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Free Trade Areas for China's Belt and Road
GONZALO VILLALTA PUIG
This article studies China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its call to open free trade areas with the customs territories along the routes that it covers. It argues that, as a solution to the problems of the World Trade Organization to liberalise trade at the multilateral level, China should indeed attempt to enter into plurilateral and bilateral agreements with its largest trading partners. It further argues that China should work for those agreements to be comprehensive and contemporary.
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I. Introduction
The Belt and Road Initiative of the Government of the People’s Republic of China (China) proposes to develop a land and sea transportation and telecommunications network that infrastructurally connects China with the European Union (EU) and much of the rest of the world.1 The Belt and Road Initiative also proposes to open free trade areas (FTAs) by agreement2 with the customs territories along the routes that it covers. It is this element of the Belt and Road Initiative that is the subject of this article
The rationale for the Belt and Road Initiative is to facilitate access to markets for China’s ever-larger goods and services exports. On that premise, this article argues that, as a solution to the problems of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to liberalise trade at the multilateral level, Gonzalo Villalta Puig is Professor of Law at The University of Hull. He is the inaugural holder of The University of Hull established Chair in the Law of Economic Integration for his research into the constitutionalisation of free trade in non-unitary market jurisdictions. Professor Villalta Puig was formerly a Professor of Law and Outstanding Fellow of the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, a Fellow of the European Law Institute, and an Associate Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. Professor Villalta Puig chairs the International Association of Constitutional Law’s Research Group for Constitutional Studies of Free Trade and Political Economy and is a member of the Committee on the Procedure of International Courts and Tribunals of the International Law Association. He is the Associate Editor of the Global Journal of Comparative Law (Brill Nijhoff).
China should indeed attempt to enter into bilateral and plurilateral FTAs with its largest trading partners along the trade routes that the Belt and Road Initiative covers, namely, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the EU. It further argues that China should work for those FTAs to be comprehensive and contemporary deals that closely replicate the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), which is China’s most ambitious FTA to date.
II. Belt and Road Initiative’s Call to Open Free Trade Areas
In September 2013, the President of China, Xi Jinping, announced the Silk Road Economic Belt in a speech at Nazarbayev University in Astana (now Nur-Sultan), the capital of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan).3 A month later, he announced the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in a speech to the People’s Consultative Assembly of the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesia) in Jakarta.4 China’s State Council and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China5 refer to the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative (Yi Dai Yi Lu一带一路),6 a multi-purpose initiative which, for China’s National Development and Reform Com[mission (NDRC), “aims to promote the connectivity of Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas … [into] a community of shared interests, destiny and responsibility featuring mutual political trust, economic integration and cultural inclusiveness.”7
As an initiative, as a project, as a plan, as a program, as a process, as a strategy, indeed as a vision,8 this statement of purpose(s), however abstract in expression, evidences an undeniable commitment on the part of
the Chinese government to trans-regional development.9 In that respect, the Belt and Road Initiative finds certainty in elements of ancient Chinese thought. Notably, through the virtues of ren-li-yi, Confucianism calls for a moderate approach to ensure that the obligations of government are towards addressing poverty and underdevelopment.10 Thus, the Silk Road Spirit—“peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit”11 — further enhances that otherwise free and fluid commitment of the Belt and Road Initiative to respectful socio-political and economic development.12# Devoid of any legal form in the absence of a definitional treaty or foundational charter,13 the Belt and Road Initiative can only be a public good14 for it aims to promote infrastructural (physical and digital) connectivity and economic (trade and investment) cooperation15 between Asia and Europe as it rebuilds the Silk Road of old16 through land corridors and maritime routes.17
Ultimately, the Belt and Road Initiative18 is a trade route between China and its largest trading partner, the EU, albeit one that passes through other trading partners in Europe, Asia, and Africa19 with economies of considerable size, including – within the EAEU – Central Asia’s largest economy (Kazakhstan) and the eleventh largest economy in the world (the Russian Federation (Russia)), the largest oil producer in the world (the GCC), the most dynamic economic region in the world (ASEAN), the largest economy in the Pacific (the Commonwealth of Australia (Australia)), and – within ECOWAS – the largest economy in Africa (the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Nigeria)). This land and sea transportation and telecommunications network counts, for its construction, with USD 200 billion (and, into the future, USD 6 trillion)20 in financial support for (high rate) loans21 from the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB),22 New Development Bank (NDB) and the Silk Road Fund (SRF) (with a separate treasury of USD 40 billion) as well as the financial support of the China Development Bank, The Export-Import Bank of China and China’s largest state-owned banks.23
The Belt and Road Initiative is, however, so much more than a trade route.24 It is a “mega strategic initiative,”25 a “going-global strategy,”26 a “geo-economic vision”27 from the world’s second largest economy, largest goods exporter, and third largest investor28 for seventy of the world’s countries and twothirds of its population.29 With a projection to cover more than 30% of world trade by 2050,30 the Belt and Road Initiative will, most probably, redefine the terms of globalisation, reset the world’s economic balance, and reregulate the multilateral trading system.31 And it will do so as an instrument of free trade.
