An Analysis Of The Development Of Fair And Fair Treatment Standards In International Investment Treaties

With the fast development of economic integration and investment liberalizationglobally, international investment experienced great-leap-forward development. Tocreate a better investment environment, the number of bilateral and multilateralinvestment treaties has being increased a lot. As for China, the newly signedCross-strait investment promotion and protection Agreement andChina-Japan-South-Korea investment treaty Agreement Among The government ofJapan, The government of republic of South Korea and The government of ThePeople’s Republic of China for the promotion, facilitation and protection of theinvestment) have great influence in the investment field. When signing an investmenttreaty, the foreign investment treatment is an inevitable issue which shows theambition of the host country attracting the foreign investment and what kind ofpreferences the host country is willing to offer. The most common treatments includethe national treatment, the most favored nation treatment and the fair and equitabletreatment, among them the fair and equitable treatment attracts the most attention. It isan absolute treatment, which is quite different from the national treatment and themost favored nation treatment. It is widely adopted in many international investmenttreaties, however, due to the ambitious words, foreign investors, capital importingcountries and exporting countries have great divergences, which leads to a lot ofcontroversial points in international arbitrations. Especially in the latest cases thistreatment principal can be found nearly in every case, which seems like whatever kindof cause could be related to the fair and equitable treatment. The trend of broadeningthe scope of this principal is obvious, so it is quite necessary to recognize and rethinkit. As a capital giant of both importing and exporting, China has signed quite anumber of investment treaties including the fair and equitable treatment clause, whichmakes it urgent for us to fully know it in all aspects so as to better protect economicsovereignty and accelerate the development speed.This article will firstly explore the origin of the fair and equitable treatment,analyze its connotation and characters through a lot cases. Then on this basis it will elaborate the application of this principal in international arbitrations, and distinguishbetween this principal and national treatment, the most favored nation treatment andinternational minimum standard of treatment. Following these steps, this article willsum up some basic characters of this treatment and some relating principals throughcases, during this process the trend of extensification of this principal can be easilyseen. From my perspective this trend is unreasonable and should be constrained.Lastly, this article will scan China signed investment treaties and find some defects,then give its own advises such as clearly defining the intension and extension of thisprincipal and make sure of the scope of accusation and exceptional circumstances,which can reduce risks of lawsuits and to make this principal a more positive role inthe international investment field.