From October 24 to 25, the Eighth Intersessional Meeting of UNCITRAL Working Group III was held in Chengdu. This meeting was co-hosted by China’s Ministry of Commerce and UNCITRAL, and co-organized by the Sichuan Provincial Government and China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission, with the theme of Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform. Hundreds of domestic and foreign representatives from relevant international organizations, government sectors, academic fields and practice fields attended this meeting.

During the opening ceremony, speeches were made Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce ministry Mr. Li Fei, Secretary General of UNCITRAL Ms. Anna Joubin-Bret, Deputy Director and Secretary-General of the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission Mr. Wang Chengjie and Chairman of the UNCITRAL Third Working Group Mr. Shane Spelliscy.

Prof. Ji Wenhua, Co-Chair for WTO Chairs Programme at UIBE attended this meeting as a moderator for the panel discussion on “The meaning and influence of the Appeal Mechanism on the ISDS Mechanism”.

In this panel, Secretary General of UNCITRAL Ms. Anna Joubin-Bret, Ambassador of Sierra Leone to the United Nations Mr. Michael Kanu, former Research Director of the World Trade Institute Prof. Peter van den Bossche and a founding member of the Asian International Law Institute Prof. Teresa Cheng joined the discussion. Prof. Ji moderated the whole discussion and concluded that an appeals mechanism could well help solve the problem of lack of consistency and predictability in the ISDS mechanism. It needs a better regulation design and borrow experiences from other international institution, including WTO appellate mechanism, to improve the efficiency and acceptance level of the ISDS appeal mechanism.

During the meeting, Prof. Ji also had wide communications with presented scholars and government officials from home and abroad to consolidate the influence of the WTO Chair at UIBE specifically in law area and to expect future academic cooperation.