Even though the Belt and Road Initiative cannot qualify as an international organisation or even as an international agreement,32 its soft law33 regime promotes the freedom of trade to an almost constitutional status. The foundational normative blueprint34 document of the Belt and Road Initiative— the Vision and Actions statement put out by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce with State Council Authorisation in March 2015—calls on countries along the Belt and Road to promote “unimpeded trade.”35 Inasmuch as the Joint Communiqué of the Leaders’ Roundtable of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (Joint Communiqué) of May 2017 can double as an organisational charter,36 the Belt and Road Initiative represents a “shared commitment to build [an] open economy, ensure free and inclusive trade, oppose all forms of protectionism [and] endeavor to promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system with WTO at its core.”37 Two years later, for the second Belt and Road Forum of April 2019, the Joint Communiqué ever diplomatically reaffirmed the determination “to pursue trade and investment liberalization and facilitation” and the aspiration “to further open our markets, reject protectionism, unilateralism and other measures that are incompatible with WTO rules.”38
The diplomatic, non-binding approach here is deliberate. It is precisely because of such “maximised flexibility regarding institutions and norms”39 that the value of economic cooperation between governments in “a partnership-based, relational approach”40 promotes free trade. This freedom is not through the surrender of sovereignty41 in the Bretton Woods rule-based international economic system but through the spontaneous process of economic integration that inevitably comes with infrastructural connectivity42 and investment for development in a “hub-andspoke … trial-and-error”43 network where China leads but only to share power and responsibility44 with its partner countries in
dialogue and for mutual benefit.
Yet, however participatory, China leads the initiative with authoritative confidence. Despite the selfless rhetoric, it leads with a set of fairly pragmatic objectives all around the ideal of wider and deeper economic integration for diversification.45 The first objective is to open up new export markets beyond the ever protectionist United States and the still stagnant EU and simultaneously secure access to resources in Africa and the Persian Gulf.46 The second objective is to reform the economy; that is, to rely less on the increasingly vulnerable mercantile47 labour-intensive manufacturing model of old through the promotion of domestic consumption in a knowledge economy that develops China’s western provinces and reduces excess production capacities in steel, cement, aluminium and other essentials of construction.48 The third objective is to effectively use the country’s vast foreign currency reserves and, at the same time, internationalise the renminbi (yuan).49
The Belt and Road Initiative, however, presents itself more nobly as a WTOaligned framework for multilateral, non-discriminatory integration through cooperation.50 In that tone, the Vision and Actions statement pledges that the Chinese government will work “to build a community of shared interests, destiny and responsibility featuring mutual political trust, economic integration and cultural inclusiveness.”51 China has certainly benefitted from its membership of the WTO’s multilateral trading system,52 without which its mercantilist–all-exports–economic model would not be sustainable. Indeed, “fifty-two of the sixty-five countries along the Belt and Road route”53 are WTO Members with only Iran and Iraq as notable exceptions.54
While China should work with Belt and Road Initiative participant customs territories in an attempt to advance multilateral trade negotiations through the WTO, China should and does indeed accept that the WTO no longer functions as a trade liberalisation forum but as a trade dispute settlement body. Indeed, since the introduction of the Doha Development Agenda, international trade law and policy have experienced a kind of paradigm shift from non-discriminatory multilateral trade liberalisation to discriminatory nonmultilateral trade liberalisation.55
The ultimate objective of the Belt and Road Initiative, therefore, is not so much to overtake the WTO56 but to bypass it with the establishment of a global, Belt and Road FTA—the opening, in other words, of a common market for all countries along the route.57 The basic idea is “to consolidate and upgrade a dense network of bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTA) into a multilateral arrangement, anchored by China’s gravitational pull and vast open market.”58 China’s State Council in fact acknowledges that “the long-term goal is to forge a global FTA network that further covers countries along the route of the Belt and Road Initiative and other important countries.”59 While the ultimate objective of the Belt and Road Initiative may well be to evolve into a kind of extra-regional, countermodel60 free trade area between the customs territories that lie across China and Europe,61 the Belt and Road Initiative is certainly not as such and cannot be as such, by nature.
