Interim measures from Mainland courts in aid of a Hong Kong arbitration: a step-by-step guide

The award comes later. The assets move now. For any claimant in a Hong Kong arbitration with a counterparty whose assets sit in the Mainland, the question of interim measures arises before the first substantive hearing – and the window to act is narrow. A freezing order, a property-preservation measure, or an injunction against the disposal of evidence: these are the tools that prevent an award from becoming a paper judgment against an empty shell.

Under the Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the HKSAR (the Interim-Measures Arrangement), which has been in effect since 1 October 2019, a party to a qualifying Hong Kong-seated arbitration may apply to the people's courts of the Mainland for interim measures before or after the constitution of the arbitral tribunal. Hong Kong is the only jurisdiction outside the Mainland whose seated arbitrations may access this route.

This guide sets out the step-by-step sequence – the gate at each stage, the document requirements, and the critical timing decisions – for a practitioner or in-house team preparing to use the route.

What decision does the reader face, and what are the options?

Interim relief in a cross-border arbitration is a strategic choice, not a procedural formality. Before filing anything, the team needs to decide which jurisdiction's courts to approach, and in what order.

Three options sit on the table for a claimant in a Hong Kong-seated arbitration whose counterparty has Mainland assets. First, the tribunal itself may order interim measures under the Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 609), which is modelled on the UNCITRAL Model Law. Those orders bind the parties but cannot be directly enforced by Mainland enforcement organs. Second, the Hong Kong Court of First Instance has its own statutory power to grant interim relief in support of arbitral proceedings, including orders with extraterritorial reach – but enforcement across the boundary still depends on Mainland courts' willingness to recognise the order. Third, and most directly, the party may apply to a Mainland people's court under the Interim-Measures Arrangement, producing an order that Mainland enforcement organs can act on immediately.

The third route is the subject of this guide. It is not a substitute for a tribunal-ordered measure or a Hong Kong court order; it runs alongside them. The choice of route – and the order in which routes are pursued – determines whether the assets are still there when the award lands.

What foreign principals often misread is the relationship between urgency and eligibility. The Arrangement has specific gateways. A party that moves too quickly – before the arbitration has been formally commenced – or too slowly – after the counterparty has had wind of the filing – may lose the practical benefit even if the legal eligibility exists.

Is the arbitration a qualifying case?

Eligibility under the Interim-Measures Arrangement is not universal. The arbitration must be administered by one of the institutions approved under the Arrangement and seated in Hong Kong. At the time of writing, the approved institutions include the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC), the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) Hong Kong Arbitration Centre, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Court's Hong Kong case-management office, and a small number of other listed bodies.

Ad hoc arbitrations – those conducted without an administering institution – do not qualify. This is one of the most consequential drafting points in any arbitration agreement involving Mainland counterparties. A clause that defaults to an unlisted institution, or that designates ad hoc procedures to save cost, may forfeit the right to Mainland interim measures entirely. We address the drafting implications in our analysis of drafting an HKIAC arbitration clause for Mainland China counterparties.

The seat must be Hong Kong. A clause that designates HKIAC rules but names a foreign seat will not satisfy the Arrangement's gateway. Check the agreement at the outset, before filing.

How is the route structured step by step?

The Interim-Measures Arrangement runs in a defined sequence. Each step has a gate; skipping a gate invalidates the step that follows it.

Step 1: Commence the arbitration formally. The Arrangement allows applications before or after constitution of the tribunal, but the arbitration must have been formally commenced. For HKIAC proceedings, commencement occurs when the claimant files the Notice of Arbitration with the HKIAC and pays the requisite filing fee. Once the HKIAC has confirmed receipt, the case reference number is generated. That number is the key documentary item for the Mainland court application.

Step 2: Identify the competent Mainland court. The application for interim measures is made to the Intermediate People's Court of the place where the respondent is domiciled or where the property to be preserved is situated, or where the evidence to be preserved is located. Choosing the right court matters: a mis-filed application wastes time and signals to the counterparty that action is coming. Local knowledge of the relevant court's caseload and practice is essential at this step.

