Peking University, Mar. 23, 2016: The 13th Willem C. Vis international Commercial Arbitration Moot (East) was held in Hong Kong from March 13th to 17th, 2016. Peking University team won the Eighth Finalist in the oral competition. This is the best result since Peking University attended the event, and is also the best ranking for Chinese Mainland’s teams in this year’s competition.
PKU Vis Team
From Left: Frederik Hübl, ZHAO Xinnuo, LI Siqi, YU Xuechen, LIU Ying, CHEN Junguang, WANG Xinjia
William C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot is one of the world's largest moot court competitions with long history. Vis moot is organized jointly by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, University of Vienna (Universität Wien), the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators East Asia Branch and some other institutions. It is also the only worldwide moot court competitions held by United Nations institutions. Each year the oral competition of Vis moot would be held in Vienna and Hong Kong respectively.
This year, in total of 115 universities and colleges from all around the world came to Hong Kong to participate in the oral competition, including Yale University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg), National University of Singapore, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Several Mainland teams, including but not limited to Peking University, Tsinghua University, East China University of Political Science and Wuhan University, also participated in the contest.
PKU's 2015/2016 Vis-Team was supported by Professor Yi Ping, Professor Joe Pratt, Professor Thomas Manson, and Peking University alumni from all over the world, as well as ZHAO Xinnuo, a third year undergraduate student who acted as captain of the team and Frederik Hübl, an exchange student from Heidelberg University who coached the team. The team itself consisted of the graduate students YU Xuechen and CHEN Junguang and the undergraduate students WANG Lijing, LIU Ying, LI Siqi and WANG Xinjia.
General Rounds against Leibniz University of Hanover
YU Xuechen, LIU Ying with arbitrators
Both the academic and the practical training at PKU were the pillars of this year's great success in the competition. With the support of the faculty and the university, the team had prepared for the final arguments in Hong Kong for over half a year. The preparation for the oral competition included extensive research in topics the students had not been familiar with before, and was carried out at King and Wood Mallesons, where the students were able to present their arguments to experienced practitioners.
In the General round, team members have launched fierce competitions with strong rivals from National law University of Jodhpur, Leibniz University of Hanover, National University of Singapore and Nagoya University. Rising from the total of 115 participants, Peking University Team, one of the only two Mainland teams that advanced to the knockout, defeated University of Cologne and finally achieved the ninth place of the competition. The team obtained high evaluations from the arbitrators given their solid knowledge of law and outstanding advocacy in English. Moreover, Ms Yu Xuechen achieved Honorable Mention for Best Oral Advocate through her outstanding performance overall.
Certificate
Reported by: Zhao Xinnuo
Edited by: Zhang Jiang
