On April 25, the 2025 Shanghai International Automobile High-Quality Development Law Forum with the theme of "Smart Driving Future, Law Building a New Journey" was successfully held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center.
As a core supporting event of the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show, the Legal Forum aims to use the power of the rule of law to lay a track for the transformation of the global automotive industry and to inject legal momentum into the progress of world automotive civilization with Chinese wisdom.
Among the nearly 1,000 exhibitors from 26 countries and regions, international brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Bosch, Freya, and Schaeffler discussed together with Chinese manufacturers such as SAIC, NIO, Geely, and Zeekr at the legal forum. More than 300 automotive industry professionals attended the conference, presenting a booming picture of the construction of a legal ecosystem for China's automotive industry.
Zhou Minhao, Chairman of the Shanghai Council for the Promotion of International Trade and Director of the Shanghai International Arbitration Center, pointed out in his opening speech that 2025 will be the 40th anniversary of the Shanghai Auto Show, and it will also be a record-breaking auto show, with an exhibition area of over 360,000 square meters, nearly 1,000 exhibitors, and 163 new models debuting on site among the 1,308 exhibitors. The Shanghai Auto Show is one of the most influential A-class auto shows in the world, and it is also the highest-level debut site and debut venue for the world's automotive industry.
As the organizer of the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show, CCPIT Shanghai has always taken serving Chinese and foreign companies and promoting international economic and trade cooperation and exchanges as its foundation. In addition to hosting international exhibitions such as auto shows to build bridges for Sino-foreign economic and trade cooperation, it has also actively built an international legal service matrix that integrates international commercial arbitration, economic and trade mediation, commercial certification, and risk warning to help companies use the rule of law thinking to conduct compliant operations.
The Shanghai International Arbitration Center has always paid attention to the legal needs of the automotive industry and has provided high-quality dispute resolution services to safeguard the steady development of the automotive industry. In the past five years, Shanghai International Arbitration Center has accepted more than 2,400 arbitration cases involving the automotive industry, with a dispute amount of more than RMB 38 billion. In addition to traditional sales, maintenance and financial leasing contract disputes, new types of disputes such as intelligent automobile system software development, new energy vehicles, and automobile user data disputes have emerged in an endless stream, and the number of cases has shown a significant upward trend.
He proposed to take this legal forum as an opportunity to build a first-class market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment to attract global automakers to bring more new product launches, innovative research and development, new businesses and new layouts to Shanghai; and to use high-quality economic and trade legal services that are in line with international standards to help Chinese automakers move forward steadily in the ever-opening international cooperation.
During the keynote speech session, three legal experts from local new energy companies, multinational automobile companies and international arbitration institutions, Gao Gang, Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer and Global General Counsel of NIO Group, Michael Mazart, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Mercedes-Benz (China) Investment Co., Ltd., and Wang Weijun, Secretary General of Shanghai International Arbitration Center, respectively interpreted the key role of the rule of law in breaking through the automotive industry from different dimensions of global competition, focusing on key issues such as innovation, compliance, safety, sustainable development, clean energy and dispute resolution.
At the crossroads of the global automotive industry's transformation to new energy and intelligence, legal regulation has become not only a convoy for technological innovation, but also a passport for international cooperation. From the security norms of cross-border data flow to the legislative exploration of autonomous driving ethics, from the global layout of intellectual property rights to the adaptation of international trade rules, the rule of law system is being integrated into the gene chain of industrial development at an unprecedented depth. As the world's largest producer and consumer market of new energy vehicles, China is building a legal ecology of the automotive industry with global exemplary significance, defending innovative achievements with the "shield" of rules, and connecting the global market with the "bridge" of systems. The Shanghai International Arbitration Center was established in the 1980s and uses internationally accepted arbitration methods to resolve cross-border economic and trade disputes. So far, it has made more than 30,000 arbitration awards, with a dispute amount of more than RMB 380 billion, and cases involving 107 countries and regions, including 56 countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.
In recent years, foreign-related arbitration has received support from all walks of life and has made great progress. CCPIT Shanghai is actively promoting Shanghai International Arbitration to become a world-class arbitration institution, dedicated to serving the international operations of enterprises. In the future, CCPIT Shanghai will take on the important task of setting up overseas service points for enterprises in Shanghai, continue to promote the overseas layout of Shanghai arbitration institutions, improve and strengthen professional international arbitration services, and help enterprises resolve risks in the global industrial chain and supply chain.