Step 3: Prepare and submit the application materials. The application package for a Mainland court under the Arrangement typically includes: the written application for interim measures, setting out the legal and factual basis; the arbitration agreement (or the clause from the underlying contract); the approval letter or confirmation from the qualifying institution confirming that the arbitration has been accepted; the relevant contract documents; evidence of the assets or property to be preserved; and, where applicable, proof of the applicant's identity and authority. All documents in a language other than Mandarin must be accompanied by certified Chinese translations. The Mainland court will assess whether the standard for cáichan bǎoquán (property preservation – a Mainland procedural mechanism for freezing or securing assets pending a final determination) is met. The applicant must ordinarily provide a security – a form of undertaking or bond – to compensate the respondent if the preservation order proves to have been wrongly obtained.

Step 4: Await and receive the court's ruling. The Mainland court acts on an ex parte basis (without notifying the respondent in advance) in preservation cases. Speed matters here. The court may require supplemental information before ruling. Prompt responses to any queries from the court, coordinated with local counsel admitted in the Mainland jurisdiction, are necessary to keep the timeline compressed. Once granted, the order is transmitted to the relevant enforcement organ – typically the court with jurisdiction over the assets – for immediate action.

Step 5: Preserve the order and manage post-order obligations. An interim preservation order is not indefinite. Under Mainland procedural rules, the parties generally expect the substantive arbitral proceedings to continue promptly. If the arbitration stalls or is abandoned, the Mainland court may lift the preservation measure. The claimant must also continue to perform any security obligations and comply with any undertakings given to the court.

What is the most common mistake – and how is it avoided?

In our cross-border disputes practice, the error we see most frequently is the decision to apply for interim measures without first securing HKIAC's formal confirmation that the arbitration has been accepted. This is the institutional-approval document. Without it, the Mainland court application is incomplete and will not be entertained.

The sequence – file with HKIAC, obtain confirmation, then file with the Mainland court – appears obvious on paper. Under time pressure, it collapses. A claimant who has discovered asset flight on a Monday morning wants to file on Tuesday. The HKIAC confirmation may not arrive before Thursday. Advisers who pre-draft the Mainland court application materials in parallel – so that filing can follow within hours of the HKIAC confirmation – recover most of the lost time.

A second common error involves the security requirement. Applicants who have not modelled the likely security amount before filing can find that the Mainland court names a figure that the client cannot fund within the window available. The practical answer is to have the financial arrangements for the security in place, or at least pre-approved, before the Mainland court application is filed.

Third – and this is the most consequential structural error – applicants sometimes apply to a Mainland court for preservation before checking whether their arbitration clause qualifies under the Arrangement. An ad hoc clause, or a clause naming an institution not on the approved list, produces an application that the court will dismiss on eligibility grounds. The counterparty then has notice of the claim with no preservation in place. The sequence of steps above will not cure a defective arbitration agreement; the eligibility gate is at the drafting stage, not at the filing stage.

How does the cross-border interface operate in practice?

The Interim-Measures Arrangement creates a direct procedural bridge between the Hong Kong arbitral process and Mainland court jurisdiction over assets. The two systems remain distinct: the Hong Kong arbitration continues under the Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 609) and the applicable institutional rules; the Mainland court acts under its own procedural law in issuing and enforcing the preservation order.

There is no obligation on the Mainland court to follow Hong Kong procedural standards, and no obligation on the Hong Kong tribunal to defer to the Mainland court's preservation ruling. The two tracks run concurrently. This means, in practice, that the arbitral tribunal may also issue its own interim measures order covering the same subject matter – and that order will bind the parties before the Hong Kong courts under the Arbitration Ordinance, regardless of what the Mainland court has done.

For claimants with assets on both sides of the boundary, the strongest position is to have preservation in place in both jurisdictions simultaneously, without tipping off the respondent before either application is filed. Coordinating the timing of two filings – one institutional, one court-based – across two legal systems requires a team that can act on both sides on the same day.

We regularly advise on exactly this coordination challenge, working alongside locally licensed firms in the Mainland jurisdiction to synchronise the filing sequence.

The broader enforcement question – what happens when the award is finally issued – turns on separate instruments. Mutual enforcement of arbitral awards between the Mainland and Hong Kong runs under the 1999 Arrangement and its 2020 Supplemental Arrangement, which since a 2021 amendment has permitted simultaneous enforcement applications in both jurisdictions. The interim-measures route and the award-enforcement route are distinct steps in the same endgame. Our practice overview at Disputes & Arbitration sets out how those steps connect.

