Where the reciprocal enforcement of judgments regime

A judgment creditor who wins in Hong Kong and needs to collect against assets in Guangdong, Shanghai or Beijing used to face a stark choice: start fresh litigation in a Mainland court, or hope the debtor kept reachable assets on the Hong Kong side. That position changed on 29 January 2024, when the Mainland Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance – Cap. 645 – came into force. The commercial stakes are real and immediate. Groups with counterparty exposure across the boundary are now working with a regime that is both broader in scope and more demanding in its procedural detail than most advisers outside the specialist cross-border bar appreciate.

The Mainland Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance (Cap. 645), in force from 29 January 2024, replaces the narrow 2008 choice-of-court mechanism with a connection-based registration route that covers both monetary and non-monetary judgments made on or after that date. Registration is made with the Court of First Instance; the old exclusive-jurisdiction precondition is removed.

This analysis sets out what Cap. 645 actually does, where the cross-border interface creates friction, how it compares with the separate arbitral-award enforcement track, and where – in our view – the enforcement risk still sits for principals operating across Greater China.

What changed on 29 January 2024, and why it matters commercially

Cap. 645 is not an incremental amendment. It replaces an entire regime – the 2008 choice-of-court arrangement under Cap. 597 – and expands the universe of enforceable judgments in a way that the earlier instrument never achieved.

Under the old regime, reciprocal enforcement was conditional on a written exclusive-jurisdiction agreement designating the Mainland or Hong Kong courts as the sole forum. Most commercial contracts did not contain such a clause. The practical result was that a large proportion of civil and commercial judgments obtained in Hong Kong had no direct path to Mainland enforcement, and the reverse was equally true. Parties who had not anticipated the litigation when drafting their contract were left to seek recognition in the other system on an ad hoc basis, or to commence fresh proceedings.

The 2024 instrument removes that precondition. Cap. 645 adopts a connection-based test: a Mainland judgment need only satisfy one of the defined jurisdictional connection grounds to be eligible for registration. The reach is substantially wider. It extends to non-monetary relief – declaratory orders, specific performance, injunctions – alongside the money judgments that most practitioners focus on.

The commercial reading is straightforward. Any group that litigates, transacts or holds assets across the boundary now operates in an environment where an adverse judgment on either side is a direct threat to assets on the other. That is new exposure for debtors. It is new capability for creditors. Both positions deserve a deliberate structural response.

The governing instruments: how the two-track architecture works

The enforcement architecture across the Mainland–Hong Kong boundary runs on two largely parallel tracks, and the distinction between them shapes strategy at the outset of any dispute.

Track one is the judgment route under Cap. 645. A judgment creditor holding an effective Mainland civil or commercial judgment applies to register it with the Court of First Instance. Once registered, it carries the same force as a Hong Kong judgment for execution purposes. The reverse process applies to Hong Kong judgments being used in the Mainland: a certified copy and the accompanying certificate follow the procedure prescribed by the Mainland courts under the reciprocal arrangement.

Track two is the arbitral-award route. This runs under the 1999 Arrangement between the Mainland and the Hong Kong SAR on Mutual Enforcement of Arbitral Awards, as supplemented in 2020. Since the 2021 amendment to the supplemental arrangement, simultaneous enforcement applications in both jurisdictions are permitted – a significant practical advance that reduces the risk of a creditor being outmanoeuvred by an asset-transfer during the gap between sequential applications.

The two tracks do not overlap cleanly. An arbitral award issued in a Hong Kong-seated arbitration is not a judgment, and it does not travel under Cap. 645. It travels under the arbitral-award arrangement. A court judgment following contested litigation moves under Cap. 645. A judgment that confirms an arbitration-related order – a set-aside application, a recognition decision – falls within the exclusion list in Cap. 645 and must be handled differently.

The Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 609), modelled on the UNCITRAL Model Law, governs the Hong Kong end of the arbitral track. For parties deciding at contract stage which dispute-resolution mechanism to use, the choice between litigation and arbitration carries direct enforcement consequences that are not always addressed when the contract is being negotiated.

