched the substance of the case.
This article isn’t going to teach you how to draft a contract from scratch. That’s what lawyers are for. But there are a few clauses you need to understand the logic behind, because they directly determine how many cards you have to play when a dispute hits.
The dispute resolution clause: the most important clause in the entire contract
“Dispute resolution” sounds like an afterthought. It goes at the end, a block of boilerplate. Most procurement managers focus on price, quantity, delivery dates when they sign. Dispute resolution? “We’ll never need it.”
Until you do. Then it’s the only weapon you’ve got.
Two things to get straight.
First, “or-arbitrate-or-litigate” clauses are basically invalid under Chinese law. Under Articles 16 and 17 of the Arbitration Law, a valid arbitration agreement needs three things: a clear expression of intent to arbitrate, the matters to be arbitrated, and a designated arbitration commission. If your contract says “disputes may be resolved by arbitration or litigation,” courts will typically find that this doesn’t constitute a valid arbitration agreement because there’s no exclusive commitment to arbitrate.
Second, writing “submit to arbitration” without naming a specific institution can also be invalid. For example, “resolved by an arbitration commission in the Beijing area” — there are several arbitration institutions in Beijing, so this is too vague. Unless the parties can reach a supplementary agreement afterward, the arbitration clause is dead.
There’s a third scenario that’s even more common: the contract has no dispute resolution clause at all. In that case, under Chinese law, the default is court litigation, with jurisdiction going to the people’s court at the defendant’s domicile or the place of contract performance. Which means you might end up suing in a third-tier Chinese city where the supplier is based. Everything is in Chinese. The judge doesn’t speak English. You’d need a translator just to sit in the room.
A good dispute resolution clause takes a lawyer about an hour to write. A bad one can take you twelve months to clean up.
Arbitration or court?
For most foreign buyers, the answer is arbitration. One reason: enforceability.
China joined the New York Convention in 1987 (now 172 signatory countries), which means arbitral awards made in China can be recognized and enforced in most countries worldwide. Between 2012 and 2022, Chinese courts recognized and enforced about 91% of foreign arbitral awards. The Supreme People’s Court also set up a reporting mechanism (预报核机制) — lower courts must get approval all the way up to the Supreme Court before refusing to enforce an arbitral award. The message is clear: don’t refuse lightly.
Court judgments are different. China doesn’t have mutual recognition agreements with most Western countries. An American court judgment is nearly impossible to enforce in China, and vice versa. So even if you win in court, enforcement is a separate problem.
CIETAC, HKIAC, or SIAC?
These three are the most common arbitration institutions for cross-border China trade disputes. In 2024, CIETAC (China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission) took on 758 foreign-related cases, up 18% year-on-year, with total amounts in dispute reaching RMB 81.1 billion. HKIAC (Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre) and SIAC (Singapore International Arbitration Centre) are often seen by foreign companies as more neutral options.
I generally recommend clients seriously consider HKIAC. The reasons are specific:
One, interim relief. Under the Mainland-Hong Kong Arrangement on Interim Measures, which took effect in 2019, parties to HKIAC-administered arbitrations can apply directly to mainland Chinese courts for property preservation (财产保全), evidence preservation (证据保全), and conduct preservation. SIAC can’t do this. If your supplier is on the mainland, that difference is real — you can freeze their bank account while the arbitration is ongoing.
Two, award enforcement. HKIAC is the first — and currently the only — arbitration institution outside mainland China included in the China International Commercial Court’s “one-stop” platform.
Three, CIETAC’s problem isn’t fairness, it’s perception. I worked inside the CIETAC system. Foreign parties get favorable outcomes far more often than most people assume. But the reality is, a lot of foreign companies just aren’t comfortable playing an away game. If neither side will budge, HKIAC is a compromise both sides can usually live with.
CIETAC’s model arbitration clause is just one sentence, but the wording has to be exact. For example, you can’t write “China International Arbitration Commission” instead of “China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission” — getting the name wrong can invalidate the clause. CIETAC’s 2024 rules also added an early dismissal procedure and expanded multi-contract arbitration provisions, both worth knowing about.
CIETAC’s recommended model clause reads:
“Any dispute arising from or in connection with this Contract shall be submitted to the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission for arbitration which shall be conducted in accordance with the Commission’s arbitration rules in effect at the time of applying for arbitration. The arbitral award is final and binding upon both parties.”
If the dispute resolution clause in your contract differs from this wording by even a few words, have a lawyer look at it.
The inspection period clause: silence means acceptance
This might be the most overlooked clause of all.
Article 621 of the Civil Code says: if the contract specifies an inspection period (检验期), the buyer must raise quality objections within that period. If you miss the window, the goods are legally deemed to conform to the contract. This is brutal — even if the goods genuinely have problems, if you didn’t object within the contractual window, the law presumes you accepted them.
What if the contract doesn’t specify an inspection period? Article 621, paragraph 2, provides a fallback: the buyer should inspect and notify within a “reasonable period.” The outer limit of this reasonable period is two years from receipt. But if the contract includes a warranty period, the warranty period applies instead.
Here’s the trap: many supply contracts set the inspection period very short. Seven days. Ten days. Fifteen. For things like electronic components or raw materials, it’s hard to catch every defect in that window. In judicial practice, courts tend to treat very short inspection periods as applying only to “apparent defects” (表面缺陷). For “latent defects” (隐蔽缺陷) that couldn’t have been discovered at the time, courts usually still apply the reasonable period rule.
But “usually” is a word you don’t want to bet $300,000 on.
