The ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ (SREB) Initiative is the focal point of China’s ‘Belt and Road’ national strategy. This article explores the feasibility of the SREB initiative from the perspective of international investment law. Sixty-one Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) were concluded between China and SREB countries and thirty-eight of them were signed in the 1990s or before. By a statistical research method, this article argues that these thirty-eight BITs may not fulfil the SREB initiative because of their insufficiencies in three aspects: ambiguous definitions of ‘investor’ and ‘investment’, no national treatment and limited investor-state dispute resolution mechanism. By referring to recent BITs/ Free Trade Agreement (FTAs) concluded by China, such as the China-Korea FTA and the China-Australia FTA, this article suggests solutions to revise these old BITs.
Journal of World Trade