How does the connection-based test operate in practice?

The removal of the exclusive-jurisdiction precondition is the headline change. But the connection-based test that replaces it is not open-ended. A Mainland judgment applicant must satisfy at least one of the defined grounds: the defendant was habitually resident or had its principal place of business or a branch in the Mainland at the time proceedings were commenced; the defendant submitted to the jurisdiction; the claim arose from a contract performed in the Mainland; or one of the other enumerated bases applies.

In most contested cross-border commercial disputes, the connection ground is not the difficulty. The difficulty is elsewhere: the authenticity and completeness of the judgment document, the question of whether the judgment is "effective" under Mainland procedural rules, whether it has been partially satisfied already, and whether it falls within the exclusion list.

The exclusion list matters. Cap. 645 excludes insolvency proceedings, certain categories of intellectual-property claim tied to administrative validity determinations, judgments that are themselves only recognising an arbitral award, matrimonial and succession matters, and a number of other defined categories. The exclusions are not narrow. A group advising on a cross-border dispute involving IP, insolvency or a judgment that followed an arbitration-related proceeding needs to confirm at the outset that the exclusion analysis has been done.

There is also a temporal limitation that practitioners occasionally miss: Cap. 645 applies to judgments made on or after 29 January 2024. Judgments made before that date remain subject to the earlier regime – which for most contracts without an exclusive-jurisdiction clause means no direct registration route exists. A creditor holding a pre-2024 Mainland judgment against a Hong Kong-based debtor is in a materially different position from one holding a post-2024 judgment.

The comparative read: Hong Kong courts versus Mainland courts on each side of the boundary

How does the enforcement environment actually differ when you look at it from both directions?

Hong Kong sits within a common-law system. The Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeal and the Court of Final Appeal operate under the doctrine of binding precedent, with English as a working language of the courts. Registration of a Mainland judgment is a court process; it is not automatic. The registered judgment creditor can then use the full armoury of Hong Kong execution mechanisms: charging orders over shares or property, garnishee proceedings against bank accounts, appointment of a receiver.

The Mainland system operates differently. Enforcement is administered by the people's courts. The enforcement process has become more effective in recent years, supported by mechanisms that allow courts to restrict non-compliant judgment debtors from certain transactions and movements. For a creditor with assets in the Mainland and a judgment from Hong Kong, the certified copy and certificate route under the reciprocal arrangement feeds into this system. The practical question is whether the local court with jurisdiction over the assets will give the matter the priority and efficiency that a creditor in a time-sensitive dispute requires.

Our cross-border practice sees a recurring pattern. Creditors focus on the registration step. They underestimate what happens after registration – the execution phase, where assets need to be identified, attached and realised. In both directions across the boundary, that post-registration execution work is where the commercial result is actually determined. A judgment that registers cleanly but against a debtor whose assets have been transferred, encumbered or dissipated before or during the registration process is a paper victory.

This is why the interim-measures track matters as much as the registration track. For arbitral proceedings seated in Hong Kong, the 1 October 2019 interim-measures arrangement with the Mainland allows a party to seek property preservation or evidence preservation orders from Mainland courts before an award is issued. No equivalent mechanism exists for court litigation under Cap. 645 – a structural difference that favours arbitration for disputes where pre-award asset protection is a live concern.

What foreign and in-house counsel get wrong about the new regime

Three misreadings appear consistently in cross-border disputes on our desk.

The first is treating Cap. 645 as automatic mutual recognition. It is not. Registration requires an application. The court exercises a defined supervisory function. The respondent has the opportunity to challenge. Grounds for refusal include jurisdictional defects, denial of natural justice, public-policy objections and the situation where the judgment is under appeal or not yet final. A judgment creditor who arrives at the registration stage without a properly authenticated, complete judgment document and a clear analysis of the connection grounds will lose time it may not have.

The second misreading is assuming that a post-2024 judgment in any civil matter is covered. The exclusion list is real and not marginal. Insolvency is excluded. Certain IP claims are excluded. Matters touching arbitration-related court orders are excluded. The initial scope analysis is not a formality.