I handled a case involving an auto parts factory in Ningbo, at the end of an industrial road with no streetlights. The buyer discovered seal gasket defects more than twenty days after receiving the goods. The contract specified fifteen days. The supplier’s lawyer went straight to Article 621, paragraph 1, arguing the buyer had forfeited its right to object. The tribunal ultimately ruled the seal gasket defect was a latent defect, not bound by the fifteen-day limit — but the argument ate up nearly two months of hearing time. What should have been the simplest kind of quality dispute got turned into a procedural battle by one inspection period clause.
Your contract should at minimum do this: set separate objection periods for apparent and latent defects; specify inspection methods and standards (ISO, AQL, your own spec sheet — anything but “quality shall be acceptable”); and include a right to third-party inspection.
Governing law and contract language
Two clauses that look boring but matter a lot.
Governing law. If your contract doesn’t specify governing law, and both you and your supplier are from CISG signatory countries, the CISG (United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods) applies automatically. China acceded to the CISG in 1988. The problem is that CISG rules differ from Chinese domestic law on quite a few details — the standard for adjusting liquidated damages, evidence rules, requirements for contract form. If you want Chinese domestic law (the Contract Chapter of the Civil Code) to apply, you need to expressly exclude the CISG in your contract. Something like: “This contract is governed by the laws of the People’s Republic of China, excluding the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.”
Every lawyer knows this. Most procurement managers don’t care. Come arbitration time, which set of rules applies can directly affect your odds.
Contract language. Your contract probably exists in both Chinese and English. The question is: when the two versions conflict, which one governs? If the contract doesn’t say, Chinese courts tend to default to the Chinese version — after all, the entire litigation or arbitration process is conducted in Chinese. I saw a case where the English version said “acceptance upon inspection” and the Chinese version said “收货即验收” (acceptance upon receipt). Completely different meanings.
My recommendation: add a language priority clause. You don’t have to choose English — if dispute resolution is in China, making the Chinese version prevail might actually be more practical. But you have to pick one. Don’t leave it blank and let the judge decide for you.
Liquidated damages and limitation of liability
Article 585 of the Civil Code is another rule you need to know. Parties can agree on liquidated damages in the contract, but if the agreed amount exceeds actual losses by more than 30%, the court or tribunal can reduce it at the breaching party’s request.
What does this mean? You can write “0.5% penalty per day of late delivery” into the contract, but if the supplier goes to the tribunal and asks for a reduction, the tribunal will look at your actual losses. If your actual losses are much lower than the total penalty amount, the penalty gets cut.
The reverse is also true: if the agreed penalty is lower than your actual losses, you can request an increase. But in cross-border trade practice, getting a penalty increased is much harder than getting one reduced, because you need to prove your actual losses and anticipated benefits.
There’s another clause that shows up often in supply contracts: limitation of liability — things like “supplier’s maximum liability shall not exceed the total contract value,” or “supplier shall not be liable for indirect losses.” Under Chinese law, these clauses are generally valid. But there’s a limit: if the clause is part of standard terms (格式条款) — meaning the supplier drafted them unilaterally as a template — and they unreasonably reduce the supplier’s liability or exclude the buyer’s main rights, the court can void them under Article 497.
My advice is simple: read the liability limitation clauses in your supplier’s contract template carefully. A lot of supplier templates exclude indirect losses, lost profits, reputational damage — the whole list. If you sign without changing anything, making a claim for damages beyond the direct value of the goods becomes very difficult down the road.
IP protection: an NDA won’t cut it
If you’re handing over product designs, mold drawings, or technical specs to a Chinese factory, a standard NDA (non-disclosure agreement) is almost useless. The reason is simple: in China’s supply chain context, the biggest risk isn’t information leaking out. It’s the supplier using your design to produce the same product and selling it to your competitors. A standard NDA covers confidentiality obligations. It doesn’t cover usage or circumvention.
What’s more commonly used in cross-border sourcing is an NNN agreement — Non-Disclosure, Non-Use, Non-Circumvention. Three N’s plugging three holes:
- Non-disclosure: the supplier can’t share your design or business information with third parties.
- Non-use: the supplier can’t use your technology, designs, or molds to produce similar products for themselves or other clients.
- Non-circumvention: the supplier can’t bypass you and go directly to your customers or end markets.
To make this agreement actually enforceable in China, several conditions need to be met. Chinese-language version — many Chinese courts are unenthusiastic about contracts that only exist in English. At minimum, you need a Chinese version. Chinese law as governing law — if you use English law or New York law, enforcement in a Chinese court gets very difficult. Specific penalty clause — set a reasonable but painful amount, so the supplier thinks twice when doing the math.
A good NNN agreement costs somewhere between $500 and $1,500 in legal fees. Compared to what you’re investing in molds, that number shouldn’t be a debate.
Wrapping up
I didn’t cover force majeure clauses, retention of title, or trade terms (the risk allocation differences between FOB and CIF under Incoterms 2020 probably deserve their own article) in this piece. One article can’t cover every corner of a full contract.
But the five areas above — dispute resolution, inspection periods, governing law and language, liquidated damages and liability limits, IP protection — these are the five places I’ve seen blow up most often in practice. And they have one thing in common: by the time they become a problem, it’s usually too late. Nobody can amend a contract clause after the dispute has started.
If you have a contract with a Chinese supplier right now, take ten minutes to flip to the dispute resolution clause, the inspection period clause, and the governing law clause. See if they match the problems described in this article. If they do, get your lawyer to fix them before the next order.
That’s a lot cheaper than calling me after things go wrong. Need help reviewing your contract clauses? Get in touch.
This is the second article in the series “China Supply Chain Disputes — What Every Buyer Should Know.” Previous: Your Chinese Supplier Shipped Defective Goods — Now What?. Next: Your Supplier Ghosted You After Taking the Deposit — What Are Your Options?.