JEAIL > Volume 7(2); 2014 > Articles
Research Paper
Published online: November 30, 2014
DOI: : http://dx.doi.org/10.14330/jeail.2014.7.2.04

Conceptuality or Textuality? Understanding the Notion of Expropriation in the Context of Tza Yap Shum v. The Republic of Peru

Wei Shen
Address: No. 1954 Huashan Road, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Law School
Shanghai 200030 China.
Corresponding Author: shenwei@sjtu.edu.cn

ⓒ Copyright YIJUN Institute of International Law
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Although China has been an active 'treaty-maker' in the realm of international investment arbitration as evidenced by its more than 120 bilateral investment treaties, the utility of these BITs has been very limited. Substantive standards such as expropriation and compensation have never been comprehensively tested with respect to these BITs. This article scrutinizes the concept of expropriation by reference to Chinese investment treaty jurisprudence, in particular, the final award of Tza Yap Shum v. The Republic of Peru and China's free trade agreement with Peru, the only Chinese BIT-related ICSID case. This article critically examines, in a comparative context, the treaty interpretation methodologies employed by the tribunal in interpreting expropriation under the China-Peru BIT, which is one of the earlier Chinese BITs. A thorough study of this subject is of great significance to interpreting the terms of indirect expropriation and compensation in Chinese BITs, thereby offering more concrete foreign investment protections based on investment treaties.

Keywords : Chinese BITs, Expropriation, Compensation, Treaty Interpretation, Bilateral Investment Treaties

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