Hui Zhong Law Firm

Handling a series of real estate arbitrations with a combined value of over US$1 billion

Based in Beijing and Shanghai, Hui Zhong Law Firm was founded in 2013 as one of the first Chinese law firms to specialise in dispute resolution and has significant experience in the field.

The practice, comprising 17 partners and counsel and 22 associates, is spearheaded by co-founders Xinguang Cao and Ning Fei in Beijing. Cao, who served as senior partner of Haiwen & Partners for 21 years, was one of the first arbitrators appointed by the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC). Fei led the dispute resolution group at JunHe Law Office for five years and worked at the CIETAC’s secretariat.

Senior consultant Shengchang Wang is the former vice chair and secretary general of CIETAC who was controversially imprisoned for being part of a tribunal that ruled against Chinese interests in the PepsiCo arbitration, a major Sino-Western dispute of the 2000s. The episode made Wang a champion of the arbitral community.

Hui Zhong opened offices in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in 2020. The firm played a significant part in drafting amendments to the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration rules, including its authority to hear investor-state cases and to administer cases under UNCITRAL rules. The firm often serves as co-counsel for GAR 30 firms such as Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Herbert Smith Freehills.

Who uses it?

Financial services clients are prominent users of Hui Zhong, including the Bank of China, China Everbright and Hong Kong’s Core Pacific-Yamaichi.

In other sectors, the firm has acted for IBM, Hugo Boss, Swiss multinational ABB, US water treatment company Culligan, Danish biotech company Novozymes, US flash memory manufacturer SanDisk, and Shanghai Electric and Shanghai SECCO Petrochemical Company Limited, one of China’s largest joint ventures.

The firm has also represented a number of individuals involved in high-value disputes.

Track record

The firm has minimised its clients’ losses in arbitrations, ranging from an UNCITRAL claim over a contract for the importation of soybeans to a CIETAC claim involving the Beijing subsidiary of the NBA.

The firm has also engineered advantageous settlements. US chemicals provider Lubrizol retained the firm for parallel SIAC and SHIAC proceedings over a construction dispute that settled. The firm also settled a US$33 million HKIAC case over the sale of goods.

For another client, Hui Zhong reached a settlement with a Japanese supplier in a US$35 million HKIAC case. The supplier withdrew its claim on the second day of the hearing.

The firm recently helped a Taiwanese client settle a US$110 million claim against the Chinese government over the transfer of land use rights.

It also represented several high-profile individuals, most notably the Chinese Olympic athlete Sun Yang, in a dispute with the World Anti-Doping Agency, where the firm was able to push the forming of a new panel in the Court of Arbitration for Sport that halved the original penalties imposed on the client.

Recent events

On the investment treaty front, the firm is acting as co-counsel with ArentFox Schiff for two Chinese investors who are claiming US$322 million in an ICSID arbitration against Cambodia under the ASEAN-China Agreement over the revocation of two telecommunications licences.

The firm is advising a Chinese private company in a US$120 million ICC arbitration in Hong Kong with a set of Egyptian counterparties. Before the Chinese courts, it is advising Wabtec (Shenyang) on its attempts to enforce a US$360 million HKIAC award against an engineering company.

The firm has also been involved in a series of cases arising from a large real estate project that saw more than 30 proceedings across four jurisdictions. The firm represented Beijing Zhongtian Hongye Real Estate Consulting in arbitral and judicial proceedings in China, and is acting as general coordinator for cases in other jurisdictions; the combined value of the cases exceeds US$1 billion.

The year 2022 saw partner Jingjing Chen leave the firm for JunHe Law Offices.

Client comment

Hao Junwei, legal director at Shanghai Electric Group, is using the firm in a high-value CIETAC claim against two state-owned entities concerning power plant designs. The Hui Zhong team is “well organised and very responsive” with extensive knowledge of Chinese contract law, property law and CIETAC arbitration, he says.

A co-counsel says the firm worked “very efficiently and practically” on a large-scale dispute, singling out the “impressively responsive, smart and thorough” Xueyu Yang. A US co-counsel says the team is “highly knowledgeable, effective and efficient”, adding that “they serve as a powerful bridge between Chinese and international law and practice, and appreciate nuances of civil and common law systems”.

Another co-counsel praised the exceptional quality of the firm’s work, stating that the firm brings “tremendous experience, substantive knowledge, and capability to the table”. They further highlight Fei as “strategic, well-connected, and bringing tremendous experience”, and Yang as “a good young partner, a hard worker”.