scholarly journals Chinese Investment Treaties in the Belt and Road Initiative Area

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78
Author(s):  
Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah

Abstract This article examines whether Chinese practice towards the making of investment treaties with developing countries in the Belt and Road Initiative region will be different from the treaties that it makes with developed States. Though there is a shift towards the making of hard treaties with the developed States of Europe, it is suggested that treaties made with developing States will be more nuanced. The article shows that there are political motives behind investment treaties, as the study of US practice shows. Political considerations will induce China to make different types of treaties with different types of treaty partners in the future. A comparison is made with recent Indian practice.

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-37
Author(s):  
Professor Biliang Hu

Globalisation contributed to the economic, social, political and cultural development of the deve- loped and developing countries. At the same time, it had an adverse effect, which is in-creasing disparity of income between various social groups and countries. The continuation of such process will lead to the weakening of globalisation, so there is a need to transform globalisation. According to the Author, the initiative of China, entitled: New Belt and New Road is an example of such actions and will contribute to giving new impetus to the process of globalisation in the future. <b>Globalization is now facing one of the biggest challenges in the history: British exit from the EU (Brexit), USA’s quit from the Paris Agreement on climate change, USA also quitted from TPP agreement as well as from UNESCO. People start worry about the next moves of globalization. Therefore, we need to discuss the future of globalization seriously. </b> Clearly, globalization brought very positive impact on economic, social, political and cultural developments for all the countries including the developed as well as developing economies. However, globalization also brought some negative effects, such as the income disparity among different groups of people and different countries. It has been continually enlarging, not narrowing down in the process of globalization. How to deal with the continual globalization? Of course there are different ways. We have been seeing the rising of the nationalism, the protectionism in some of the countries, we have been seeing withdraws of some countries from the global governance institutions. At the same time, we find that China has been making great efforts not only pushing forward the continual globalization but also trying to transfer the old style globalization to the new style globalization which is what I called the transformation of globalization in the new era through the Belt and Road Initiative.


Author(s):  
Zhongying Pang

This chapter discusses China’s changing attitude, doctrine, and policy actions towards international order and offers some tentative findings on the complexity of China’s role in the struggle over the future of international order. This complexity results from China’s efforts simultaneously to consolidate its presence in the existing international order but also to reform existing global governance institutions. The ambition to seek an alternative international order makes it, at least to some extent, a revisionist state. While pursuing an agenda to reform the existing international order from within, China additionally has begun to sponsor an unprecedented number of new international institutions and initiatives of its own, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). How this will play out will depend above all on the interaction of China with a USA still wedded to its hegemonic role in world politics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2150011
Author(s):  
Linda Che-lan Li ◽  
Luo Man ◽  
Phyllis Lai-lan Mo ◽  
Jeffrey Shek Yan Chung

Chinese grand infrastructure projects in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) program are instrumental for Myanmar to bridge the voluminous bottlenecks in transportation and energy infrastructure essential for economic development. However, the high project costs as well as the project design and execution have raised skepticism over their benefits for Myanmar, in particular the economic viability and disruptive impacts for the local ecology and culture. The military coup in February 2021 in Myanmar deepened the skepticism to the Chinese and even outright hostilities to some projects. This paper reviews the broader context of the local receptions to the Chinese investment, drawing upon in-depth fieldwork in Myanmar, and suggests the potentials of leveraging Hong Kong’s managerial and professional experience in enhancing responsible investment in the BRI.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-235
Author(s):  
Emile Kok-Kheng Yeoh

Abstract This article traces the evolution of China-Malaysia relations under National Front Prime Minister Najib Razak and the Alliance of Hope Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. While the Belt and Road Initiative (bri) strengthened Beijing’s support of Najib’s kleptocratic regime in Malaysia, the 2018 general elections brought the anti-graft Alliance of Hope coalition led by Mahathir into power. Under Mahathir’s leadership, Malaysia cancelled several large-scale infrastructural projects like the East Coast Rail Link (ecrl), owing to their links with Najib’s 1mdb scandal and the unfavorable terms of the bri which put Malaysia severely in China’s debt. Although this curtailed Beijing’s use of Malaysia as a pawn in its goals in the region, it alienated some of the new Alliance of Hope’s supporters and saw the loss of much Chinese investment. However, Malaysia had already been caught in the bri’s web and Mahathir had to mend fences with Beijing by renegotiating better deals and redefining Malaysia’s relations with China. As Malaysia is geopolitically strategic to China’s extension of influence in Southeast Asia, Beijing willingly cut the ecrl cost by a third. It is in such context and with due consideration of the changing developments in the Alliance of Hope’s perception of Malaysia’s relations with China that this article will explore the enigmatic nature of China-Malaysia relations as the latter strives to protect its sovereignty against Chinese influence and Beijing continues to press its charm offensive through the bri.


Subject The implications of the Belt and Road Initiative for the energy sector. Significance One of the aims of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is to increase the stability of the country's many neighbours by supporting their economic development, in part by developing their energy sectors. Improving China's own energy security is another. Impacts Electricity provision in BRI countries will improve, creating better conditions for industry and extending electrification programmes. BRI countries will become increasingly indebted to China, some of them unsustainably so. Chinese investment in power plants may encourage development of regional trading pools, encouraging development of an 'Asian supergrid'.


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