A Research On FDI Treatment In The Course Of International Investment Liberalization

In the field of international investment, national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment and fair and equitable treatment are three major treatment standards which are granted by host countries to the foreign investors. They are the keys to the international investment liberalization, which is regarded to a great extent as a continuous improvement of the treatment to foreign direct investment (FDI). From European BITs to American BITs, from the rules of European Union and ASEAN to North American Free Trade Agreement, from Non-binding APEC Investment Principles, Guidelines on the Treatment of Foreign Direct Investment and Multilateral Agreement on Investment (Draft) to binding agreements such as GATS,TRIMs and so on, their rules on FDI's treatment reflect the trend to investment liberalization. However, up to now, not all nations agree on some main legal issues about FDI's treatment, such as the content of fair and equitable treatment, the applicable object, situation, phase of national treatment and most-favored treatment and their exceptions and the like. Particularly, some developed countries, taking US as a leader, apply the national treatment to pre-establishment phase in order to quicken the course of the liberalization, whereas most developing countries hope that they can keep more supervising power over FDI so as to channel FDI into the nation's economic goal and protect national industries, but on the other hand they are in dire need of introducing FDI into domestic economic construction because of shortage of capital and have to join in the liberalization.The treatment to FDI granted by China includes national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment and fair and equitable treatment. There are some problems in domestic laws and policies and in the practice of treaties. Among them are"super-national treatment","hypo-national treatment", the relationship between national and most-favored-nation treatment and so on. In order to solve these problems, based on the trend to international investment liberalization with a fully consideration of the situations of our countries, this essay brings forward some measures on FDI's treatment in reply to the international investment liberalization.