Emergency Relief Without the Power to Grant It? Lessons from Zhejiang Crystal-Optech

The Singapore High Court’s recent decision in Zhejiang Crystal-Optech Co Ltd v Moveon Technologies Pte Ltd [2026] SGHC 186 ("Zhejiang Crystal-Optech") raises an important question about the limits of arbitral power: when institutional rules contemplate a power that the law of the seat does not itself confer, can the parties supply such power by agreement?

The case arose from a China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission ("CIETAC") emergency arbitration seated in Mainland China and administered by CIETAC’s Shanghai Sub-Commission, between a Chinese company (the claimant) and a Singapore company (the respondent). The emergency arbitrator (“EA”) granted interim relief restraining the respondent from receiving winding-up dividend payments in respect of its approximately S$19.8 million claim against the parties’ Singapore joint venture company, pending resolution of the underlying dispute (at [18]–[20], [31]). The claimant obtained permission to enforce the interim award in Singapore under Singapore’s International Arbitration Act 1994 (“IAA”), but the Singapore High Court subsequently set aside the enforcement order on the respondent’s application.

The obstacle to enforcement in this case was not the emergency nature of the EA’s decision. Indeed, the Court held that the interim award qualified as an “arbitral award” under the IAA (at [29]–[31]). The Court was also not persuaded by the respondent’s due process, arbitrability, and public policy objections to enforcement of the EA’s decision (at [116], [127], [138]). The difficulty lay elsewhere: whether the EA had the power to grant the relief in the first place. That was the determinative issue, and the Court concluded that PRC law did not confer the relevant power and the parties had not agreed to confer it (at [92]–[93]).

The decision therefore brings into focus the interaction between the lex arbitri, party agreement, and institutional rules.

The Source of the EA’s Power

The parties’ arbitration agreements referred disputes to CIETAC’s Shanghai Branch (at [42]). Article 23(2) of the CIETAC Arbitration Rules (effective 1 January 2024) (“CIETAC Rules”) permits a party to seek emergency relief “[i]n accordance with the applicable law or the agreement of the parties”. The case therefore turned on two possible sources of authority: the applicable law and the parties’ agreement (at [43]–[45]).

As to the first, the claimant argued that “applicable law” encompassed not only PRC law, as the law of the seat, but also Singapore law, as the law of the place of enforcement (at [46]). The Court rejected that argument. It distinguished between the existence of the EA’s power and the enforceability of the resulting measure: the law of the enforcement forum may determine whether a measure can be enforced there, but it cannot confer on the arbitrator the power to grant that measure in the first place (at [56]–[57]). In the Court’s view, the claimant’s suggestion that a tribunal’s power to make an order depends on where its order is to be enforced was “unorthodox” and “wrong in principle” (at [57]).

The relevant “applicable law” for purposes of Article 23(2) was therefore the lex arbitri, which is PRC law (at [58]). The relief granted was a form of “conduct preservation”, and on the expert evidence the Court concluded that PRC law reserves property, evidence, and conduct preservation measures to the courts, without empowering arbitral tribunals or EAs to grant them (at [61]–[63], [68]). Both experts agreed that PRC law did not expressly prohibit tribunals or EAs from granting such relief (at [41]). The issue was therefore not an express statutory prohibition, but the absence of statutory authority.

In reaching that conclusion, the Court also considered the legislative history of the PRC Arbitration Law. The 2021 draft revision would have empowered tribunals to grant interim measures, but those provisions were omitted from the revised law (discussed here) that was ultimately promulgated on 12 September 2025 and effective from 1 March 2026 (at [66], [69]–[70]). The Court regarded that omission as supporting a consistent legislative policy against tribunal-ordered interim measures (at [70]).

Nor could the CIETAC Rules themselves supply the power as part of the “applicable law”. The Court treated institutional rules as a body of rules separate from the lex arbitri, whose role rests on the parties’ agreement to them (at [77]–[78]). That moved the inquiry to the second limb of Article 23(2): party agreement.

Can Party Agreement Fill the Gap?

It might be tempting to state the proposition broadly: if the lex arbitri does not confer a particular power, the parties cannot create that power by agreement. The Court was careful not to go that far. It treated with “circumspection” the Respondent’s expert’s argument that “the parties’ agreement to apply the [CIETAC Rules] cannot cure that absence of statutory power” (at [89]). That caution follows naturally from Article 23(2) itself, which identifies applicable law or party agreement as alternative bases for emergency relief. Accordingly, the fact that PRC law did not itself confer the relevant power did not necessarily preclude the parties from doing so by express agreement (at [89]).