The third misreading – and the most commercially costly – is the failure to consider the asset position before proceedings begin. The purpose of an enforcement regime is to get money or relief from someone who does not want to give it. A debtor with notice of impending proceedings has every incentive to move assets. The procedural window between judgment, registration, and execution is not short. A creditor who has done the liability analysis thoroughly but has not modelled the asset position, the debtor's structure and the available protective steps is solving only half the problem.

We regularly act on matters where the liability position is strong and the enforcement position is complicated precisely because the asset question was not addressed early enough. The pattern is avoidable.

Micro-scenario one: a post-2024 enforcement under Cap. 645

A European distribution group with a Hong Kong subsidiary obtained a money judgment from a Hong Kong court in mid-2025 against a Mainland counterparty following a contractual dispute over a supply arrangement. The Mainland counterparty had a branch in Guangdong and assets across two other provinces.

The connection ground was clear: the contract had been substantially performed in the Mainland. The judgment was effective and post-2024. We were instructed to advise on the registration route and the asset-attachment sequence.

The work had two phases. The first was the registration application before the Court of First Instance: authentication of the judgment, the certified copy and certificate, and the analysis of the exclusion list to confirm the claim fell outside all excluded categories. The second was the execution strategy: identifying the Mainland assets through available public filings, modelling the order of attachment applications across the provinces involved, and advising on the risk that a co-ordinated application would be necessary to prevent sequential disposal.

The outcome was not straightforward. The debtor raised a natural-justice objection at the registration stage, arguing it had not been properly served in the underlying Hong Kong proceedings. That objection consumed time and required a response on the service-of-process record. The substantive registration eventually succeeded, but the delay had a cost. The sequencing lesson – confirm service compliance at the underlying litigation stage, not at the registration stage – is one our desk now raises with counsel at the commencement of any Hong Kong action against a Mainland counterparty.

Micro-scenario two: the arbitral-award track versus the judgment track

An Asian technology group with a holding entity in the Cayman Islands and operating entities in Hong Kong and the Mainland was considering dispute-resolution clauses for a series of joint-venture and distribution agreements with Mainland counterparties in late 2024. The in-house team had assumed that a Mainland court litigation clause was preferable on enforcement grounds, on the basis that awards from Mainland courts would be easier to enforce locally.

Our desk was asked to review that assumption. The analysis turned on three differences. First, a Hong Kong-seated arbitral award travels under the 1999 Arrangement with the supplemental 2020 amendment, which allows simultaneous enforcement applications in both jurisdictions since the 2021 amendment – meaning the creditor can move against assets on both sides of the boundary without choosing a sequence. A judgment under Cap. 645 does not carry that feature. Second, the interim-measures arrangement for Hong Kong-seated arbitration allows property-preservation orders from Mainland courts before the award is issued; no equivalent exists for Cap. 645 litigation. Third, the arbitral process under the HKIAC Administered Arbitration Rules (2024 Rules, effective 1 June 2024) allows confidential proceedings and an expedited procedure for qualifying claims, with a target of an award within six months of file transfer to the tribunal.

For that group's cross-boundary contracts, the arbitration clause with Hong Kong as the seat was the more defensible choice from an enforcement perspective. The judgment track under Cap. 645 remained relevant for situations where one party had no choice – where a dispute had already been litigated to a judgment in the Mainland or Hong Kong before the clause could be negotiated.

Where the enforcement risk sits now: our read

Cap. 645 is a genuine improvement over what came before. The connection-based test is broader. The non-monetary scope is new. The removal of the exclusive-jurisdiction precondition addresses the largest structural gap in the 2008 regime. For groups operating across the boundary with post-2024 exposure, the legal position is materially stronger than it was three years ago.

But the regime does not resolve the asset problem. It resolves the recognition problem. Those are different things.

Our view is that the principal risk concentration under Cap. 645 falls in three places.

First, the temporal cut-off is underappreciated. Large commercial disputes often involve conduct and loss that straddles the January 2024 date. A creditor whose cause of action was crystallising through 2023 and into 2024 needs careful analysis of which aspects of the judgment relate to pre- and post-cut-off conduct and whether the judgment as a whole is properly characterised as a post-2024 judgment for Cap. 645 purposes.

