ABSTRACT
European investment in China has grown at a considerable pace since the 1990s. Various factors contribute to underdeveloped China–European Union (EU) investment flows. Some European businesses complain that they face a multitude of restrictions and competitive disadvantages in both the pre-establishment and the post-establishment phases in China. The EU-United States negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership received overwhelming scepticism internationally due to the EU’s bold 2015 proposal on creating an international investment court system to replace ad hoc investor-state arbitration. The China–EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) is bound to transcend what traditional bilateral investment treaties include and shift the paradigm towards a global new generation investment agreement. As China shares mutually fundamental interests with the EU in international investment governance, the CAI will become China’s first attempt at demonstrating its proactivity in investor-state dispute settlement reform. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
