Law Commons^™

Us Trade Policy, China And The Wto (Foreword), Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

In ‘U.S. Trade Policy, China and the WTO’, Nerina Boschiero addresses a key topic in contemporary international economic law and global governance. By focusing on a turning point in global politics and the shaping/framing of trade policy in the U.S.– the election of President Donald Trump sheds light on the tumultuous process of reshaping of global governance. The crisis of multilateralism has been discussed at length in academia and mainstream media. However, little attention has been paid to how the U.S. is reacting to the rise of China in the global order, in practical terms. In particular, focus …

Public Ownership And The Wto In A Post Covid-19 Era: From Trade Disputes To A 'Social' Function, Paolo Davide Farah, Davide Zoppolato

Articles

Public ownership is closely bound to the need of the government to protect and guarantee the well-being of its citizens. Where the market cannot, or does not want to, provide goods and services, the State uses different tools to intervene, influence, and control some aspects of the private sphere of expression of its citizens in the name and interest of the collectivity. Although, in the past century, this behavior was accepted as one of the expressions of the public authority and part of the social contract, this perception has shifted partially in accordance with the wave of privatization programs initiated …

Against Populist Isolationism: New Asian Regionalism And Global South Powers In International Economic Law, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article provides the most up-to-date examination of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is poised to become the world’s largest free trade agreement (FTA). It argues that the 16-country mega-FTA will galvanize the paradigm shift in Asian regionalism and build a normative foundation for the Global South in international economic law. Based on intertwined theoretical and substantive claims, this article opens an inquiry into the assertive legalism of developing nations in the new regional economic order. It further manifests the pivotal force of emerging economies against populist isolationism in the Trump era that undermines the neoliberal foundation of …

Multilateral Economic Institutions And U.S. Foreign Policy: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Multilateral Int'l Dev., Multilateral Insts., & Int'l Econ., Energy, & Envtl. Pol'y Of The S. Comm. On Foreign Relations, 115th Cong., Nov. 27, 2018 (Statement Of Jennifer A. Hillman), Jennifer A. Hillman

Testimony Before Congress

Virtually every major international gathering of world leaders recently has ended in failure—or at least failure to reach enough agreement to issue a concluding statement or communique. These failures come at a time when many have been looking for signs that world leaders would come together to address the most pressing problems facing the world—including climate change, the breakdown in the rules of the international trading system, the need everywhere for good jobs that pay a living wage, and rapidly growing income inequality.

The failure of these meetings to produce formal agreements—or even specific paths to reaching agreements in the …

Resourcing Green Technologies Through Smart Mineral Enterprise Development: A Case Analysis Of Cobalt, Saleem Ali, Perrine Toledano, Nicolas Maennling, Nathaniel Hoffman, Lola Aganga

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement requires the world to adopt ‘green technologies’ such as renewable energies and electric transportation at an unprecedented scale. While many countries have implemented policies to spur the adoption of such technologies, a lack of focus has been placed on the sourcing of minerals that are required as inputs. As a result, there is likely to be a significant deficit that may constrain the adoption of green technologies.

In this report, we argue that a neglected area in addressing the mineral scarcity challenge is the private sector’s current trajectory for geological mineral exploration and …

Bringing Human Rights Into Bilateral Investment Treaties: South Africa And A Different Approach To International Investment Disputes, Erika George, Elizabeth Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

This Article therefore begins with a discussion of the Western imperialist history underlying the pasts of China and Africa, discussing the evolution of a Chinese-African economic alliance. Next, this Article discusses the broader roles of BITs in the ISDS system within the context of Chinese and South Africa BITs. It continues with a discussion on the Southern African Development Community's Model BIT, explaining why this particular model is a step in the right direction towards the protection of human rights in all IIAs. This Article highlights the relationship between international investment law, foreign direct investment ("FDI"), BITs, and human rights, …

Recognition Of Foreign Judgments In China: The Liu Case And The 'Belt And Road' Initiative, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In June, 2017, the Wuhan Intermediate People's Court became the first Chinese court to recognize a U.S. judgment in the case of Liu Li v. Tao Li & Tong Wu. The Liu case is a significant development in Chinese private international law, but represents more than a single decision in a single case. It is one piece of a developing puzzle in which the law on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in China is a part of a larger set of developments. These developments are inextricably tied to the “One Belt and One Road,” or “Belt and …