By its nature, the Belt and Road Initiative maximises flexibility in an extralegal policy space devoid even of a constituting instrument, it is also, by nature, different from an FTA. Unlike an FTA, which prescribes a system of non-discrimination norms and dispute settlement in exchange for mutually exclusive market access and other trade preferences, the Belt and Road Initiative groups together seemingly random but decidedly inclusive connectivity for trade, cooperation for coprosperity, and public, rather than private projects,62 without much if any regulatory specification.63 Development ahead of rules is the approach.64
If, however, the Belt and Road Initiative is to promote predictability, consistency, and coherence,65 it will, sooner rather than later, need to give itself a code—a book of rules of conduct.66 Those rules will inevitably and invariably have to come from the most effective instrument of international trade law known to date, the FTA, either bilateral or plurilateral in form.67 True enough, the Belt and Road Initiative68 already shows particular concern for the simplification and harmonisation of international trade procedures (such as customs clearance procedures), the removal of regulatory divergences and other non-tariff barriers to trade, the liberalisation of trade in services especially through electronic commerce, and the protection of foreign investment.69 The Vision and Actions statement proposes to address these concerns by “opening free trade areas.”70 The Joint Communiqué of May
2017 indeed follows up this proposal with a welcome to “the development of free trade areas and signing of free trade agreements by interested countries.”71
A single FTA that unites the Belt and Road Initiative participant customs territories is a most unlikely prospect and not only because of its loose constitutional configuration. Despite the (imperfect) model of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP-11), too many are the political, economic, cultural, and even security considerations for such a plurilateral agreement to ever form. Among these considerations, perhaps the most important is the difference in economic development. The differences are greater than the similarities.
Instead, China, together with its Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong72 and Macau, should negotiate the establishment of FTAs with its largest trading partners in each of the regions that the Belt and Road Initiative covers: the EU in Europe, the EAEU in Eurasia and Central Asia, the GCC in Western Asia and ECOWAS in Africa, apart from ASEAN in Southeast Asia and Australia in the Pacific. Already, as of 15 July 2019, China has signed FTAs with 15 trading partners, including Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific, South Korea, Singapore and ASEAN in Asia, Switzerland73 and Iceland in Europe, Chile, Peru and Costa Rica in South America, as well as Pakistan, Georgia and The Maldives.74 China is in negotiations with Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Israel, Palestine, Norway, Moldova, Panama, as well as Japan and South Korea as part of a trilateral deal and, at a regional level, the GCC and ASEAN’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. China is also progressing joint feasibility studies with Colombia, Canada, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Nepal, Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Switzerland. Admittedly, several of these agreements and prospective agreements do have an obvious geopolitical relationship with the Belt and Road Initiative but others do, most notably, the AustraliaChina FTA (ChAFTA).75 Indeed, the model for Belt and Road Initiative FTAs should be ChAFTA, even if China may be reluctant to adopt a template approach to trade negotiations.76
Signed on 17 June 2015, ChAFTA is not only China’s most recent large-type trade agreement but also its most ambitious. ChAFTA is a model because, the South Korea FTA aside, it is with the most developed economy that China has dealt with to date – Australia is the 13th largest economy in the world – and also because of its profile as a ‘comprehensive, high-quality and balanced interest’77 deal. It is ambitious as it is strategic because ChAFTA78 is China’s first trade agreement to deliberately implement the Belt and Road Initiative.79
On trade in goods, more than 85 per cent of exports now enter duty free or at preferential rates and this percentage will rise to 98 per cent by the end of the implementation period. On trade in services, Australia has opened its services sector to China on a negative list mode, being the first country to do so, while China offers Australia its best-ever services commitments in a trade agreement. In the investment area, the two sides give each other most-favoured-nation treatment. In addition, ChAFTA enhances bilateral communication and cooperation in more than ten contemporary trade topic areas, including electronic commerce, government procurement, intellectual property rights and competition.
