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

Abstract

This contribution discusses legal methodology problems of multilevel trade and investment regulation (section I) and explores related problems of adjudication involving investment projects in the context of China’s 2013 ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative involving more than 65 countries (section II). 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 China’s OBOR cooperation. 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 OBOR regulations into multilateral trade, investment and UN law.