Rights-Weakening Federalism, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines whether federalism protects land rights in China from two dimensions. I first compare national law with local institutions of eminent domain, revealing that local governments take much more land than the national government approves, frequently violating, tweaking, and challenging national law. I next examine the impact of interjurisdictional competition on the development of local land institutions, demonstrating that local governments are weakening individual land rights for the benefits of mobile capital. Overall, Chinese federalism weakens rather than strengthens individual land rights and should be called rights-weakening federalism.

This China case also has general theoretical implications. Leading property …

Twenty-Five Years On — The Establishment And Application Of Corporate Fiduciary Duties In Prc Law, Nicholas C. Howson

Law & Economics Working Papers

This chapter analyzes the development of corporate fiduciary law and principles in the law of the People’s Republic of China from the early 1990s to date. The story starts with a short history of the contested advent of explicitly law-based corporate fiduciary duties into the PRC legal system after 1978, with an in depth consideration of the concurrent “legal construction” and “corporatization without privatization” programs implemented by China’s post-Mao administrations in the two decades following. In that regard, at least three development paths are described and explained — academic, regulatory and judicial/jurisprudential. Then the paper details how the substantive legal …

China's 'Corporatization Without Privatization' And The Late 19th Century Roots Of A Stubborn Path Dependency, Nicholas C. Howson

Law & Economics Working Papers

This Article analyzes the contemporary program of “corporatization without privatization” in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) directed at China’s traditional state-owned enterprises (SOEs) through a consideration of long ago precursor enterprise establishments—starting from the last Chinese imperial dynasty’s creation of “government promoted/supervised-merchant financed/operated” (guandu shangban) firms in the latter part of the nineteenth century. While analysts are tempted to see PRC corporations with listings on international exchanges that dominate the global economy and capital markets as expressions of “convergence,” this Article argues that such firms in fact show deeply embedded aspects of path dependency unique to the Chinese context …

Cultural Paradigms In Property Institutions, Taisu Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

Do “cultural factors” substantively influence the creation and evolution of property institutions? For the past several decades, few legal scholars have answered affirmatively. Those inclined towards a law and economics methodology tend to see property institutions as the outcome of self-interested and utilitarian bargaining, and therefore often question the analytical usefulness of “culture.” The major emerging alternative, a progressive literature that emphasizes the social embeddedness of property institutions and individuals, is theoretically more accommodating of cultural analysis but has done very little of it.

This Article develops a “cultural” theory of how property institutions are created and demonstrates that such …

Transfer Pricing: Un Practical Manual – China, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Andrew Shact

Faculty Scholarship

Any contemporary Chinese transfer pricing assessment needs to consider the United Nation (UN) Practical Manual on Transfer Pricing for Developing Countries released in May 2013. In particular, Chapter 10 discusses Country Practices and presents China’s most up to date transfer pricing policy statement.

China is not an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nor has it formally adopted the OECD’s Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations. Chapter 10 makes it very clear that China is charting a different transfer pricing course in at least nine important areas. China believes that: 1. significant comparability adjustments are …

Transfer Pricing: Un Guidelines -- Brazil, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

The UN Practical Manual on Transfer Pricing for Developing Countries endeavors to provide “clearer guidance on the policy and administrative aspects of applying transfer pricing analysis.” Chapter 10 is particularly noteworthy. It sets out specific country practices. The rules in Brazil, China, India and South Africa are offered as templates for developing countries to follow.

