6 - Tackling Political Risks through Treatization along the Belt and Road: A Minilateral Solution

Summary

It explores the BRI and China’s bilateral investment treaty (BIT) regime in the context of expropriation. It focuses on the notion of expropriation and the related compensation standard by examining expropriation clauses in China’s existing BITs. China’s BITs have been experiencing a generational evolution. Since 2006 when China signed a BIT with India, China includes the concept of indirect expropriation in her BITs. Yet most of the BITs between China and the BRI counterparties were signed before 2006, which suggests that the expropriation and compensation standards in these existing BITs were not up to higher standards for protecting China’s outbound investment in BRI counterparties. A sensible approach to fill in the gap is to have a BIT network covering China and BRI countries and applying the doctrines of indirect expropriation and ‘Hull Formula’ to compensate expropriated investment.