BEIJING: Courts in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region are making significant strides in establishing themselves as a preferred venue for resolving international commercial disputes, with mediation and artificial intelligence playing key roles in the effort.
As China’s gateway to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Guangxi shares a dynamic border with Vietnam. Each day, trucks laden with tropical fruits and a steady flow of traders and travelers cross the border for business and family visits. Such frequent exchanges naturally give rise to disputes.
Between January 2020 and June 2026, courts across Guangxi handled 3,250 foreign-related civil and commercial cases involving 75 countries, including the United States, Vietnam, Japan and Canada. The cases covered a wide range of issues, from divorce and private loans to trademark infringement and contract disputes. In 2025 alone, courts in the region handled 1,059 such cases, with the number rising annually, according to the Guangxi High People’s Court.
To position itself as a preferred destination for resolving international commercial disputes, the region’s judiciary has made mediation a cornerstone of its approach, tailoring it to the distinctive nature of cross-border cases.
At Youyiguan, or the Friendship Pass, in Pingxiang, a city on the Vietnam border, local judges work with police, market regulators, officials from the border economic zone and trade associations to address commercial disputes. When a cross-border trade dispute arises, police often first stabilize the situation and identify the key issues.
If the dispute involves border trade, they alert the local court to conduct joint mediation.
“Our goal is to prevent commercial conflicts from escalating,” said Liu Qiangqiang, a border police officer, highlighting how expedited mediation keeps trade flowing and prevents minor misunderstandings from becoming major disputes.
Zhou Meichu, head of the Puzhai community in Youyi township, also underscored the importance of mediation in resolving disputes involving perishable goods such as durians and jackfruits.
“Some businesses can wait, but fruit cannot. Time is money,” he said. “Quick resolutions do more to ensure the stability of cross-border trade between China and Vietnam than simply announcing verdicts.”
With years of experience in international trade and community management, Zhou has earned the trust of many merchants, both Chinese and foreign. He subsequently became a civilian mediator, assisting judges in resolving foreign-related commercial cases. To better understand the needs of Vietnamese traders, Zhou has enlisted three Vietnamese nationals with a strong grasp of cross-border business practices as his colleagues.
“Mediation only works when it stays within the legal framework. That’s what gets to the heart of a dispute and keeps business relationships alive in the long run,” he added.
In Dongxing, another city in Guangxi, Du Yimiao serves as one of the region’s bilingual, business-savvy mediators. Located just across a narrow river from Vietnam, Dongxing sees daily cross-border trade. Since a circuit judicial team was established in the border area in 2014, it has resolved more than 1,400 border trade disputes, with a mediation success rate of nearly 50 percent.
Du, an overseas Chinese, holds positions in the local chamber of commerce and women’s federation, giving her deeper insight into business practices and cultural norms on both sides of the border. Over the past four years, she has participated in 57 dispute resolutions.
“Language barriers and cultural differences may easily turn minor disagreements into major conflicts,” she said, describing her role as a bridge between the two sides.
“The law sets the baseline — I make sure both sides understand their legal standing while reminding them of the longstanding business relationships we have built across the border,” she added.
To strengthen the institutional framework for mediation, the Guangxi High People’s Court has issued guiding documents to support the Belt and Road Initiative and improve the business environment. The region has also established the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area Nanning International Commercial Tribunal, further helping foster an institutional system for standardized mediation in cross-border cases.
The tribunal is also turning to AI to address one of the key challenges in international commercial disputes: identifying and applying foreign laws where applicable.
In 2025, the Guangxi Department of Justice and Guangxi Minzu University launched an artificial intelligence-powered legal service assistant. The platform has since incorporated more than 100,000 legal texts from ASEAN member countries, covering 100 core laws in seven languages. It provides legal consultation, policy interpretation and risk assessment, along with multilingual translation and cross-jurisdictional services.
Dang Shu, director of the rule of law research center at the Guangxi Department of Justice, said that compared with other AI tools, the dedicated legal assistant draws on official data sources from ASEAN countries and follows a rigorous translation process to ensure judicial accuracy.
Wu Xiaofan, president of the Guangxi Commercial Mediation Association, praised the platform’s reliable database, saying it helps parties reduce the costs and time involved in mediation.
In a late-2025 durian contract dispute, for instance, the tribunal used the AI tool to retrieve, cross-reference and translate applicable Vietnamese laws for the litigants, resolving within minutes a dispute over the characterization of the business relationship that had long eluded consensus.
Since its establishment in September 2022, the tribunal’s caseload has grown from 438 cases in 2023 to 610 in the first half of this year. Yang Ding, deputy chief judge, said she and her colleagues are embracing the technology to improve judicial efficiency and quality.
“We hope to build a fully integrated, digitally empowered dispute-resolution system tailored for ASEAN partners to advance the region’s goal of becoming a preferred venue for international commercial disputes and supporting high-level opening-up,” she added. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
