中国双边投资协定新纲领:实体内容、合理性及其对国际投资法创制的影响

China’s New Bilateral Investment Treaty Programme:Substance,Rational and Implications for International Investment Law Making

本文旨在对20世纪80年代初期以来中国双边投资协定(BIT)政策的演变进行实证性研究,并将其与发达国家的现行做法进行比较分析。通过分析实体性和程序性投资保护条款的发展状况,本文指出中国已经积极着手对其先前约束性BIT政策进行大幅变革,使之朝自由化方向发展。自1998年以来,中国不停地商签含有综合性投资者—东道国争端解决条款的BITs。中国甚至已经改变了其反对外国投资者享有国民待遇的立场。尽管中国目前仍对无条件国民待遇持保留态度,但中国现行的协定范本已可以与欧洲国家采纳的BIT范本相比。然而,已启动的中美BIT谈判前景看似相当暗淡。这主要归因于以下两个因素的影响:一是双方就准入前FDI保护存在根本性的意见分歧;二是美国当前强调应关注来自其他发达国家和新兴国家投资者对美国国家安全影响的政治环境。

This article aims at empirically investigating the evolution of China’s BIT policy since the early 1980s and compares it with current developed country approaches.Analysing the development of substantive and procedural investment protection provisions,it will be argued that China has pro-actively initiated a remarkable change of its formerly restrictive BIT policy towards a liberal approach.Since 1998,Beijing has been negotiating BITs that contain comprehensive investor-state dispute settlement provisions.China even abandoned its hostile stance on national treatment of foreign investors.Notwithstanding existing reservations towards unrestricted national treatment,the current Chinese model agreement is comparable to the model BIT adopted by European countries.The prospects of the proposed Sino-US BIT,however,are looking rather bleak.This is mainly due to fundamental differences with respect to the parties view on the protection of FDI in the pre-establishment phase and the current political environment in the US that accentuates national security concerns with regard to foreign investors from developed and emerging countries.