A Study Of Some Legal Issues On Regional Investment Rules

Regional economic integration is one of the prominent characteristics of the world's economic development today. Regional economic integration promotes the drastic development of regional economic organizations. Cooperation and arrangements in law in the fields of investment begin to improve gradually in regional economic organizations. Regional investment rules are increasingly becoming an important part of international investment rules. Recently some new changes have appeared in many aspects of regional investment rules such as in the aspects of investment access, investment treatment, investment protection, and investment disputes settlement. The cause, manifestation, characteristic and influence of the new changes are great issues to be researched. The new changes of regional investment rules represent the trend of development of international investment rules. It will influence the multilateral uniform investment legislation in the future. It is necessary to analyze the essence of regional investment rules, foresee the influence and set down scientific countermeasures in time. Developing countries especially China should participate in the establishment of regional investment rules effectively and promote the regional investment cooperation actively, which will help them have the initiative in multilateral investment cooperation.The article consists of three chapters and is organized as follows:Chapter one is an introduction of regional economic integration and regional investment rules. It focuses on three regional economic organizations: EU, NAFTA and APEC. It also classifies regional investment rules and gives a brief introduction about these rules.Chapter two is the main part of this article. It analyzes some representative regional investment rules comparatively in four core issues: investment access, investment treatment, investment protection, and investment disputes settlement. It helps us to grasp their essence. The characteristics of regional investment rules havebeen summarized in this chapter. Since there is no multilateral uniform investment rule in the world now and it will be influenced by regional investment rules in many aspects, this chapter concentrates on the influences in the following parts.Chapter three discusses the strategies China should take in the establishment of regional investment rules. China has not participated in any virtual regional investment cooperation. China should make use of APEC and China-ASEAN Free Trade Area to impulse the establishment of regional investment rules. The investment rules that will be brought forward under the multilateral framework can be experimented in regional area firstly. It will help to influence the development of multilateral investment rules positively.