Second, the exclusion list will generate contested applications. The insolvency exclusion is straightforward in pure cases. But cross-border disputes routinely involve parties in financial difficulty, restructuring negotiations or intermingled insolvency and commercial claims. Whether a particular judgment falls within the insolvency exclusion is not always a clean determination, and the early contest over that question delays the enforcement clock.

Third, the absence of interim-measures relief on the court litigation track – as opposed to the arbitral track – means that a creditor pursuing a money judgment under Cap. 645 has no asset-preservation mechanism in the Mainland during the litigation and registration period. The practical answer is to consider whether ancillary relief is available under Hong Kong law, and to move early on any available attachment or Mareva-type relief on the Hong Kong side. But that answer protects only Hong Kong-situated assets. Mainland assets remain exposed to disposal until Mainland execution proceedings are commenced.

The enforcement-risk question for cross-border practitioners is therefore not whether Cap. 645 works. It does. The question is whether the asset position, the exclusion analysis and the timing sequence have been thought through from the first day a dispute becomes apparent – not from the day a judgment is handed down.

The sequence above describes the standard position. Your matter turns on the documents, the jurisdictions actually engaged, and the order of steps – which is where the outcome is won or lost.

For a structured assessment of your cross-border enforcement position across Hong Kong and the Mainland, write to us at info@lockhartyip.com.

Further background on our disputes and arbitration practice is available at our disputes and arbitration practice page. Related analysis on enforcing awards across other cross-border corridors is set out in our briefings on enforcing an arbitral award from the UAE to Hong Kong and on the Hong Kong–Cyprus enforcement corridor.

If an earlier filing or enforcement attempt produced a stalled result, a second read can identify the strategic error and the routes still open. Write to info@lockhartyip.com to discuss.

Related practices

Holding Structures – structuring cross-boundary holding entities to support the enforcement position
M&A & Transactions – transaction documents and dispute-resolution clauses for Greater China deals

Frequently asked questions

What does the route look like for the reciprocal enforcement of judgments regime with the Mainland?

Under Cap. 645, a judgment creditor holding an effective Mainland civil or commercial judgment made on or after 29 January 2024 applies to register it with the Court of First Instance. Once registered, it has the same force as a Hong Kong judgment and is enforceable through the full range of Hong Kong execution mechanisms. The reverse route applies to Hong Kong judgments being used in the Mainland, where a certified copy and accompanying certificate follow the procedure administered by the Mainland courts. The applicant must satisfy at least one of the defined connection grounds and confirm the judgment falls outside the statutory exclusion list. Parties should verify the current procedural requirements before acting.

Which jurisdiction's law applies to the reciprocal enforcement of judgments regime with the Mainland?

The registration and enforcement of a Mainland judgment in Hong Kong is governed by Hong Kong law – specifically the Mainland Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance (Cap. 645) and the procedural rules of the Court of First Instance. The underlying judgment remains a Mainland judgment; Hong Kong courts do not re-examine the merits. The admissibility of that judgment as a basis for registration is assessed under the grounds and exclusions in Cap. 645. When a Hong Kong judgment is being used in the Mainland, Mainland procedural rules govern the recognition process on that side. Both sides of the arrangement operate within their own procedural systems.

What is the first step in the reciprocal enforcement of judgments regime with the Mainland?

The first practical step is a scope analysis: confirming that the judgment is effective, that it was made on or after 29 January 2024, that the subject matter falls outside the Cap. 645 exclusion list, and that at least one of the connection grounds applies. Only after that analysis is complete does it make sense to prepare the registration application. The documents required include a certified copy of the judgment and the supporting certificate; authentication requirements apply. Rushing to file before the scope analysis is done risks a contested application at the registration stage – consuming time that the enforcement clock may not allow.

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This publication is general information and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on your situation, contact info@lockhartyip.com.

Where the reciprocal enforcement of judgments regime with the Mainland stands now