Resumen de Explaining China's approach to investor-state dispute settlement reform: A contextual perspective

Ming Du

• China's approach to ISDS reform is widely perceived as undecided and ambiguous. This paper pro-vides the first detailed analysis of China's submission to the UNITRAL Working Group III and situ-ates China's approach in the context of global dialogue of ISDS reform and competing reformproposals. The paper shows that China's open, flexible, and evolving approach to ISDS reform couldbe better understood by a contextual evaluation of the pertinent factors which have contributed toits formation. Moreover, this paper explains why China did not sign up to the EU's investment courtsystem (ICS) proposal in the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). Lastly, thepaper argues that China should reconsider its attitude towards the ICS in the CAI context and thatthe EU's recent suggestion that the envisaged multilateral investment court may adopt an‘openarchitecture’is likely to enhance its appeal to China.