This article considers the Brazilian contribution to Chapter 10. Although some writers believe that developing countries should adopt the Brazilian model this article suggests otherwise. Even though it is a theoretically simple system, some aspects of the Brazilian model consistently work to the fiscal disadvantage …

Reassessing Apec's Role As A Trans-Regional Economic Architecture: Legal And Policy Dimensions, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines the two-decade evolution of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the future prospects for Asian regionalism. It argues that while APEC retains advantages over competing regional structures, it should undergo reforms to accelerate the Bogor Goals and ensure its complementarity with the World Trade Organization (WTO). The article first analyzes the impact of stake-holding countries’ trade policies on APEC’s structure and development. By assessing APEC’s soft-law mechanism, it explores APEC’s WTO-plus contributions that reinvigorated the International Technology Agreement negotiations and improved supply chain facilitation. APEC’s goal of creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) can …

One (Firm) Is Not Enough: A Legal-Economic Analysis Of Ec-Fasteners, Chad P. Brown, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

The WTO’s Appellate Body (AB) dealt with a number of issues for the first time in the Report of EC-Fasteners. Importantly, the AB discussed the consistency of the European Union (EU) regulation with the multilateral rules on the conditions for deviating from the obligation to calculate individual dumping margins. Although China formally won the argument, the AB may have opened the door to treat China as a non-market economy (NME) even beyond 2016 when China’s NME-status was thought to expire under the terms of China’s 2001 WTO Accession Protocol. The AB further dealt with numerous other issues ranging from statistical …

Pathway To Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions In The People's Republic Of China, Donald C. Clarke, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

Using a dataset of Chinese judicial opinions arising in over fifty cases, this paper analyses the development and current implementation of shareholder derivative actions in the courts of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), both before and after the derivative lawsuit was explicitly authorized in the PRC’s 2006 Company Law effective January 1, 2006. In addition, we describe the very unique ecology of enterprise organization and corporate governance in modern China, and critique the formal design of the derivative action and offer reform suggestions. We find the design of the Chinese derivative lawsuit to be, in some respects, innovative and …

Cadbury Twenty Years On, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Cadbury Report, one of the most significant events in modern corporate governance. The Cadbury Report, and its simple two page 'best practices', triggered a global debate on corporate governance. 'Cadbury' codes of corporate governance spread like wildfire. The legacy of the Cadbury Report lives on in the UK with no diminution in the appeal of its voluntary code/comply or explain approach to corporate governance. But there are several clouds looming on the horizon. Comply or explain and voluntary codes of corporate governance appear to have run their course elsewhere …

China In Africa: What The Policy Of Nonintervention Adds To The Western Development Dilemma, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

Chinese investment activity in Africa has skyrocketed in recent years, outpacing every other nation except South Africa. China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent’s emerging economies. These loans and investments are typically made in exchange for securing access to natural resources. Based on its principles of nonintervention and respect for sovereignty, China gives this money with little or no strings attached. The West, which typically conditions its loans on initiatives like democracy promotion and corruption reduction, has labeled China a “rogue donor,” whose actions will …

The China Currency Issue: Why The World Trade Organization Would Fail To Provide The United States With An Effective Remedy, Marcus Sohlberg

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

A critical issue in the global trading system that came to the forefront in 2010 concerns exchange rates. Having suffered to various degrees through the worst economic and financial downturn since the Great Depression, many large trading nations have sought to achieve economic recovery through export-led growth. In order to boost international competitiveness, many have engaged in competitive devaluations, i.e. interventions in currency markets to devalue domestic currency. According to Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega this situation has escalated into a “global currency war”.

This paper focuses on China’s practice of maintaining an artificially undervalued currency, and addresses the question …

Property Rights In Land, Agricultural Capitalism, And The Relative Decline Of Pre-Industrial China, Taisu Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Economically Benevolent Dictators: Lessons For Developing Democracies, Ronald J. Gilson, Curtis J. Milhaupt

Faculty Scholarship

The post-war experience of developing countries leads to two depressing conclusions: only a small number of countries have successfully developed; and development theory has not produced development. In this article we examine one critical fact that might provide insights into the development conundrum: Some autocratic regimes have fundamentally transformed their economies, despite serious deficiencies along a range of other dimensions. Our aim is to understand how growth came about in these regimes, and whether emerging democracies might learn something important from these experiences.

Our thesis is that in these economically successful countries, the authoritarian regime managed a critical juncture in …

China And Brazil: Potential Allies Or Just Brics In The Wall?, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Brazil is an increasingly important actor in global governance and for China specifically. Sino-Brazilian relations have deepened considerably but they remain concentrated in areas of trade and investment. There is also considerable overlap in interests between the two countries in other areas, such as diplomatic and political relations. At the same time, China must manage carefully important differences that exist over the enlargement of the UN and the potential challenge to the Brazilian industry.

