Foreign-Related Mediation under the Fengqiao Experience: Zhejiang's Cross-Border Practice and International Narrative

Abstract

The "Fengqiao Experience" is China's grassroots social governance model with over sixty years of evolution, evolving from a mass education mechanism into a universal multi-dimensional dispute resolution system. Guided by Xi Jinping's Thought on the Rule of Law, the new-era Fengqiao Experience has been continuously enriched, and its foreign-related mediation practice serves as a critical micro case for coordinating domestic and foreign-related rule of law. Taking Zhejiang's cross-border mediation practice under the Fengqiao Experience as the research object, this paper sorts out its developmental history and grassroots inheritance & innovation, analyzes typical local cases including Shaoxing Keqiao's "Foreign Uncles" Mediation Team, Yiwu's "Foreign Parties Mediating Foreign Disputes" mechanism and Ningbo Maritime Court's Maritime Shared Court, and unpacks the internal operation logic of foreign-related dispute resolution. From the perspective of international communication, it explores paths to tell China's rule-of-law stories globally, clarifying the theoretical positioning and practical value of such mediation within the foreign-related rule of law system under Xi Jinping's Thought on the Rule of Law. The study concludes that foreign-related mediation based on the Fengqiao Experience features grassroots roots, source prevention and mediation priority. Supported by institutional innovations including professional outbound foreign dispute mediation, digital judicial confirmation, and multi-stakeholder litigation-mediation integration, it extends the "conflict containment at source" governance wisdom to cross-border scenarios, providing grassroots empirical evidence for the foreign-related rule-of-law discourse of Xi Jinping's Thought on the Rule of Law.