Decoding Chinese Bilateral Investment Treaties

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.

Shen Wei is KoGuan Distinguished Professor of Law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University Law School, Global Professor of Law at NYU Law School and L. Bates Lea Professor of Law at Michigan Law School. Professor Shen is an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and sits on various international panels as an advisor. He is an arbitrator for major arbitration centers such as the London Court of International Arbitration, Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre and Singapore International Arbitration Centre. He has been a visiting professor at more than ten law schools in Europe, the US and Asia. Besides editorial duties for various international journals, he has written and edited over 10 books and published more than 200 articles in both English and Chinese journals.