Preface

This book is entitled the Practical Essence of PRC Cross-Border Civil and Commercial Litigation.

The concept of cross-border litigation，the topic of this book，covers not just traditional civil litigation before PRC courts involving “overseas” entities and individuals，but also PRC litigation with parties of “foreign-invested” businesses in the PRC which are not categorized as typical cross-border litigations under the current framework of the PRC civil procedures and rules of private international law.In addition，cross-border litigation includes civil litigation before courts of foreign jurisdictions involving PRC entities or nationals.This expansion of the concept derives from and indeed serves the practice of cross-border litigation both from a judge's perspective and an attorney's.

This book aims to be different.Toward that end，in editing this book I followed five basic but widely ignored principles.

First，procedural matters，not substantive laws，are the focus of this book.This is because，from a practical perspective，the significance of procedure outweighs that of substance in PRC cross-border litigations.Procedural issues，such as jurisdiction，governing law，overseas evidence，and witnesses and the like have a direct bearing upon the outcome of any PRC cross-border litigation.

Second，building on the first point above，this book concentrates on bottleneck issues relating to the practice of cross-border civil litigation，rather than attempting to comprehensively review every potential procedural issue.Said bottleneck issues include the practical aspects of communication with overseas parties and attorneys，jurisdiction and jurisdictional challenges，parallel litigation，governing law and its application，collection and production of cross-border evidence and witnesses，notarization and legalization of overseas evidence，requirements of translation and interpretation，overseas E-discovery，cross-border service of process，enforcement of foreign judgments，etc.

Third，this book tries to systematically organize all of the gists and key skills involved in PRC-related cross-border litigation.Previously published literature of similar topics have been fragmented into separate essays or at most one or two chapters in a book.I believe that it will help the growth of the cross-border litigation sector to systematize and organize a comprehensive book.

Fourth，almost every “gist” point is illustrated and corroborated with a classic judicial precedent—either a case I presided over as a judge or argued as an attorney，or the milestone authoritative rules released by justices of the Supreme People's Court or Provincial High Courts.While PRC law，including its civil procedures，follows the civil law tradition by focusing on statutes rather than case law as its major forms of legal rules，the judicial precedents help me demonstrate how specific rules of law work in practice，what the gists and twists are，and how they can be managed and applied.

Last，but not least，the summary of the gists and key skills are founded not just on the precedents which I have selected and edited carefully and conscientiously，but more often and importantly on my own relevant experience.As pointed out，few books approached the topics of this book from a practical and empirical perspective；rather，they engaged in long discussions of legal theory and doctrines.However，this does not mean that this book has no theoretical basis.Instead，I heavily edited discussions of legal theories which are based on the purposes and intent of the statutes and well-established jurisprudence.

As China has been deepening its opening-up strategy by encouraging domestic businesses to go abroad and meanwhile attracting better-quality foreign investment，this book will hopefully contribute to the prevention and resolution of cross-border litigations both before PRC courts and courts of other jurisdictions in the world.

As a former judge and a senior legal practitioner，I hope that my experiences and perspectives as reflected in this book will be helpful to judges，attorneys and counsels，as well as law scholars and students interested in cross-border civil litigation practice.

Enjoy this book.

（Aaron）Yizhou Deng