Home Country Regulation On Overseas Investors' Environmental Behavior:China's Call

While the transnational corporations as engines and beneficiaries of the globalizationare powerful entities that can dramatically influence the life of the local communitiesin the host country of their investment, no efficient mechanism was so far put intopractice for rendering them accountable. With China having become the third largestinvestor in2013, what Beijing has to say in this matter is important. This paper firstpresents a background of the issue, centered on the corporate opposition to regulationand efforts to keep all international regulation to which they may be subject at avoluntary level, and then provides an original legal analysis of the measures adoptedby China. Although voluntary, the measures are found to have unique characteristicsand a potential unobserved in the literature.Inspired by the path chosen by China with its Guidelines for Environmental Protection(2013), the paper argues that one reason that stood in the way of global legaladvancement in matters of transnational corporations' accountability was mixing upthe fields (labor, environment, human rights). In this vein, the author argues, usingprior experience as political marketer and noticing a visible preoccupation of theChinese leadership for the country's international reputation, that China may have anopportunity in stepping further on the road of holding its corporations moreaccountable for environmental wrongdoing, when this happens. To this end, for thecase that the policy makers will consider the advantages of such an unexpected move,the paper provides as source of inspiration a functionalist, comprehensive and originallegal analysis of the measures adopted by other important capital exporters: US, EU,Canada andAustralia.