What does the Belt and Road Initiative mean for the existing multilateral organisations? What can it represent for the future of the European Union in the long run? What is the role of hard and soft law in the functioning of the Initiative? What does it represent from a legal theory perspective? This book aspires to contribute to the international debate by gathering scholars with different backgrounds (legal theorists, public international lawyers, comparative lawyers) in a way that they can offer their inputs and observations concerning the Belt and Road Initiative.

The concept of the One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR) was raised by the President of the People’s Republic of China in October 2013. The OBOR comprises the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and the ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’, encompassing over 60 countries from Asia to Europe via Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, and the Middle East. The overall objective of the OBOR is to encourage the economic prosperity of the countries along the Belt and Road and regional economic cooperation, encourage mutual learning between different civilizations, and promoting peace and development. However, countries along the Belt and Road routes of the OBOR project have diverse laws and legal systems. It is not difficult to envisage problems relating to harmonisation of laws and rules in trade between countries along the OBOR routes or otherwise. These problems can potentially cut through the core of the very objective of the OBOR itself. Integration in China’s One Belt One Road Initiative explores possible challenges to the success of the OBOR arising from the situational interface of diversity of laws, with the focus primarily on issues associated with private international law. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students interested in private international law issues pertaining to the OBOR routes as well as private international law in general, Asian studies, and the politics of international trade.

This 28-chapter volume brings together academics and practitioners to provide a comprehensive legal, economic and political analysis of the Belt and Road (BRI) initiative that has emerged since 2013 as a key feature of China’s international economic policy. It offers a fundamentally novel approach towards international trade, investment and global governance in an unsettled time of shifting geopolitics when many institutions developed in the West are being called into question. The book covers a broad range of BRI-related international economic law and policy issues, including trade facilitation and connectivity, economics and geopolitics of new trade routes, foreign direct investment law, bilateral investment treaties, free trade agreements, financing of infrastructure, development aid, international dispute resolution, and regional economic integration.

This book showcases how the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been utilizing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to reshape the global order. Dissecting China's increasingly assertive international behaviour, the book demonstrates how the PRC projects its self-perception onto the international order. The book outlines five aspects of China's international role projection, which the PRC applies selectively, depending on its target audience: (1) The bearer of traditional Chinese culture; (2) The humiliated nation; (3) The socialist state with Chinese characteristics; (4) The developing state and promoter of international development; (5) The authoritarian globalization optimist.Drawing on an in-depth analysis of hundreds of primary BRI documents, the book offers a comprehensive overview of China's most crucial foreign policy agenda item. It demonstrates how, through the BRI, the PRC has introduced mechanisms to the international level, which reflect its domestic policy-making mode. In addition, the PRC has institutionalized the initiative by establishing China-centered BRI networks across a wide range of policy areas. Within those emerging China-centered BRI networks, the PRC systematically increases its international discursive power, for example, by inserting Chinese vocabulary into UN resolutions or by promoting Beijing's approaches vis-à-vis 'the rule of law' across a range of developing states. This book also further discusses the implications of the BRI for the international legal order.

This forward-looking book examines dispute resolution issues in the context of Belt and Road Initiative dealings between parties in ASEAN Member States, China and other trade partners. It discusses a range of commercial dispute issues and economic agreements including free trade agreements and investment agreements, both bilateral and regional.

In this book, Eurasia will be discussed in the context of the Greater Eurasian Partnership proposed by Russia, the “eastward” transformations spurred by Neo-Eurasianism and the Greater Eurasian Partnership, and cooperation with China through the BRI, while related countries of Atlanticism was used to described the U.S., Europe, and their allies. The Greater Eurasian Partnership proposed by Russia is an initiative with specific diplomatic considerations, economic development strategies, and geopolitical implications. The initiative represents an attempt by Russia to shift foreign policy thinking, which has traditionally focused on alignment with the U.S. and the West. The Greater Eurasian Partnership contains both short-term strategies to cope with Western pressure and long-term strategic goals for building a new international and regional order. What this portends for the future of Sino-Russian relations is of interest to geopoliticians, economists and journalists.

This book focuses on the triangular relations between China, the United States and the European Union from the perspective of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) via the methodology of international political economy. China, the US and the EU are the three most important players in international politics and the global economy, and their relations are accordingly among the most influential in the global arena. This book will argue that the interactions between China, the US and the EU are highly dynamic given their close connections in trade, finance and many other economic fields. In the context of US–China competition, the decisions of the EU, which has sought to remain independent in its foreign policy for decades, crucially shape the landscape of international politics, and lucidly articulates how international relations look from China to scholars of geopolitics.

This timely book offers revealing insights into the changing role of China in world governance as exemplified by the Silk Road Initiative, the People’s Republic’s first published major initiative for external affairs. Focusing on various aspects of the Silk Road Initiative, particularly those that are largely neglected in current discussions, including culture and philosophy, finance and investment, environmental protection and social responsibility, judiciary and lawyers, the authors explore a wide range of contexts in which China’s role as an emerging power in international relations and international law is examined. In the current era of ever-increasing populism, protectionism and challenges to globalization, the authors explore the Chinese philosophy underpinning Chinese norms of regional and international development. Bearing in mind the political and economic uncertainties hampering the establishment of such norms, the authors offer crucial insights into how the Silk Road Initiative could or should be developed and regulated.Given its depth of coverage, the book is an indispensable read for anyone interested in the Initiative and its social-legal implications.

Should Chinese energy investments be excluded from the liberal economic system based on geopolitical assessments only? This book explores the potential regulatory control by the Chinese government over foreign energy investments to achieve their perceived strategic objectives. Host states in which Chinese energy companies make investments have increasingly opposed Chinese energy investments in their national security reviews, based on concerns that these investments have strategic objectives. The book analyses China's investment-related law, regulations, and energy policies to examine how overseas energy investment-making is governed. The book also explores the role of the Chinese government in energy investment promotion and protection. Uniquely, the examination of China's potential regulatory control provides an objective criterion, rather than geopolitical considerations, for host states to assess the nature of Chinese energy investments. The book helps readers to open the 'black box' of Chinese energy investments from a regulatory perspective. It is a useful resource for researchers as well as practising lawyers assisting their Chinese clients through national security reviews, or when trying to determine whether China's SOEs can bring cases before investor-state arbitration tribunals.