Trade and investment adjudication involving ‘silk road projects’ : legal methodology challenges

Abstract

It discusses legal methodology problems of multilevel trade and investment regulation and explores related problems of adjudication involving investment projects in the context of BRI involving more than sixty-five countries. The very limited number of investor–state arbitration proceedings initiated so far by foreign companies against China – or by Chinese companies against foreign host states – suggests that alternative dispute resolution may become one of the important ‘legal innovations’ of BRI. Yet also involvement of third parties as ‘mediators’ or ‘conciliators’ in dispute settlement proceedings raises questions of ‘justice’ and of legal methodology that are easier to resolve by embedding BRI regulations into multilateral trade, investment and UN law.