China's foreign investment legal regime encompasses domestic laws governing inward and outward investments, investment treaties and the Belt and Road Initiative. Can China's foreign investment legal regime lead its two-way investments towards the country's five development goals (building technological capacity, deepening integration into the global economy, promoting green development, protecting security, and participating in global economic governance and rule-making)? Yawen Zheng pioneers a systematic study of China's foreign investment legal regime, finding that the regime has gradually made progress towards the development goals, but the effort is diluted by obstacles such as outdated treaties, conflicts with the West, and domestic political challenges.

This book presents a comprehensive survey of Chinese legal and regulatory systems governing international trade, following China's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in November 2001, and the coming into force of the revised PRC Foreign Trade Law in July 2004. It provides a systematic and in-depth analysis on the text of applicable Chinese laws and rules, with a particular focus on their practical application. It also critically explores whether international trade regulation in China complies with the WTO Agreement both in the text and in spirit and identifies areas where improvements by Chinese trade regulators would be desirable. This book starts with an analysis of basic issues of international trade regulation in China. Part II, covers foreign trading rights, trade restrictions and prohibitions, licensing and quotas, customs regulation, health, safety and technical standards, and trade in technology. The focus is on possible abuses of trade regulations designed to be neutral but which have the effect of discriminating against goods of foreign origin. law, in the form of anti-dumping law, anti-subsidy law, safeguarding measures and trade retaliation. Part IV explores new regulatory issues, including trade promotion, trade and competition, trade and IP rights protection, and resolution of trade disputes. This book combines academic research with detailed information and practical advice on the laws and policies of international trade regulation in China. It should attract not only legal researchers, but also practitioners who have an interest in international trade with China and the relevant legal and regulatory issues.

Vessels very frequently serve under a long chain of charterparties and sub-charterparties. When this is the case, the legal issues are more convoluted than they might at first seem. Incorporation clauses are commonplace in bills of lading used in the tramp trade due to the desire to make this web of contracts back-to-back. The extent to which the terms of the charterparty referred to can be carried across to the bill of lading has, over the centuries, been hotly disputed in many jurisdictions. Entirely dedicated to the topic of the incorporation of charterparty terms into bills of lading, this book discusses and analyses the legal and practical issues surrounding this topic under English and US law. Through discussions on the incorporation of a wide range of different charterparty terms, the book combines the peculiar and sophisticated rules of incorporation with the legal and practical issues concerning shipping, international trade, arbitration and conflict of laws and jurisdiction.

The law of secured transactions has seen dramatic changes in the last decade. International organisations, particularly the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), have been working towards the creation of international legal standards aimed at the modernisation and harmonisation of secured financing laws (eg, the United Nations Convention on the Assignment of Receivables in International Trade, the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions and its Intellectual Property Supplement, the UNCITRAL Guide on the Implementation of a Security Rights Registry and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions). The overall theme of this book is international (or cross-border) secured transactions law. It assembles contributions from some of the most authoritative academic voices on secured financing law. This publication will be of interest to those involved in secured transactions around the world, including policy-makers, practitioners, judges, arbitrators and academics.

This groundbreaking book provides the first comprehensive account of the "juridiction consulaire," ""or Merchant Court, of eighteenth-century Paris. Drawing on extensive archival research, Amalia D. Kessler reconstructs the workings of the court and the commercial law that it applied and uses these to shed new light on questions about the relationship between commerce and modernity that are of deep and abiding interest to lawyers, historians, and social scientists alike. Kessler shows how the merchants who were associated with the court--and not just elite thinkers and royal reformers--played a key role in reconceptualizing commerce as the credit-fueled private exchange necessary to sustain the social order. Deploying this modern conception of commerce in a variety of contexts, ranging from litigation over negotiable instruments to corporatist battles for status and jurisdiction, these merchants contributed (largely inadvertently and to their ultimate regret) to the demise of corporatism as both conceptual framework and institutional practice. In so doing, they helped bring about the social and political revolution of 1789. Highly readable and engaging, "A Revolution in Commerce" provides important new insights into the rise of commercial modernity by demonstrating the remarkable role played by the law in ideological and institutional transformation.