That reasoning, however, leaves an important question. Although PRC law contains no express prohibition on tribunal-ordered interim measures, it confers the relevant preservation powers on the courts without conferring corresponding powers on arbitral tribunals. Does that statutory allocation amount, by implication, to a mandatory limitation on the powers that parties may confer? The Court recognized that legislation may restrict powers that parties seek to confer on an arbitral tribunal (at [76]), but did not decide whether PRC law imposed such a restriction here. Its description of preservation measures as the “exclusive preserve of the courts in China” (at [63]), and its observation that the legislature appeared to have “deliberately decided” not to accord that power to tribunals (at [85]), arguably support such a restriction. Yet the Court also contemplated that express party agreement may supply a power where the lex arbitri is silent, though not one contrary to a statutory prohibition or other mandatory provisions (at [89]). The question matters because it defines the scope for party autonomy: does the statutory allocation leave a gap that party agreement may fill, or impose a mandatory limit that it cannot overcome?

Why Incorporation Was Not Enough

The parties had agreed to CIETAC arbitration and were therefore deemed under Article 4(2) of the CIETAC Rules to have agreed to arbitration in accordance with those Rules (at [42]). But the Court held that deemed consent to the Rules did not, by itself, constitute the “agreement of the parties” contemplated by Article 23(2). If it did, Article 23(2)’s separate reference to party agreement would be redundant. The provision therefore contemplated a distinct agreement over and above agreement to the CIETAC Rules (at [88]).

The Court did not, however, establish a general rule that incorporation of institutional rules can never confer arbitral powers; that depends on the wording of the particular rules. Here, the Court relied on expert evidence that Article 23(2) was introduced to accommodate CIETAC arbitrations involving foreign laws or the laws of Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan. Against that background, agreement to CIETAC arbitration did not necessarily empower an EA to grant interim measures in a Mainland China-seated arbitration (at [91]). The Court acknowledged commentary taking the opposite view, namely that agreeing to rules providing for emergency arbitration should itself be treated as an express agreement conferring the power, since otherwise there would be “no point agreeing to the availability of emergency arbitration” (at [90]). The Court did not reject that view outright; its answer turned on the wording and purpose of the particular CIETAC Rules (at [91]). That reading is consistent with the CIETAC Rules Commentary, which states that the emergency arbitrator provisions “do not apply to arbitration proceedings seated in the People’s Republic of China” (at [84]). The Court expressly left open whether the position might differ in a foreign-seated CIETAC arbitration (at [91]).

On the facts, the Court concluded that the parties had not agreed—whether in the arbitration clauses or elsewhere—to confer that power on the EA (at [92]). The EA had therefore purported to exercise a power it did not possess, thereby exceeding the scope of the submission to arbitration and providing a basis for refusing enforcement under section 31(2)(d) of the IAA (at [93]).

Institutional Design and Its Limits

The broader significance of Zhejiang Crystal-Optech lies in the distinction between the existence of a procedural mechanism and the legal authority to use it. Modern institutional rules increasingly provide for broad tribunal and emergency arbitrator powers, but the presence of those provisions does not itself establish the arbitrator’s authority to exercise them. Nor can the law of the enforcement forum supply a power absent from both the applicable law and the parties’ agreement. The availability of a procedure under institutional rules is therefore only part of the inquiry; the source of the arbitrator’s authority to exercise the power contemplated by that procedure remains a separate question.

The tension is particularly apparent in Mainland China. The CIETAC Rules provide for emergency arbitration and emergency relief, while PRC law does not confer corresponding interim-measure powers on arbitral tribunals or EAs. The recent revision of the PRC Arbitration Law did not alter that position, although the 2021 draft would have done so (at [69]–[70]). Zhejiang Crystal-Optech demonstrates how that mismatch can matter in practice: when relief granted in a Mainland China-seated arbitration is taken abroad for enforcement, the question may be not simply whether the measure is enforceable there, but whether the arbitrator had the power to grant it in the first place.

Yet Zhejiang Crystal-Optech also makes clear that the analysis is not reducible to a simple rule that statutory silence defeats party autonomy. The Court deliberately left open the possibility that express agreement may confer a power not independently conferred by the lex arbitri, and its reasoning suggests that the answer will turn on the language of the particular rules, the terms of the parties’ agreement, and the mandatory framework of the seat. A procedural power appearing in institutional rules should not be assumed to be legally available simply because the parties have chosen those rules. Its presence instead exposes a question that can remain hidden until enforcement: what, precisely, is the legal source of the arbitrator’s power?

For parties and counsel, that question belongs at the point when the arbitration agreement and seat are chosen—not only when an emergency measure is later taken to an enforcement court.