Asia's Changing International Investment Regime

This book focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, delineating the evolving dynamics of foreign investment in the region. It examines the relationship between efforts to increase foreign direct investment (FDI) and efforts to improve governance and inclusive growth and development. Against a background of rapidly developing international investment law, it emphasises the need to strike a balance between these domestic and international legal frameworks, seeking to promote both foreign investment and the laws and policies necessary to regulate investments and investor conduct. Foreign investments play a pivotal role in most countries’ political economies, and in order to encourage cross-border capital flows, countries have taken various steps, such as revising their domestic legal frameworks, liberalising rules on inward and outward investment, and creating special regimes that provide incentives and protections for foreign investment. Alongside the developments in domestic laws, countries have also taken bilateral and multilateral action, including entering into trade and/or investment agreements.

Further, the book explores regional investment trends, highlights specific features of Asia-Pacific investment laws and treaties, and analyses policy implications. It addresses four overarching themes: the trends (how Asia-Pacific’s agreements compare with recent global trends in the evolving rules on foreign investment); what China is doing; current investment arbitration practice in Asia; and the importance of regionalising investment law in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, it identifies and discusses the research and policy gaps that should be filled in order to promote more sustainable and responsible investment.

The book offers a valuable resource not only for academics and students, but also for trade and investment officials, policy-makers, diplomats, economists, lawyers, think tanks, and business leaders interested in the governance and regulation offoreign investment, economic policy reforms, and the development of new types of investment agreements.

“In Asia and the Pacific, reforms still need to be completed to deliver simpler, more transparent and equitable rules based investment regimes… This book provides some of the detail and solid analysis we need to inform work to reform international investment regimes.” – Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations