Decoding Chinese Bilateral Investment Treaties

Comprehensively investigate key characteristics, evolutionary path, driving forces, interpreting methodologies, and some missing puzzles of Chinese BITs.

Shen Wei (Author)

9781108490986, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 August 2021

300 pages
26.2 x 18.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.89 kg

'This book is highly recommended, providing enough detail, comparative analysis, and wide-ranging coverage to be useful for practitioners negotiating BITs or free trade agreement chapters with China …' Marcia Don Harpaz, The China Quarterly

This is a major work investigating China's bilateral investment treaties (BITs) regime through various approaches including textual analysis, case study, comparative study and empirical study. This book tries to unveil some of the puzzles in Chinese BITs. The general consensus is that the evolution of China's BIT regime has its underlying logic, which follows an investment liberalization trend and fits China's changing role from a key capital-importing state to a major capital-exporting state. A similar trend is evident in Chinese BIT-making and BIT policy. This book investigates these theoretical assumptions and looks into some of the loopholes in Chinese BITs.

1. Current landscape and puzzling issues
2. China's foreign investment law in the past four decades
3. Substantive protection provisions in Chinese BITs
4. Non-discriminatory standards in China's BITs
5. Expropriation in local and global contexts
6. How are Chinese bits interpreted? Jurisprudential review of treaty interpretative tools in Chinese BIT-based arbitration cases
7. Parallel proceedings under Chinese BITs
8. Transitional clauses in transition and the black hole in Chinese BIT law
9. Evolutionary path of China's BIT law in the return of the state paradigm – a statistical and textual approach
10. Who makes Chinese BITs? – an empirical investigation
11. By way of conclusion: Chinese BIT law and practice in the jungle.

Subject Areas: Investment treaties & disputes [LBBM3], International economic & trade law [LBBM], Treaties & other sources of international law [LBBC], Public international law [LBB], International law [LB], Politics & government [JP], Educational strategies & policy [JNF]