This book explores the allocation of risk and liability of dangerous goods between the seller and the buyer under CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) and FOB (Free on Board) contracts, providing an in-depth study of the issue of carriage of dangerous goods in the context of international trade law. In addition to offering specific solutions to issues arising in the context of the contract of sale, the book provides a non-contractual angle, putting forward suggestions under non-contractual mechanisms. Importantly, the book incorporates case law examples from the Commonwealth and the US. Dangerous goods that are carried by sea can cause potential risks of losses and damages to the vessel, other cargoes and lives on board. The allocation of liability arising out of the carriage of dangerous goods has recently attracted unwelcome attention because of mis-declared cargoes leading to fires on board ships. Thus the book fills a gap in the literature by addressing the issue in detail with examples from multiple jurisdictions, and proposing solutions. In particular, the book analyses whether and to what extent the law of international sale of goods can provide any assistance in the re-allocation of liability between the buyer and the seller. This book will be of great interest to all those involved in the research as well as legal practice of international trade law and the law of carriage of goods by sea.

Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state, with more than 18,000 islands and over 7.9 million square kilometres of sea. The marine frontier presents the nation with both economic opportunities and political and strategic challenges. Indonesia has been affected more than most countries in the world by a slow revolution in the management of its waters. Whereas Indonesia's seas were once conceived administratively as little more than the empty space between islands, successive governments have become aware that this view is outmoded. The effective transfer to the seas of regulatory regimes that took shape on land, such as territoriality, has been an enduring challenge to Indonesian governments. This book addresses issues related to maritime boundaries and security, marine safety, inter-island shipping, the development of the archipelagic concept in international law, marine conservation, illegal fishing, and the place of the sea in national and regional identity.

Against the backdrop of enormous technological strides, this book argues that the air transport industry must be constantly vigilant in its efforts to employ a legal regime that is applicable to the aeronautical and human aspects of the carriage by air of persons and goods. In this regard, safety and security are of the utmost importance, both in terms of safe air navigation and the preservation of human life. Although the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) addresses legal issues through its Legal Committee, many emerging issues that urgently require attention lie outside the Committee's purview. This book analyzes in detail the items being considered by ICAO's Legal Committee, considers the legal nature of ICAO, and discusses whether or not ICAO's scope should be extended. Since the limited issues currently addressed by ICAO do not reflect the rapidly changing realities of air transport, the book also covers a broad range of key issues outside the parameters set by ICAO, such as: the need to teach air law to a new generation of aviation professionals; combating cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism; the regulation of artificial intelligence; traveller identification; interference with air navigation; human trafficking; unruly passengers; climate change; air carrier liability for passenger death or injury; Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (drones); and the cabin crew and their legal implications.

This collection of essays critically evaluates the legal framework necessary for the use of autonomous ships in international waters. The work is divided into three parts: Part 1 evaluates how far national shipping regulation, and the public international law background that lies behind it, may need modification and updating to accommodate the use of autonomous ships on international voyages. Part 2 deals with private law and insurance issues such as collision and pollution liability, salvage, limitation of liability and allocation of risk between carrier and cargo interests. Part 3 analyses international convention regimes dealing with maritime safety and other matters, arguing for specific changes in the existing conventions such as SOLAS and MARPOL, which would provide the international framework that is necessary for putting autonomous ships into commercial use. The book also takes the view that amendment of international conventions is important in the case of liability issues, arguing that leaving such matters to national law, particularly issues concerning product liability, could not only restrict or hinder the availability of liability insurance but also hamper the development of technology in this field. Written by internationally-known experts in their respective areas, the book offers a holistic approach to the debate on autonomous ships and makes a timely and important contribution to the literature.

