New Frontiers in Asia-Pacific International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution is a meaty volume exploring the rising importance of international commercial dispute resolution—principally arbitration, but also mediation and litigation—in the Asia-Pacific region. With four editors and 19 authors (ranging from early-career researchers to prolific research-active professors), the book canvasses the dispute-resolution options, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and reforms in Australasia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Korea. At over 400 pages, the book offers exhaustive multi-jurisdictional doctrinal analysis and contextual critique.

The central rationale for the volume is Asia’s surging economic power. As Nobumichi Teramura, Shahla Ali, and Anselmo Eyes note in Chapter 15, “Expanding Asia-Pacific Frontiers for International Dispute Resolution: Conclusions and Recommendations,” gross domestic product (GDP) in the Asian region in 1970 was two-thirds that of Europe and half that of North America; fast-forward 50 years and it now eclipses both. Rising trade volumes and increases in foreign direct investment flows, within and with the region, are key drivers of this re-tilting of economic power. To secure continued economic prosperity, free-trade and investment agreements are proliferating in the region: the popularity of bilateral investment treaties in the 1990s and 2000s is now giving way to multilateral international investment agreements. As Luke Nottage and Bruno Jetin observe in the introductory Chapter 1, “New Frontiers in Asia-Pacific Trade, Investment and International Business Dispute Resolution,” robust dispute resolution is an important component to these agreements.

The thesis of the book is that the Asia-Pacific region is emerging as a new site for international dispute resolution, especially commercial arbitration. Singapore and Hong Kong are already established leaders in this space; China is rapidly becoming more important, especially given the ambitious scope of its multiregional “One Belt One Road” economic-development initiative; Japan, Korea, and Australia are developing expertise. Beyond international arbitration, the editors submit, the region has opportunities to build new institutions and marshal fresh expertise in other forms of international commercial dispute resolution—in particular, litigation in Asia-based international commercial courts and international mediation services applying the newly minted United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (Singapore Convention on Mediation) that came into force from September 2020. The editors, however, are careful not to overstate their claims. For example, Malaysia, although actively promoting free-trade agreements and alternative dispute resolution, has had limited involvement in trade disputes and investor–state dispute settlements (according to A. Vijayalakshmi Venugopal in Chapter 10, “Malaysia’s Involvement in International Business Dispute Resolution”). And India is terminating its bilateral investment treaties in favour of fresh documents privileging state rights—a trend that could threaten the economic gains achieved from the extinguished treaties (according to Jaivir Singh in Chapter 12, “Indian Investment Treaty Practice: Qualitatively and Quantitatively Assessing Recent Developments”).

