Springer Asia's Changing International Investment Regime: Sustainability, Regionalization, and Arbitration (International Law and the Global South)

This book focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, delineating the evolving dynamics of foreign investment in the region. It examines the relationship between efforts to increase foreign direct investment (FDI) and efforts to improve governance and inclusive growth and development. Against a background of rapidly developing international investment law, it emphasises the need to strike a balance between these domestic and international legal frameworks, seeking to promote both foreign investment and the laws and policies necessary to regulate investments and investor conduct. Foreign investments play a pivotal role in most countries’ political economies, and in order to encourage cross-border capital flows, countries have taken various steps, such as revising their domestic legal frameworks, liberalising rules on inward and outward investment, and creating special regimes that provide incentives and protections for foreign investment. Alongside the developments in domestic laws, countries have also taken bilateral and multilateral action, including entering into trade and/or investment agreements. Further, the book explores regional investment trends, highlights specific features of Asia-Pacific investment laws and treaties, and analyses policy implications. It addresses four overarching themes: the trends (how Asia-Pacific’s agreements compare with recent global trends in the evolving rules on foreign investment); what China is doing; current investment arbitration practice in Asia; and the importance of regionalising investment law in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, it identifies and discusses the research and policy gaps that should be filled in order to promote more sustainable and responsible investment. The book offers a valuable resource not only for academics and students, but also for trade and investment officials, policy-makers, diplomats, economists, lawyers, think tanks, and business leaders interested in the governance and regulation of foreign investment, economic policy reforms, and the development of new types of investment agreements. Review “Asia’s Changing International Investment Regime will certainly become a widely read book for its scope and accessibility to the readership. It comprehensively covers many regional trends in the increasingly fragmented investment protection regime. In this way, it fulfils its main purpose and complements the existing literature on the rapid development of the international investment law in the Asia-Pacific region which we are witnessing.” (Ondřej Svoboda, The Lawyer Quarterly, Vol. 10 (2), 2020) “Provides a succinct and quite comprehensive overview, as well as some detailed analysis, of key developments and themes in the rapidly evolving field of Asia-Pacific international investment treaties. It is particularly useful for readers in the antipodes … . this book provides much food for thought and useful information as well as analysis of trends in FDI, regional investment treaties, and treaty-based dispute settlement, in ‘Asia’ – in a very broad sense. It is definitely worth a closer read.” (Luke Nottage and Ana Ubilava, University of Western Australia Law Review, Vol. 44(2), 2018) From the Back Cover This book focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, delineating the evolving dynamics of foreign investment in the region. It examines the relationship between efforts to increase foreign direct investment (FDI) and efforts to improve governance and inclusive growth and development. Against a background of rapidly developing international investment law, it emphasises the need to strike a balance between these domestic and international legal frameworks, seeking to promote both foreign investment and the laws and policies necessary to regulate investments and investor conduct. Foreign investments play a pivotal role in most countries’ political economies, and in order to encourage cross-border capital flows, countries have