Recently, 2023 Asia Pacific Regional Arbitration Group (APRAG) Conference was held in Beijing. Li Xuanle, the Deputy Secretary General of HZAC, was invited to attend the conference, which was organized by the Beijing International Arbitration Center (BIAC). More than 400 participants, including representatives of APRAG members, representatives of courts and well-known arbitral institutions, arbitrators, lawyers, experts, scholars and enterprise representatives from New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, India, Malaysia, Thailand and other Asia Pacific countries and regions also attended the conference.

He Rong, Minister of Justice of PRC, and Yin Yong, Mayor of Beijing and Deputy Secretary of CPC Beijing Municipal Committee, attended the opening ceremony and addressed the conference. Wang Shumei, Vice-ministerial member of the trial committee of the Supreme People's Court of PRC and Chinese senior judge of second grade, and Anna Joubin-Bret, Secretary of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, delivered the keynote speeches at the opening ceremony. Machimdhorn Khampiranont, the representative of the APRAG President, delivered a speech on behalf of the immediate past president. Guo Wei, the President-in-office of the 8th APRAG committee and Chairperson of BIAC, presided the Opening Ceremony.

With the theme of International Arbitration in Changing Times: Meeting Challenge, Bridging Divide, the conference involved six topics shared by addressing guests from different jurisdictions, namely [i] The Continued Rises of International Arbitration in Asia-Pacific: Evolving Rules, Innovative Practices and Latest Cases, [ii] Arbitration Reform: Key Changes and the Way Ahead, [iii] Revisiting the Expectations of Arbitration Users: Potential Challenges and Practical Options, [iv] Building an International Arbitration Hub: Coordinated Development of Local Legal Ecosystems and International Arbitration, [v] Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform: Where do the Asia-Pacific Stakeholders' Interests Lie?, and [vi] Disputes of Tomorrow: Arbitration in the Era of Artificial Intelligence & Big Data.

The Conference summarized and reviewed the arbitration experiences in the Asia-Pacific region over the past decade in terms of evolving rules, innovative practices, and arbitration cases, focused on the issues of arbitration reform, user expectations in arbitration, and the construction of international arbitration hubs confronted with the Asia-Pacific region, looked ahead to the future development of investment arbitration, artificial intelligence, and big data in the Asia-Pacific region, attempting to bridge the differences and enhancing the consensus across the entire region.