Legal regulation of the project "One Belt - One Road"

2021/2022

Учебный год

ENG

Обучение ведется на английском языке

5

Кредиты

Кто читает:

Департамент международного права

Статус:

Курс по выбору

Когда читается:

2-й курс, 1, 2 модуль

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), initiated by the Chinese government in 2013, represents a global cooperation for developing infrastructure, enhancing regional connectivity, and further accelerating economic growth. The BRI has already involved more than 150 countries and international organisations in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas, and is expected to be implemented during a period of several decades. Compared to China’s previous efforts of opening-up and going-global, the BRIs is characterised by its endeavour of frameworking the undertakings and institutionalising them into certain mechanisms underpinned by legal instruments, both formal and informal. Accordingly, the legal aspect of the BRI should be paid more significance by both practitioners and scholars. The course does not isolate itself from a wider ground of the international economic order whereby countries alongside the BRI have assumed profound and sophisticated international obligations under various bilateral, regional, and multilateral treaties. Therefore, more international legal instruments, as well as international adjudicative practices in different tribunals, will be explored and discussed in order to understand the compliance of BRI practices with various international economic regimes. The teaching module pays particular attention to the bilateral relationship between Russia and China, whereas stable and positive cooperation between the two major players of the world economy has increasingly shown its significant during a time of uncertainty resulting from protectionism and anti-globalisation movements.

Learning Objectives

• This two-week teaching module would provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the relevant legal issues regarding the BRI. From a horizontal perspective, the proposed module covers a wide range of topics, including transnational trade, cross-border investment, and international financing. The law subject to exploration is triple-folded, namely: the law applicable to commercial relationships between private actors on an equal footing, the law governing regulatory relationships between a state and a market actor, as well as the law underpinning the coordinative relationships between different sovereign states. For each specific topic, the module first focuses on different kinds of instruments are employed under various BRI projects, and then go further as to discuss the questions as to how relevant norms of international economic law have been adopted or otherwise revised by BRI practices and to what extent the international economic order may be enhanced or otherwise reshaped by the implementation of the BRI.

Expected Learning Outcomes

•  to avail students to access the most heated topics in the field of BRI, such as the outbound investment by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), contractual arrangements underpinning infrastructure-based projects, the compliance of relevant BRI practices with the existing international economic regimes, as well as the legal instruments that can be adopted to counter the potential risks of BRI projects;
•  to bridge the gap between Chinese scholarships in global trade law and international investment law and their counterparts in the non-Chinese scholarships. They will introduce the views and primary sources in contemporary China, and conversely, receive comments and critiques from the outside world;
•  to discuss the rationales behind the BRI, focusing on the relevance of China’s traditional and contemporarily prevailing philosophies to its existing engagement into the international economic order.
•  to enhance students’ capacity of conducting doctrinal and normative analysis and in and legal reasoning.
•  to review the legal instruments employed under the BRI, covering broadly the areas of world trade, transnational investment, and international finance;  to guide students to have an up-to-date conception of the innovative doctrines guiding various BRI practices, while exploring the implications of the BRI to the existing international economic order;

Course Contents

• 1. Introduction to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
• 2. The Law Concerning International Trade under the BRI
• 3. The Law Concerning International Investment under the BRI
• 4. The Law Concerning International Finance
• 5. Special Issues of the BRI

Assessment Elements

• Discussion. Online
• Essay writing or classroom-based examination. Online

Interim Assessment

• 2021/2022 2nd module
  0.7 * Essay writing or classroom-based examination. Online + 0.3 * Discussion. Online

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Epstein, D. G. (2011). Cases and Materials on Contracts: Making and Doing Deals. Law Faculty Publications.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Folsom, R. H., Van Alstine, M. P., & Ramsey, M. D. (2020). International Business Transactions in a Nutshell, 11th: Vol. Eleventh edition. West Academic Publishing.