ChAFTA, then, is a model FTA with provisions that substantially liberalise and facilitate trade over and beyond the WTO normative framework. It should be the template for all other FTAs under the Belt and Road Initiative. ChAFTA is not, however, the only template.
III. Belt and Road Initiative’s Trading Partners
The Protocol to Amend the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Co-operation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China (Protocol)80 presents another valuable precedent, not altogether dissimilar to ChAFTA. The Protocol comprises a new-generation FTA that regulates most future-focused issues in trade, including cross-border electronic commerce, customs clearance procedures, trade in finance and telecommunications services, and even economic and technical cooperation. It establishes a Future Work Programme, which serves as a basis for further bilateral economic
integration.
The Protocol also serves as a basis for the advancement of negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP)81 between ASEAN and those countries with which ASEAN has trade arrangements, China as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and, importantly for the Belt and Road Initiative, India. Negotiations for RCEP are likely to close by the middle of 2020 (the twenty-sixth round of negotiations was held in July 2019). Seven of 20 chapters of the trade pact are now closed, such as sanitary measures and rules on industrial standards. However, sensitive chapters, including foreign investment, electronic commerce rules and tariff reductions (in particular, zero-tariff lists) are still up for negotiation.
ACFTA is already in force, so is ChAFTA. Apart from these trade agreements, China is still to establish FTAs along most of the other customs territories that the Belt and Road Initiative covers, including the GCC and the EUEA as halfway points and ECOWAS and the EU as final destinations of the east-west trade route. A. Gulf Cooperation Council
Negotiations between China and the GCC for a ‘comprehensive and high-quality agreement’82 begun in 2004 but were suspended in 2009. They resumed in 2016— the third round was held in December of 2016—but the parties have made no further progress since then.83 The prospective establishment of an FTA between China and the GCC should aim to remove the various barriers that currently impede bilateral trade.
The trade relationship between China and the GCC’s largest Member State, Saudi Arabia, is a relevant case study.84 Even though “the economic cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia has developed by leaps and bounds”85 and “Saudi Arabia has become the largest trading partner of China in the Middle East,”86 China considers that Saudi Arabia still does not allow adequate market access to third-country service suppliers and investors.87 The concerns are mainly to do with participation in major government projects and the regulation of safety standards, including the transparency of the Halal certification approval process.88 Conversely, these concerns are much the same concerns that Saudi Arabia has with China, which translate into a call for the further simplification of customs clearance procedures (rules of origin requirements)89 and the removal of foreign direct investment restrictions,90 including a relaxation of antidumping measures.91
The recent political fracture of the GCC into two opposite sides each respectively led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar has put a halt on FTA negotiations. If and when negotiations resume, they would have to simplify safety standards requirements and overall improve customs clearance procedures, liberalize trade in professional services through mutual recognition as well as protect, promote, and facilitate pre-establishment and postestablishment party-to-party investment. Possibly in reaction to the current state of paralysis of the GCC and in order to further promote free and open trade in the wider region, China is in the midst of FTA negotiations with Palestine and Israel. B. Eurasian Economic Union
Prospective FTA negotiations between China and the EAEU would have the support of the framework available through their Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement, now in force. Even then, they would have to address the specific issues that the bilateral trade relationship raises. These issues are evident from the trade policy review exercise that China and Russia—as the largest EAEU Member State economy among WTO Members—regularly undergo within the WTO.
