Research On The Dispute Settlement Mechanism Of Chinese High-speed Rail Outbound Investment

Chinese high-speed rail outbound investment has drawn an increasing attention all around the world.At the same time,it is facing many risks such as legal risks,political risks,economic risks,social and cultural risks.With so many hidden dangers,the disputes of outbound investment in Chinese high-speed rail has occurred constantly.From the perspective of legal reasons,before the dispute,China lacks the consciousness of utilizing law to reduce the loss and preventing contradictions from intensifying into disputes.Meanwhile,the domestic laws of some host countries may conflict with their investment policies,which leads to a lack of laws and regulations of the host country for external investors.After the dispute,the legal environment changes because of the change of the political and economic environment in the host country,which finally widens the adverse effects and promotes the occurrence of disputes.However,negotiation is mainly the feasible solution to the dispute over Chinese high-speed rail outbound investment at present.Recently,China intends to trigger an arbitration to Mexico for the latter's unilaterally breach of the contract,which unprecedentedly create a new way to protect the rights of Chinese high-speed rail overseas investment.For some controversial projects,our country will use its national influence in the diplomatic meetings to help Chinese enterprises to settle those disputes.But these methods are relatively simple and not able to fundamentally guarantee the settlement of the disputes.What solutions to disputes arising out of Chinese high-speed rail outbound investment can be learned? Is ICSID suitable for the settlement of such disputes? Is there any available dispute resolution clauses in the Chinese BITs to help solve these disputes?Which arbitration mechanism is more suitable for dispute resolution? Those issues will be discussed in this paper and aforesaid problems will be solved one by one.The traditional methods of resolving investment disputes have their own unique features,including political solution,judicial settlement and arbitration.Compared with other ways,arbitration is more suitable for solving the dispute in Chinese high-speed rail outbound investment.As far as arbitration is concerned,ICSID is a dispute settlement mechanism specifically designed for disputes between foreign investors and host countries.Even though China only submits 7 cases to ICSID as applicants so far,there is still much room for using the ICSID rules to solve such disputes.Among the countries that have high-speed rails cooperation with China,most of them are members of the“Washington Convention”,which belong to the jurisdiction of ICSID.After comparing ICSID and other arbitration mechanisms,we found that ICSID is more suitable for the settlement of dispute in Chinese high-speed rail outbound investment.At the same time,as China actively conducts diplomatic and trade exchanges with various countries,we attach great importance to the signing of BITs between China and the rest of the world,and other countries also tend to use the provisions of the BIT in dispute resolution.After combing nearly 20 BITs concerning countries related to Chinese high-speed rail investment,I found several issues that may affect the dispute resolution,including the conflict that China has made between the reservations to article 25 of the “Washington Convention” and the full acceptance of the convention,and the choice between the judicial resolution and various arbitration mechanisms.The second problem has been concluded in the comparison of ICSID dispute settlement mechanism with other arbitration mechanism,and ICSID is more suitable for dispute resolution.The first issue,which is confirmed in the later argument,is that although China has not withdrawn its reservations,it has greatly relieved its overly cautious attitude toward the "Washington Convention" in recent years' BITs.In conclusion,to solve the disputes arising out of Chinese high-speed rail outbound investment,firstly,our country should learn from the advantages of traditional solutions,such as insisting on the use of negotiation and mediation.Then,we should also avoid the drawbacks of diplomatic protection and judicial solution,make reasonable use of ICSID provisions in Chinese and foreign BITs and adopt dispute settlement methods dominated by ICSID jurisdiction assisted with other arbitration mechanisms.Finally,with regard to the reservations to article 25 of the “Washington Convention”,China is advised to show different attitudes toward developed and developing countries and try its best to safeguard the interests of Chinese high-speed rail investors.