International investment law is undergoing a transformation. Proposals have been experimented at various fora. One of the key issues is whether there is a so-called BRICS approach. This timely book investigates “whether and to what extent the BRICS, new power hub in international society, have a common approach to investment treaties and the potential to bring new inputs to international legal order on investment”.
In doing so, the book firstly includes five national chapters on the BRICS countries respectively to explore “why and how the BRICS countries modernize their approach to investment treaty regime”. Then two comparative chapters explore “whether they can develop some common approach to investment treaties” and “what BRICS countries will bring to the investment treaty regime in the future”. This book systematically maps the evolution of investment treaty regime, the salient substantive and procedural practices, and the current position on investment arbitration reform of the BRICS countries respectively. Despite the fact that the BRICS countries are no longer rule-takers and that they have tried to coordinate or “harmonize” their policies, the editors conclude that it is still too early to say there is a common BRICS approach to investment treaty reform. But from a normative perspective, the editors point out that “the BRICS countries might be both reformers and disrupters” of the whole investment treaty regime.
The book has thoroughly described investment treaty reforms in the BRICS countries while not sufficiently discussing the role of The BRICS in the New International Legal Order on Investment. The book points out certain similar but different localized measures (e.g., dispute prevention, investment facilitation) but does not satisfyingly explain the institutional and policy settings at both national and international levels underlying the tendency. Put in the broader picture, the BRICS countries are not exceptional in the rising experimentalism in investment treaty reform. The recent developments of non-BRICS countries, e.g., the European Union's judicialized approach, the Canadian inclusive proposal in its new model treaty, the American geo-economic approach, and the Japanese suite approach, should have been moderately engaged. The book would have made greater contribution if it had made more theoretical reflections on the geopolitical, structural, and paradigmatic shift of international economic governance in the rise of the BRICS countries collectively or individually.
This book is the first of its kind to systematically explore the BRICS's (common) approach to and influence on investment treaty regime and the features on its non-western accounts of BRICS approach(es) to investment treaty by specialists with BRICS backgrounds, supposedly “ensures an accurate description of the legal policies and practice of BRICS on international investment”. As an edited volume, the book provides focused and coherent discussions on edge-cutting issues with accessible language. The editors of the book are leading international law scholars in China and publish extensively on China and international law, such as Professor Congyan CAI's The Rise of China and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) and Professor Huiping CHEN's OECD's Multilateral Agreement on Investment: A Chinese Perspective (The Hague/New York: Kluwer Law International, 2002). This book is the recent output of the editors’ research project on the Rise of China and International Law which should appeal to a wide range of scholars and observers in the fields of both international law and international relations.