For Russia, which has in China its largest trading partner,92 the concerns are to do with the transparency, accountability and competitiveness of China’s trade policies and practices,93 especially in the area of innovation technologies, intellectual property, and trade facilitation with the need to simplify procedures and bring greater clarity to China’s Compulsory Certificate and other safety standards.94 For China, the concerns are with the need to further open up the Russian market under the principle of fair competition and improve its level of trade facilitation.95
Accordingly, an FTA between China and the EAEU would have to address the regulation of safety standards as part of a wider effort to improve customs procedures as well as facilitate the further liberalisation of trade in services and ensure the liberalisation, protection, promotion, and facilitation of party-to-party investment. It does not seem an unlikely prospect, especially in the light of the political affinity that these regions recently share.96
In support of the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Eurasian region, China has signed an FTA with
Georgia, which entered into force in January 2018. In terms of trade in goods, Georgia now imposes zero tariffs on almost 100 per cent of its total imports from China; China will progressively impose zero tariffs on 94 per cent of its total imports from Georgia. In terms of trade in services, both sides will further open their markets to each other on the basis of their WTO commitments. In addition, both sides have reached broad consensus in many areas such as environment and trade, competition, intellectual property, investment and electronic commerce. Importantly, this deal is China’s first FTA since it formally launched the Belt and Road Initiative.
In parallel, China is presently in negotiations with Moldova for an FTA. C. Economic Community of West African States
An FTA between China and ECOWAS would have to address the type of barriers that bar the trade relationship between China and Nigeria, which are logically extensive to the wider interregional relationship. The WTO’s trade policy review would suggest that bilateral concerns are primarily to do with trade in goods.
China considers that the ECOWAS common external tariff structure is unpredictable with a large gap between applied tariff rates and bound tariff rates.97 China, moreover, has concerns with the complexity and relative backwardness of customs procedures, the high cost of doing business in the region, the lack of transparency in many trade policies and the persistence of foreign direct investment barriers.98
With China as its third largest trading partner,99 Nigeria has concerns with the relative poor quality of Chinese goods imports: "substandard, pirated/counterfeited products."100 The other ECOWAS Member States would likely share this concern and, accordingly, would call on China to improve its protection and enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).101 The other concerns are with China’s unethical technology transfer practices, government subsidies through State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs) and the full performance of Trade Facilitation Agreement obligations.102
Despite the cooperative spirit of the Belt and Road Initiative,103 an FTA between China and ECOWAS does then seem an unlikely prospect. The unlikelihood is even greater in the light of the different stages of economic development between China and ECOWAS:104 building trade capacity would be paramount. In the meantime and in support of the implementation of the maritime element of the Belt and Road initiative for Africa, China signed an FTA with the Maldives in December 2017. In September 2018, China concluded FTA negotiations with Mauritius and is presently in negotiations with Sri Lanka. D. European Union
The EU is the final destination of the trade route that the Belt and Road Initiative proposes to open for China, with the Netherlands and the Republic of Germany as the distribution hubs.105 After all, “[the] EU is the biggest trading partner and largest import source of China, and China is the largest import source, second biggest trading partner and export market of the EU.”106 Importantly, as the Memorandum of Understanding on the EU – China Connectivity Platform denotes,107 the Belt and Road Initiative complements the European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe.108 To facilitate two-way investment, China and the EU are in negotiations for a bilateral investment agreement, which is now in its twenty-second round of negotiations (July 2019). And to facilitate the prospect of an FTA, the EU-China Trade Project provides trade related technical assistance.
The WTO’s Trade Policy Review exercise for both the EU and China reveals the need for a bilateral FTA precisely because the barriers to trade between them are too problematic for the WTO alone to solve. China’s concerns with the EU are largely to do with “[the] EU’s extensive use of antidumping measures, high level of subsiding for agriculture, strict export control on hightech products to China and particularly the TRQ [tariff-rate quota] on poultry products from China.”109
Among China’s concerns, the most important is with EU anti-dumping measures110 and their analogue country methodology as a non-market economy country.111 China is not only upset at the extent of the EU’s anti-dumping measures and countervailing investigations on many of its goods (especially, iron and steel products),112 but is also upset at the duration of some of these measures, in some cases, almost 20 years.113
Another important concern is with trade in agricultural goods. The EU average
applied most-favored nation (MFN) rate for agricultural goods was 14.1 per cent in 2017.114 Tariff-rate quotas make access for China’s agricultural goods to the EU market even more difficult. Other concerns include restrictions on EU high-tech exports to China,115 greater investment cooperation and fairer treatment to Chinese enterprises, and greater ease of business visa application procedures.116
The EU’s concerns with China are less bilateral and more multilateral in nature. They are largely to do with China’s performance as a WTO Member. The first concern is with policy transparency. The EU considers that concerns over the distortion that comes with public intervention in economic activities are due to a lack of transparency. The EU, therefore, calls on China to “truly honour its transparency obligations in the WTO” and, specifically, to publish and translate all its trade-related laws and measures.117 The EU, in particular, objects to China’s deficient notification of subsidies and China’s rather unclear118 system of provision of incentives for SOEs. “Openness has to go hand in hand with fairness”, the EU claims.119 In sum, the EU’s first concern is with China’s mercantilism (Made-in-China 2025 local content requirements), use of subsidies and overcapacity in steel and other sectors and forced technology transfers.120 Competition has to be fair.121
The second concern is with China’s business environment.122 The EU considers that doing business in China is difficult.123 The concern is, fundamentally, with state intervention in what ought to be a market economy; in other words, for the EU, China’s government should be an economic regulator not an economic operator.124 It translates into a concern with foreign operator access to and the independence of China’s judicial system125 and a concern with competition enforcement in order to “achieve a level playing field among the private and state-owned entities.”126 There are additional concerns, though less important, including inadequate protection of foreign investment;127 insufficient enforcement of trade secrets and other IPRs;128 different behind-the-border measures, especially in relation to the attribution of licenses;129 and, the need for cybersecurity measures to be proportionate and technology-neutral.130
In summary, the EU “count[s] on China to concretely demonstrate its commitment to transparency and non-discrimination, actively participate in current and future WTO negotiating activities, help find multilateral solutions to current trade problems and fill the gaps in the trade rulebook, in particular in relation to subsidies.”131 Specifically, in relation to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the EU cautiously considers that “[d] one in the right way, more investment in cross-border infrastructure links can unleash growth potential with benefits for all. But such initiatives must be based on a level-playing field for trade and investment with full adherence to market rules and international norms.”132
IV. Conclusion
This article has assessed the significance of FTAs to the Belt and Road Initiative. It has argued that, as a solution to the problems of the WTO to liberalise trade at the multilateral level, China should attempt to enter into FTAs with its largest trading partners along the trade routes that the Belt and Road Initiative covers. The article has further argued that China should work for those FTAs to be comprehensive and contemporary deals much like ChAFTA.
In conclusion, goods and services do need a transportation and telecommunications network to move through. The Belt and Road Initiative proposes to build that network for China. China, however, will need the agreement of its trading partners if it is to free the movement through that network into preferential market access for its products.
1. See generally Gonzalo Villalta Puig,
Unimpeded Trade? The Significance of Free Trade Areas to the Belt and
