A Study On Several Legal Issues Of Bilateral Investment Agreements Under The Trend Of International Investment Liberalization

Along with the rapid development trend of international globalization, the foreigndirect investment is increasingly become the main force to promote the development ofit. Thus, following the liberalization of trade, there is the new wave of liberalization inthe international investment field. At the same time, China’s foreign investment scale isgrowing. In2013, it continued to exceed the growth rate of attracting foreigninvestment, which also means that our country is switching from "bringing in", the roleof capital-importing countries, increasingly to the dual roles reversal of capital exporterand importer. And it will enhance the development of both "going out" and "bringingin". Development of the global economy make a crucial impact on the internationalinvestment rules.In recent years, our country revised or signed the Bilateral investment treaties (shortas BITs) towards more comprehensive and perfect, especially in such aspects asdefinition in the investment and national treatment etc.At the beginning of2008, China and the United States restarted the negotiation ofBITs between the two countries, which began a century negotiations, both sides willfocus the talks as top economic item in recent years. This negotiations is showing that,facing the changing of the investment environment and more open free investment rules,China changes the attitude and to be positive demanding the cooperation andopportunities. Once the agreement signed, it will change the old BITs model of ourcountry, and it will indicate that there is a new generation of BITs with a higherstandard. This article analyzed about the China’s BITs through recent years, andcombined with the main part of the access and treatments to summarize some legalissues in the BITs.I hope the article can provide a reference for the ongoing investmentagreement negotiations between China and the European Union, and later FTAnegotiations involved the investment issues between China&Australia, China&Japan and South Korea, and even the future of BITs with other more countries.The paper is divided into three chapters:The first chapter briefly introduces the background of investment liberalization andthe transformation of China’s economic role in the investment field. Then it teases theBITs of China in recent years. I used three generations of the classification for the BITsmodels and the new generation BIT namely China-US BIT. And this paragraph mainlytalks about the recent investment agreement which is the third generation BITs.The second and third chapters are the main parts of this article，mainly from thedefinition of investment terms and national treatment provisions analysising thedevelopment trend of China’s bilateral investment treaties.The second chapter focuses on the definition clause. It starts the meaning of theterms established by the specific definition in the academic aspect and summarizedvarious BITs description of the definition of "investment". I select two perspectives ofthe definition clause, the types and the models, to reviewe the development and thechange of this clause.The third chapter is about the national treatment provisions. It makes an explorationof selection and development of BITs in national treatment. The national treatmentvaries a lot from the Post-establishment Treatment to Pre-establishment Treatment,which set up explicitly in China-US investment negotiations in2013. And I combinedwith US2012BIT template to analysis the future BITs template which is shaping up tothe Pre-establishment Treatment with negative list, as well as a huge impact on China’srules of law and reform. I hope the article can provide the reference to the investmentnegotiations in the future.