High Court enforces Chinese judgement in Xiong Wei v Wang Junhong dispute

The High Court has ordered the enforcement of a Chinese court judgement worth over US$2.1 million, dismissing arguments that the judgement was neither final nor obtained through a fair process, in a dispute rooted in the transfer of shares in an English invoice-financing subsidiary.

In Xiong Wei and another v Wang Junhong [2026] EWHC 1892 (Comm), Mr Andrew Hochhauser KC, sitting as a Deputy Judge, allowed a claim brought by Wenda Co Ltd, a Chinese chemicals manufacturer, and its founder Mr Xiong Wei, to enforce at common law a judgement obtained against the company's former chief financial officer and director, Ms Wang Junhong, in the Intermediate People's Court of Dalian City, later upheld by the Liaoning High Court.

The underlying dispute concerned Syner Ltd, an English subsidiary Wenda established in 2012 to access UK invoice financing, which Ms Wang had managed as sole director after relocating to London. In 2017 she registered herself as Syner's sole shareholder without paying Wenda anything for the shares, a transfer governed by an agreement requiring payment of the company's net equity value. Wenda's case, accepted by the Chinese courts, was that Ms Wang owed the value of the company as it stood once a US$2.2 million loan she said she had made to Syner was waived, leaving no offsetting debt. Ms Wang argued this effectively required her to pay twice for shares she had already funded through the loan.

Before the English court, Ms Wang raised two defences. The first was that the Chinese judgement was not "final and conclusive" as required for enforcement, given that a supervisory body, the Liaoning Province People's Procuratorate, was at the time still considering whether to recommend a retrial. The judge rejected this, noting that the Procuratorate had in fact dismissed the application shortly before judgement was handed down, and that in any event a judgement remains final and conclusive under English law even while subject to a pending appeal or supervisory review, applying established authority including Nouvion v Freeman and Colt v Sarlie (No. 2). He distinguished the Austrian judgement considered in Blohn v Desser, finding that case turned on the judgement not being enforceable even in its home jurisdiction against the relevant defendant, unlike the position here.

The second defence concerned natural justice, specifically that the Liaoning High Court had failed to properly consider an accountant's report Ms Wang had submitted for the first time when applying for a retrial, an exceptional remedy under Chinese civil procedure. The judge found no breach. Ms Wang had never raised any complaint about the fairness of the original trial or the appeal that followed it, and she had possessed the relevant report well before the appeal hearing yet chose not to submit it then. When she later sought a retrial, she relied only on grounds concerning insufficient evidence and legal error, rather than the specific "new evidence" ground available under Chinese procedure, and expert evidence established that the Liaoning High Court was under no obligation to examine grounds she had not pleaded. The judge accepted evidence from the claimants' expert over that of the defendant's, whose evidence was not tested by cross-examination after her legal team failed to secure the permissions required under Chinese law for her to give evidence remotely.

Citing the principle that "the trial is not a dress rehearsal," the judge held that Ms Wang had been given ample opportunity across multiple stages of the Chinese proceedings to advance her case and had failed to take it, meaning she could not now complain that the process had been unfair. The court accordingly granted the claimants the relief sought, enforcing the Chinese judgement in full.