Why Economic Performance Has Differed Between Brazil And China? A Comparative Analysis Of Brazilian And Chinese Macroeconomic Policy, Fernando Ferrari-Filho, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper addresses a specific question: why has China grown so rapidly and Brazil not? To answer this question, it (i) establishes the basis for comparison between China and Brazil by contextualizing these countries within the BRICs concept, and (ii) presents a comparative analysis of Brazilian and Chinese reforms focusing only on the issue of macroeconomic policy, especially the monetary and exchange rate regimes, and its effect on growth.

Banking Reform In The Chinese Mirror, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This paper analyzes the transactions that led to the partial privatization of China’s three largest banks in 2005-06. It suggests that these transactions were structured to allow for inter-organizational learning under conditions of uncertainty. For the involved foreign investors, participation in large financial intermediaries of central importance to the Chinese economy gave them the opportunity to learn about financial governance in China. For the Chinese banks partnering with more than one foreign investor, their participation allowed them to benefit from the input by different players in the global financial market place and to learn from the range of technical and …

An Unrecognized State In Foreign And International Courts: The Case Of The Republic Of China On Taiwan, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the 1970s, Taiwan lost its United Nations seat, and most nations switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China (PRC). The loss of Taiwan's diplomatic recognition became a fundamental issue in judicial proceedings. Contrary to the PRC's claim, the article argues that, from the viewpoint of international law, Taiwan has never been succeeded by the PRC. The article explores the Taiwan question faced by foreign courts and finds that, albeit the lack of diplomatic recognition, the courts around the world have almost uniformly accorded Taiwan the status of state and this judicial recognition has risen to …

The Paradox Of Corruption As Antithesis To Economic Development: Does Corruption Undermine Economic Development In Indonesia And China, And Why Are The Experiences Different In Each Country?, Andrew White

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The question of whether corruption is antithetical to economic development has been extensively researched and debated since the 1960s. While nearly all participants in the debate appear to agree that corruption ultimately is antithetical to long-term economic development, the extent to which it positively or negatively affects economic development in the short term depends upon highly contextual factors. In different countries and regions of the world, factors of local culture and history, the nature of the state, the type of corruption and actors involved, and the political responses and motivations to curtail corruption all inform the answer to this question. …

The Internet, Regulation And The Market For Loyalties: An Economic Analysis Of Transborder Information Flow, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

As the Internet has gained prevalence, attention has turned to its regulation. Indeed, regulation proves to be a unique and complex problem, given the Internet's lack of traditional borders and boundaries. Highlighting possible avenues of regulation, the author discusses neo-classical economic theory, specifically Monroe E. Price's market for loyalties theory. Although originally applied to the regulation of broadcasting, the author contends that the market for loyalties theory can also be applied to the Internet. Building on Professor Price's pioneering analysis, the article extends the theory to examine market elasticity's effect on the loss of monopoly control over information flow (as …

Feminist Foundations For The Law Of Business: One Law And Economics Scholar's Survey And (Re)View, Barbara Ann White

All Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this Essay is to suggest frameworks and modes of inquiry for applying feminist legal analysis to business law and the related theory of law and economics. It does so in two ways. One is to assess works already written by feminist scholars in the business law arena, highlighting how those contributions have begun to pave the way towards enriching the scope of business law analysis. The other is to offer two new roles for feminist jurisprudence. One role is to define just (that is, fair) distributions of rights and the other role is to define social judgments …

Sugar Coated Bullets: Corruption And The New Economic Order In China, Mark Findlay, Thomas Chor-Wing Chiu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The recent political debate concerning the influence of corruption on the “new economic order” in the People's Republic of China is unique not only for its detailed and public manifestations, but also because it works around the acceptance of some degree of corporate private ownership of the means of production within China. The concern for corruption in Chinese government and commerce is not, of itself, novel.We prefer in this paper briefly to focus on the economic and political environment from within which this concern has been generated, to comment on the significance for the Government of the PRC in associating …