The first high-level meeting between the Supreme Judiciary Council and the Supreme People's Court of China was held on Wednesday, and co-chaired by President of the Supreme Judiciary Council and President of the Court of Cassation Dr Hassan bin Lahdan al-Mohannadi, and his counterpart, Judge Zhou Qiang, via video conference, QNA reported.
The heads of the diplomatic missions of the two countries in Doha and Beijing, senior judges and administrative leaders from both sides participated in the meeting.
The meeting discussed a number of issues, including the theoretical and practical foundations that can be built in finding bilateral judicial co-operation that serves the two jurisdictions of the two friendly countries, and at the same time contributes to strengthening multilateral international judicial co-operation in light of the two countries' efforts to play an important role in consolidating the values of prompt justice.
The meeting discussed issues of co-operation in many fields, foremost of which is the development of commercial justice practices and the regulation of commercial transactions through traditional dispute resolution mechanisms and alternative solutions to resolve these disputes, as well as making them as tools supportive of the growing bilateral trade between the two friendly countries and other issues of common interest.
The discussions also included a presentation on the performance of the Chinese judiciary during the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) and the smart technical alternatives that were used to maintain the sustainability of the litigation mechanism.
The Supreme Judiciary Council also presented an overview of its structure and its ambitious plan to make amendments and developments that would speed up the procedural cycle of litigation and rationalise the drain of resources and efforts. In particular, it provides support for the country's economy and its external and internal trade, which was led by the project of creating a specialised court for trade and investment disputes.
In this regard, HE President of the Trade and Investment Court Judge Khalid Ali al-Obaidly, reviewed the jurisdiction of the court and the timetable for launching its work and the new added values that he is working to integrate into litigation mechanisms, in the procedural or technical aspects, in addition to the ambitions of this court to benefit from relevant global experiences.
Ambassador of Qatar to China, Mohamed al-Dehaimi, and China's ambassador in Doha, Zhou Jian, participated in the meeting.
In their intervention, the two ambassadors expressed the full diplomatic channels' support for this trend, the first-of-its-kind between the courts of the two countries, since the establishment of bilateral relations 33 years ago. This is consistent with the remarkable activity witnessed by these ties and which has translated into two visits of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to China in 2014 and 2019, as well as the continuation of direct dialogue and practical co-operation between the two countries at all levels, which has also contributed to making China the largest trading partner of Qatar last year.
The two ambassadors stressed that judicial co-operation and mutual recognition of judgments and bilateral judicial delegations between the courts of the two countries will add a new dimension to the pledge of the leadership of the two friendly countries to expand the horizons of this co-operation. At the end of the meeting, the two sides pledged to proceed quickly to put the bilateral judicial co-operation plans into action and to benefit from the support provided by the diplomatic channels and electronic means of communication in bringing the distance between the two countries closer.
