The academic contribution to the question of reforms to the China International Commercial Court (CICC) has essentially been based on classic comparative legal approaches. More precisely, two main schools of thought have emerged which compare the CICC with the international commercial courts established by Singapore (the Singapore International Commercial Court [SICC]) and Dubai (the Dubai International Financial Centre [DIFC]) because Chinese officials have presented these institutions as models for the CICC. This article breaks new ground by adopting a legal and geopolitical analysis. The article makes an interdisciplinary enquiry, which combines political-economy and sociological analysis. The politicaleconomy approach emphasizes an institutional reform in line with China's self-interested response to the commercial needs of Chinese investors along the Belt and Road Initiative. The sociological approach refers to China's history and culture, appreciates China's contemporary policies, and suggests that reform on mediation and arbitration under the CICC are likely to play the most prominent role at the new court. This article highlights the fundamental contradiction between geopolitics and judicial independence within the realm of the CICC, and argues that if the designers of the CICC treat SICC and DIFC courts' procedural rules as templates for replication, any reform attempts are likely to fail, given that the CICC forms part of China's geopolitical tactics rather than being a product of market orientation. Instead, this article argues that the CICC should be understood as a mechanism for domestic reform purpose and function.
State capitalism and the liberal economic order have had an antagonistic relationship. While the international economic law rules have sought to reduce the role of the state in the economy, state-controlled entities have more recently increased in size and importance – both domestically, as well as internationally. In this connection, the article analyses the effects of state capitalism's expansion simultaneously with the domestic investment law of States. The article analyses the underlying principles of state capitalism in an effort to answer the question of whether domestic laws promoting investment – as defined in the special issue – are positive, negative, or neutral to state capitalists. The article further interprets the trends spawned by the propagation of the liberal international economic order as states realize their development targets and envisage to actively contribute to the regulation of international trade and cross-border transactions globally.
In the global development of new international commercial dispute resolution centers, the China International Commercial Court (CICC) represents a genuine innovation in China's legal history. The CICC aims to become a dispute resolution “one stop shop” (combining litigation, arbitration, and mediation) for Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) related disputes. Despite its name and ambition, however, the CICC operates more like a domestic court. The CICC's stringent jurisdictional requirements and conservative institutional design show that the CICC cannot serve its stated objective of attracting new investment opportunities or foreign parties to the Chinese forum. These defects are not fatal but will have to be addressed for the CICC to reach its full potential of hybridization of litigation and arbitration both in and beyond China.
Since 2012, international investment tribunals have passed several awards highlighting the interaction between environmental obligations imposed upon foreign investors and the host State’s duties towards investors in terms of green investment. The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) is a step forward in continuing the debate on environmental protection and conservation in the context of investment law. This article focuses on section IV subsection 2 of the CAI and analyses the relevant provisions of the CAI and other Sino-EU BITs having a potential impact on the development of environmental policy and climate change-related measures. This article references publicly available investor-State arbitration decisions to understand the ramifications of environmental standards on foreign investment policymaking. Further, this article also highlights the potential impact of the CAI on green investment and green financing measures undertaken by the European Commission.
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