A challenge in assembling an edited collection of essays is ensuring thematic coherence. This is especially so given that some scholarly communities (such as Australia) assume contributions to edited books are weaker in quality than peer-reviewed journal articles or monographs. Of course, this is a strange assumption to ground a metric for research performance and, fortunately, it is not one that is universally shared. In my own experience, edited books can offer authoritative, in-depth, and rich treatment of a new issue or long-standing controversy.Footnote ¹ Indeed, I would argue that the signature contribution of this book lies precisely in that it brings together up-to-date doctrinal, contextual, empirical, and theoretical ideas about international commercial dispute resolution in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, the structure and chapter sequence of the book do raise some concerns about coherence. For example, the collection is book-ended by an introductory chapter (by Luke Nottage and Bruno Jetin) and a conclusion (by Nobumichi Teramura, Shahla Ali, and Anselmo Reyes). They both cover similar terrain. Yet, as a reader, I found the conclusion a more succinct outline of the chapters of the book. The introduction, despite an excellent contextual overview of the state of international dispute resolution in the Asia-Pacific, was a less satisfying overview of the individual chapters, discussing them out of sequence and giving each chapter quite different depth of treatment. Further, I was puzzled by the early, prominent emphasis given to the jurisdiction of Australia in the first four substantive chapters: Chapter 2, “An International Commercial Court for Australia: An Idea Worth Taking to Market” by Marilyn Warren and Clyde Croft; Chapter 3, “New Frontiers for International Commercial Arbitration in Australia: Beyond the ‘Lucky Country’” by Albert Monichino and Nobumichi Teramura; Chapter 4, “Confidentiality and Transparency in International Arbitration: Asia-Pacific Tensions and Expectations” by Luke Nottage (also covering Japan); and Chapter 5, “Novel and Noteworthy Aspects of Australia’s Recent Investment Agreements and ISDS Policy: The CPTPP, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Mauritius Transparency Treaties” by Ana Ubilava and Luke Nottage. This is because, as all the authors acknowledge, Australia is not a popular site for international commercial arbitration and has limited case-law interpreting arbitration rules. A similar criticism could be levelled at the disproportionate emphasis on Japan, likewise a relatively low-profile player in international commercial dispute-resolution services. In addition to Luke Nottage’s Chapter 4 on transparency and confidentiality (mentioned above), James Claxton, Luke Nottage, and Nobumichi Teramura contributed Chapter 10, “Disruption as a Catalyst for International Dispute Services in Japan: No Longer Business as Usual?,” and James Claxton, Luke Nottage, and Brett Williams co-authored Chapter 11, “Litigating, Arbitrating and Mediating Japan-Korea Trade and Investment Tensions.”

Between the Australia and Japan sequence of chapters were two excellent pieces on the powerhouses of Hong Kong and China: Shahla Ali’s Chapter 6 on “New Frontiers in Hong Kong’s Resolution of ‘One Belt One Road’ International Commercial and Investor–State Disputes” and Weixia Gu’s Chapter 7 on “Harmonizing the Public Policy Exception for International Commercial Arbitration along the Belt and Road.” These two chapters were highlights for me: well-structured, succinct, and clearly written overviews of Hong Kong’s sustained excellence in international commercial dispute resolution (albeit facing a challenge due to international trade tensions with China) and the implications of China’s One Belt One Road multiregional development plan and its implications for commercial dispute resolution. Vivienne Bath’s Chapter 8, “Recent Developments in China in Cross-Border Dispute Resolution: Judicial Reforms in the Shadow of Political Conformity,” reinforces Gu’s work, but adds important socio-legal commentary on China’s political and ideological control over domestic courts and the risks this poses to investment certainty.

These are not the only gems in the book. Two chapters are applied case-studies: Chapter 11, “Litigating, Arbitrating and Mediating Japan-Korea Trade and Investment Tensions” by James Claxton, Luke Nottage, and Brett Williams, for example, explores the different dispute-resolution options for the deteriorating trade relationship between Korea and Japan, especially delicate given the tense historical context. Chapter 13, “FTA Dispute Resolution to Protect Health and the Maritime Environment” by Jie (Jeanne) Huang and Jiaxiang Hu, uses a hypothetical case-study to explore how free-trade agreements may be deployed to advance non-economic international policy, such as environmental protection and public health. S. I. Strong’s Chapter 14 on “Promoting International Mediation Through the Singapore Convention on Mediation” engages with dispute-system design, default theory, psychology, and law and economics to evaluate the new Singapore Convention on Mediation. Jaivir Singh (in his India chapter mentioned above) uses econometric data to project the risks of India’s new approach to trade and investment treaty-making. And the chapter by James Claxton, Luke Nottage, and Nobumichi Teramura on Japan’s international dispute-resolution services (mentioned above) explores the extent to which theoretical accounts of Japanese disputing behaviour explain and predict Japan’s approach to international arbitration and mediation. These chapters offer a lively departure from the more doctrinal approaches in many of the other chapters.

New Frontiers in Asia-Pacific International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution is both a wide-ranging and in-depth analysis and critique of the role of international law and legal institutions in investment and trade in the Asian century. It is sure to encourage future Asia-focused international and comparative work in international commercial dispute resolution.