Research On The Legal Issues In International Investment Treaties

This paper aims to study the issue of transparency in international investment treaties (IIAs). The Article consists of five parts:The first part analyzes the current situation and the development trend of investment treaties, highlighting its two distinct characteristics:regional treaty-making is gradually moving to centre stage and sustainability considerations are gaining prominence in the negotiation of IIAs. The former can be illustrated by such typical examples as:the Trans-pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement(TPP), the China-Japan-Korea trilateral investment agreement, and ASEAN (10+) Free Trade Agreement.The second part discusses the transparency obligations of countries within the traditional framework of IIAs. The subject, scope, extent, implementation and enforcement are discussed in this section.The third part introduces investors’ transparency obligations, which is an requirement for investors to fulfill corporate social responsibility and for the the host country to protect the public interest.The fourth part, which debates the issue of transparency in international investment arbitration, is the focus of this article. This section firstly introduces and analyses the international investment arbitration mechanism and its terrible situation, then generalizes the content and related institutional rules of transparency in investment arbitration, and finally puts forward several measures to solve the problem of lack of transparency in investment arbitration.The fifth part expounds China’s attitudes and policy choices towards transparency obligation. With reference to China’s Model BIT and recent bilateral and regional investment treaties, China should actively do some research and establish the system of transparency.