Administrative Review Provisions in Chinese Investment Treaties: ‘Gilding the Lily’?

Despite the popularization of investor-state arbitration (ISA), administrative review remains a helpful local remedy for investment-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in some states. China has a complicated and comprehensive legal system of administrative review. It has concluded a large number of international investment agreements (IIAs), and nearly half of them contain an administrative review provision. These provisions could be considered as an expropriation review mechanism, a standalone ISDS option, an ISA supporting measure or a pre-ISA requirement. Given that administrative review has legal and practical limits, and that China’s national law on dispute settlement and foreign investment governance keeps changing, the attractiveness and significance of administrative review for ISDS are diminishing. In China’s recent IIA-making, there appears an emerging trend of abandoning administrative review. In the long run, it remains to be seen how China will balance local remedies and ISA in IIA-making and foreign investment governance in the future.