For comparison, cross-boundary recognition of court judgments – as distinct from arbitral awards – now operates under the Mainland Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance (Cap. 645), which came into force on 29 January 2024. Parties who have obtained court judgments rather than arbitral awards use that route. The architecture differs from the arbitral-measures route, but the practical logic of sequencing preservation and enforcement steps is the same. Our related guide on recognising a court judgment from the Cayman Islands in Hong Kong addresses the parallel question in a different jurisdictional pair.

What are the timing expectations?

The Arrangement does not prescribe a hard deadline for Mainland court decisions on preservation applications, but the preservation mechanism under Mainland procedural rules is designed for speed. Courts with experience of commercial preservation applications typically act within a short number of business days of receiving a complete application package.

The principal variables are: the completeness of the application materials on filing; whether the court raises supplemental queries; and whether the security can be lodged promptly. An incomplete initial filing is the single largest source of delay. Applications that arrive with full translations, a clear evidence bundle, and security arrangements already in place tend to be processed faster than those where documents are submitted in stages.

At the Hong Kong end, the HKIAC's emergency arbitrator procedure – where available under the 2024 HKIAC Administered Arbitration Rules (in force from 1 June 2024) – offers a parallel route to urgent relief, ordinarily completed within 14 days of file transmission. An emergency arbitrator order and a Mainland court preservation order serve different functions and different enforcement channels; they are not alternatives to each other. In complex cases with assets in multiple jurisdictions, both may be pursued on overlapping timelines.

Decision checklist: mapping the route before filing

Before initiating any application under the Interim-Measures Arrangement, the team should work through each point on the following checklist. A single "no" at the eligibility stage does not mean interim measures are unavailable – it means the route and the instrument need to be reconsidered.

• Is the arbitration seated in Hong Kong? (A foreign seat forecloses the Arrangement.)
• Is the administering institution named in the agreement on the approved list? (Ad hoc arbitrations and unlisted institutions are excluded.)
• Has the Notice of Arbitration been formally filed and confirmed by the institution? (The institutional confirmation is a mandatory document for the Mainland court.)
• Have the Mainland court application materials – including certified Chinese translations of all documents – been prepared in advance, so that filing can follow within hours of HKIAC confirmation?
• Has the competent Mainland court been identified, based on the respondent's domicile or the location of the assets to be preserved?
• Have the financial arrangements for the security been pre-approved? (An inability to fund the security at short notice stalls the application after filing.)
• Has the timing of the Mainland court filing been coordinated with any parallel application to the Hong Kong Court of First Instance or to the tribunal for its own interim measures?
• Has local counsel admitted in the Mainland jurisdiction been briefed and ready to file on the same day?
• Is there a plan to manage post-order obligations – including maintaining the security and ensuring the arbitration progresses – so that the preservation measure is not lifted?

The sequence above describes the standard position. Your matter turns on the specific documents, the jurisdictions actually engaged, and the order of steps – which is where the route is won or lost. For a structured assessment of the interim-measures options available in your cross-border arbitration, write to us at info@lockhartyip.com.

What if an earlier step has already gone wrong?

Not every instruction arrives at Step 1. In our cross-border practice, we regularly see matters where an earlier filing has stalled – a defective Notice of Arbitration, a dismissal by the Mainland court on eligibility grounds, or an application filed before the institutional confirmation arrived.

A stalled application does not automatically foreclose the route. If the dismissal was on procedural grounds rather than jurisdictional ones, re-filing with a corrected package may be available. If the underlying arbitration agreement is defective – for example, it names an unapproved institution – the options narrow considerably, but related mechanisms under the Arbitration Ordinance and the Hong Kong courts' own jurisdiction to grant interim relief remain.

If an earlier filing, structure or enforcement attempt produced an adverse or stalled result, a second read can identify the strategic error and the routes still open. Write to us at info@lockhartyip.com with the background and we will set out the analysis.

Related practices

• Disputes & Arbitration – cross-border arbitration, enforcement and interim relief across Greater China
• Holding Structures – structuring above Mainland operating entities to support enforcement and asset protection

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• Disputes Arbitration
• Drafting Hkiac Arbitration Clause Mainland China Counterparty Mainland 2
• Recognising Court Judgment From Cayman Islands Hong Kong

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