Research On Online Mediation And Its Development In China

With the rapid development of modern information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet, e-commerce, a new trading mode has emerged. On the one hand, e-commerce can bring unlimited vitality to a country’s economy, on the other hand, it inevitably causes large amounts of online disputes. These disputes are often small in value, transnational or trans-regional and virtual in subject, thus making traditional resolution inadequate in resolving them. In order to meet the demands of e-commerce practitioners the presence of an efficient and effective dispute resolution, developed countries put Online Dispute Resolution into practice, which is a combination of alternative dispute resolutions and information and communication technologies. As an important form of ODR scheme, online mediation has been widely used in practice. This paper studies online mediation mechanism and tries to put forward suggestions on its future development in China.This paper can be divided into four parts. The first part of the paper is a general introduction of online mediation. Online mediation and traditional mediation are essentially the same, while online mediation is traditional mediation supplemented with Internet technologies and is conducted online. Therefore, it is high-tech, economic, flexible and global. Online mediation first appeared in the1960s and it is now entering an organizational phase. At the very beginning, online mediation is applied to e-commerce disputes, however, with the development of the mechanism itself, it has been applied to many non-commercial fields nowadays.The second part of the paper observes a few international typical online mediation providers and their practices. The United States and the European Union are in the forefront of the online mediation field, they have successfully established several influential online mediation platforms such as Square Trade、Modria、Juripax and so on. Online mediation has become an inevitable trend worldwide. International practices have also offered us abundant experience, for example, online mediation providers should have adequate cases, reasonable charges, supports from the society, etc. The third part of the paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of online mediation and how to resolve its current problems. Using online mediation to resolve disputes is cost-saving, efficient and can avoid complex jurisdiction issues. While online mediation is superior in many ways, it also has many disadvantages, namely impersonal, potentially inaccessible, language obstacles, confidentiality concern, difficulty in performing mediation agreements and so on. If we want to further develop online mediation in our country, we must strive to overcome its disadvantages. Therefore, we should establish the minimum standard of developing online mediation, strengthen cooperation on dispute resolution, improve modern information and communication technologies and regulate the behaviors of online mediation participants.The forth part of the paper discusses the development of online mediation in China. The long-standing mediation tradition and rapid development of Internet make online mediation possible in our country. Meanwhile, the number of disputes arising from e-commerce is on the rise due to the development of e-commerce. If these disputes can’t be timely settled, they will have an adverse impact on the e-commerce. In addition, the international competition in the online mediation market indicates that it is essential for us to develop our own online mediation mechanism. Online mediation in China is still in the primary stage due to a late start, there are several problems such as the obstacles of opinion and the mechanism itself, lack of supporting mechanism system and so on. Therefore, we should try to raise people’s awareness of online mediation, enhance the construction of online mediation mechanism itself to realize the procedure justice, improve supporting mechanism system of online mediation. Only in these ways can we guarantee faster and better development of the online mediation mechanism in our country.