Abstract: With the surge in the number of foreign-related cases，obtaining evidence from abroad in civil and commercial cases has increasingly become an issue. It is essentially part of the system of evidence collection in civil lawsuits and China’s civil procedure law should make basic provisions for this.Generally，the United States and the EU respectively represent two different basic models. The former fully implements the basic spirit of the adversary system，while the latter is based on the authority principle.With reference to these two basic models，China should combine the strengths of the two. While requiring that the litigant should obtain evidence from abroad，the court must also do so through ways of judicial assistance. When constructing the system of obtaining evidence from abroad，it is necessary to proceed from both procedural and evaluative norms. They are the two sides of a coin and they both contribute to the entire system.

Key words: civil and commercial cases, obtaining evidence from abroad, procedural norms, evaluative norms, civil procedure law