Road Initiative of the People’s Republic of China, in Legal Dimensions of China’s Belt and Road Initiative 103, 104 (Lutz-Christian Wolff and Chao Xi eds., Wolters Kluwer Law & Business 2016). 2. Nat’l Dev. & Reform Comm’n, Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Ministry of Commerce of China, with State Council Authorization, Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21-st Century Maritime Silk Road (2015) [hereinafter Vision & Actions]. 3. Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, Promote People-to-People Friendship and Create a Better Future (Sept. 7, 2013). 4. Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, Speech at People’s Representative Council of Indonesia (Oct. 2, 2013), reprinted in Wu Jiao, President Xi gives speech to Indonesia’s parliament, ChinaDaily.com.cn (Oct. 2, 2013), http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ china/2013xiapec/2013-10/02/ content_17007915.htm. 5. Press Release, Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Cent. Comm., Suggestions of the CPC Central Committee on the Thirteenth Five-year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (Oct. 29, 2015). 6. M. Bart Kasteleijn, Legal and
Economic Aspects of Chinese ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ Investments into
Europe via the Netherlands, 14 Global Trade & Cust. J. 238, 238 (2019) (explaining that the Belt and Road Initiative was originally named “New Silk Roads” and later renamed “One Belt One Road”). 7. Vision & Actions, supra note 2; see also David M. Ong, The Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank:
Bringing ‘Asian Values’ to Global
Economic Governance?, 20 J. of Int’l Econ. L. 535, 548 (2017). 8. Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 239. 9. Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 238. 10. Tao Li & Zuoli Jiang, Human
Rights, Justice, and Courts in IEL:
A Critical Examination of Petersmann’s Constitutionalization
Theory, 21 J. of Int’l Econ. L. 193, 210 (2018). 11. Vision & Actions, supra note 2; see also Li & Jiang, supra note 10,
end notes
at 204. 12. Liao Li, The Legal Challenges and
Legal Safeguards for the Belt and
Road Initiative, 14 Global Trade & Customs J. 211, 211 (2019). 13. Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 238; Heng Wang, China’s Approach to the Belt and Road Initiative: Scope,
Character and Sustainability, 22 J. Int’l Econ. L. 29, 43 (2019) [hereinafter H. Wang]; Lingliang Zeng, Conceptual Analysis of
China’s Belt and Road Initiative:
A Road towards a Regional Community of Common Destiny, 15 Chinese J. Int’l L. 517, 539 (2016). See generally Yun Zhao, International Governance and the Rule of Law in China under the Belt and Road Initiative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Michael M Du, China’s “One Belt, One
Road” Initiative: Context, Focus,
Institutions, and Implications, 2 Chinese J. Global Governance 30 (2016); Guiguo Wang, Legal
Challenges to the Belt and Road
Initiative, 4 J. Int’l & Comp. L. 309 (2017); 14. Li & Jiang, supra note 10, at 204. 15. Li, supra note 12, at 211. 16. Julien Chaisse & Mitsuo Matsushita, China’s “Belt and Road”
Initiative: Mapping the World’s
Normative and Strategic Implications, 52 J. World Trade 163, 163 (2018). 17. Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 238. 18. Vision & Actions, supra note 2. 19. Jiangyu Wang, China’s Governance
Approach to the Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI): Relations, Partnership, and Law, 14 Global Trade & Customs J. 222, 222 (2019) [hereinafter J. Wang]. 20. Fan Zhai, China’s Belt and Road
Initiative: A Preliminary Quantitative Assessment, 55 J. Asian Econ. 84, 85 (2018); Cem Nalbantoglu,
One Belt One Road Initiative: New
Route on China’s Change of Course to Growth, 5 Open J. Soc. Sci. 87 (2017). 21. Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 239 (“The lending rate . . . averaged 6%, which is way above the World Bank’s average lending rate of 1.5% above London Inter bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) lending rate.”). 22. Hong Yu, Motivation Behind
China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiatives and Establishment of the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank, 26 J. Contemp. China 353, 354 (2017). 23. The AIIB functions independently of the Belt and Road Initiative. However, the AIIB Articles of Agreement states: “The purpose of the Bank shall be to … improve infrastructure connectivity in Asia by investing in infrastructure and other productive sectors.” Asian Infrastructure Inv. Bank, Articles of Agreement (2015); see also Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 239. 24. Peter Ferdinand, Westward Ho— the China Dream and “One Belt,
One Road”: Chinese Foreign Policy under Xi Jinping, 92 Int’l Aff. 941 (2016); see also Yiping Huang,
Understanding China’s Belt & Road
Initiative: Motivation, Framework and Assessment 40 China Econ. Rev. 314 (2016). 25. J. Wang, supra note 19, at 222. 26. Li, supra note 12, at 214. 27. H. Wang, supra note 13, at 30. 28. Li, supra note 12, at 214. 29. H. Wang, supra note 13, at 30. 30. Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 239. 31. Kasteleijn, supra note 6, at 239. 32. J. Wang, supra note 19, at 224. 33. J. Wang, supra note 19, at 224. 34. J. Wang, supra note 19, at 224. 35. Vision & Actions, supra note 2; see also Press Release, Joint Communiqué of the Leaders’ Roundtable of the 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign of Affairs of China ¶ 6 (Apr. 27, 2019) [hereinafter Joint Communiqué]; Cary Huang, Game On: How the US and
China are Vying for Dominance in the Battle of the Asia-Pacific Trade
Facts, S. China Morning Post, Nov. 17, 2015, at A4; see generally Justin Yifu Lin, “One Belt and
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