In quantity and importance, private standards are rapidly taking over the role of public norms in the international and national regulation of product safety. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the rise, role and status of these private product safety standards in the legal regulation of integrating markets. In international and regional trade law as in European and American constitutional and administrative law, tort law and antitrust law, the book analyses the ways in which legal systems can and do recognise private norms as 'law.' This sociological question of law's recognition of private governance is indissolubly connected with a normative question of democratic theory: can law recognize legal validity and democratic legitimacy outside the constitution, without constitutional political institutions and beyond the nation state? Or: can law 'constitute' private transnational governance? The book offers the first systematic treatment of European, American and international 'standards law' in the English language, and makes a significant contribution to the study of the processes of globalization and privatization in social and legal theory. For the thesis on which this book was based Harm Schepel was awarded the first EUI Alumni Prize for the "best interdisciplinary and/or comparative thesis on European issues" written at the EUI in recent years.

Letters of credit have retained their role as an instrumentality for the financing of foreign trade. An understanding of the law and practice in point is imperative for lawyers advising business people and bank clients, as well as for the banking and trading communities. The book examines the topic on the basis of the common law system, primarily UK law, and adopts an approach that is analytical and not merely descriptive. Letter of credit transactions are, by their nature, international and most nations have adopted the Uniform Customs and Practices ("UCP") originally promulgated by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in 1933 and updated from time to time. Today, the UCP constitutes a code of internationally accepted rules governing letter of credit transactions. The authors have therefore selectively incorporated some comparative discussion, for instance, of the position in the USA and Europe. The book will be an essential work of reference for commercial lawyers in all the major financial centres of Europe, America and Asia.

The book provides readers with an overview of the unique features of German business and enterprise law and an in-depth analysis of the organs of governance of German public limited companies (general meeting, management board, supervisory board). In addition, approaches for reforms required at the international level are also suggested and discussed, including, among others, the unique interplay and dynamics of the German two-tier board model with the system of codetermination, referring to the arrangement of employees sitting on the supervisory boards of German public limited companies and private companies employing more than 500 employees; also covered are significant recent legal developments in Europe.The book highlights the core function of valuation and financial reporting at the international, European and German levels, with accounting as the documentary proof of good corporate governance. Corporate governance encompasses the free enterprise system, which is treated comprehensively in this book from a German perspective. This distinguishes the book from other books written in English in this subject area, not only because of the comprehensive way it covers German corporate law and corporate governance, but also because of the fact that it provides international and European perspectives on these important topics.The book is addressed to researchers, practitioners and basically anyone with an interest in the complex, but intriguing areas of corporate law and corporate governance.

To what extent did English law facilitate trade before the advent of general incorporation and modern securities law? This is the question at the heart of Capitalism before Corporations. It examines the extent to which legal institutions of the Regency period, especially Lord Eldon's Chancellorship, were sympathetic to the needs of merchants and willing to accommodate their changing practices and demands within established legal doctrinal frameworks and contemporary political economic thought. In so doing, this book probes at the heart of modern debates about equity, trusts, insolvency, and the justifiability of corporate privileges. Corporations are an integral part of modern life. We bank with corporations, we usually buy our groceries from them, and they provide us with most news and media. We take it for granted too that most large-scale business, and even much small-scale business, is carried out by corporations. Things were not always so. Televantos considers the Bubble Act of 1720, which criminalised the forming of corporations without a Royal Charter or Act of Parliament, its repeal in 1825, and the subsequent impact. Much of the modernisation of Britain's industry therefore took place before general incorporation was allowed. Unaided by statute, traders had to create business organisations using the basic building blocks of private law: trusts, partnership, and agency.

This book seeks to examine the relationship between corporate law rules and economic performance. Contributors examine the design of the two main systems of corporate governance to ascertain which bundle of rules is likely to support the emergence of a strong system of governance. They seek to show that the performance of companies is linked to different patterns of shareholding, legal rules, and non-legal relationships.

The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement, by Daniel A. Crane provides a comprehensive and succinct treatment of the history, structure, and behavior of the various U.S. institutions that enforce antitrust laws, such as the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. It addresses the relationship between corporate regulation and antitrust, the uniquely American approach of having two federal antitrust agencies, antitrust federalism, and the predominance of private enforcement over public enforcement. It also draws comparisons with the structure of institutional enforcement outside the United States in the European Union and in other parts of the world, and it considers the possibility of creating international antitrust institutions through the World Trade Organization or other treaty mechanisms. The book derives its topics from historical, economic, political, and theoretical perspectives.