The Influence Of Regional Investment Rules On The Multilateral Investment Agreement

Regional investment rules are the aspect which the researchers usually ignored inthe recent decades. The academic materials presented today are, in some sense, outdated,and, we rarely have the research on the issue of the impact which the regional investmentrules have on the multilateral investment rules. This article is born to fulfill the functionof perfection of the research on the regional investment rules and bridges the gap betweenregional investment rules and multilateral investment rules. This article mainly focuses on the present regional rules with respect to the foreigndirect investment (FDI), which embodied in the regional economic integration, and thentries to find a solution that how to deal with the regional rules in the future multilateralinvestment convention. The methodologies used in this article are comparative andcase-analysis, sometimes even the terminology way. Epagoge and syllogism are alsoutilized in the demonstration. This article tries to analyze the driving engines of the regional economicintegration, especially regarding the regional rules governing foreign direct investment, towhich the global disciplines still are insufficient. In the view that geographicalanastomosis couldn't be regarded as the predominant reason for the regional economicintegration, the author holds that the economic and political ambition is the main reasonfor the integration, and, the tumble of the endeavor to the multilateral convention on thetrade is the reason which led the formation of the trade blocs, attaching to which theregional investment rules are brought to the negotiation table. Furthermore, the aspirationof the regional integration on investment rules partly attribute to interest collisionbetween the developing countries and developed countries. Hence, the author induces thefeatures of the regional investment rules, taking the specific provisions of the differentregional blocs under discussion as the grounds. In the chapter three, some regional blocsare focused on in order to give the readers the whole picture of the present rules existingin the main blocs, including NAFTA, EU, APEC, MERCOSUR and ASEAN, somecomments are successively given. The following chapter introduces the ways regionalinvestment rules affect the formation of the global disciplines on FDI. Simultaneously,the author is in the view that the future global convention on FDI may observe and absorbthe experience and merits of the regional rules and also some points may be rewarding tothe global convention are listed. Finally, after analyzing and thus denying the existingmodes which deal with the regional rules in the global convention, the author personallyproposes that the future global convention should adopt the dichotomy in order tooptimize the exception of regional rules.