With the aim of eliminating discriminated treatments towards foreign and non-domestic arbitral awards vis-à-vis with those domestic ones, the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards ("New York Convention") was conceived in 1958 [1] and has ever since acted as one of the key instruments in international arbitration. As of today, the New York Convention owns 164 contracting parties [2]. China has acceded to the New York Convention since April 22nd, 1987, which could be seen as the inherent requisite as well as the natural outcome of China's ever-deepening reform and opening policy and its increasingly close integration into the world economy. Decades after the accession, the international arbitration has been attached more and more importance in China's legal context as a critical means of settlement of international commercial disputes with the continued efforts made to implement the New York Convention all over the country. Even confronted with the pandemic at present, or in the post-pandemic era, there will be no grounds for China to be in breach of its commitments to the New York Convention.

As of the effectiveness date (June 1st,2017) of the Cybersecurity Law of PRC.,China has promulgated many new regulations and rules on personal data protection. On May 1st, 2018, the national standard of the "Information security technology—Personal information security specification" (the "Standard") has also become effective. The Regulations for the Security Protection of Critical Information Infrastructure ("Regulation") is currently in the process of legislation and will be promulgated soon. We recently advised several international institutions on their online whistleblowing and personal information protection relatedissues and below are some main points which are worth to be noted and discussed.