Here’s the introduction to Susan Finder’s piece. It’s a long & detailed article and a must read for anybody working in the area
INVISIBLE BELT & ROAD DISPUTES
In academic and many professional discussions of Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) disputes, the focus is on disputes between the Chinese and foreign parties. Few mention disputes between two or more Chinese parties but linked with a BRI project. (Professor Vivienne Bath of the University of Sydney Law School is one of the few exceptions.) These are what I call “invisible BRI disputes,” because few in the academic world and a small group in the professional world have noticed them.
I mentioned these type of disputes during my keynote speech at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Asian Studies Center’s “Deals and Disputes: China, Hong Kong, and Commercial Law” webinar when I spoke about the role of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) in developing “Chinese international commercial law” (as I defined the term).–as can be seen in the slide above.
Although I made inquiries with some authoritative persons in the world of Chinese arbitration and the judiciary, they were unable to give even a vague estimate of the number of these invisible BRI disputes, but all had the sense that they have been increasing and will continue to increase, both in arbitration and in the courts, as more projects undertaken by Chinese contractors overseas encounter unanticipated problems and enter into dispute settlement proceedings with one or more foreign counterparties and thereafter seek to claim their losses from their Chinese subcontractors (or sub-subcontractors) or suppliers or prevent their banker from paying out under a demand guarantee (or counter-guarantee).
The Belt and Road Initiative: Legal Risks and Opportunities Facing Chinese Engineering Contractors Operating Overseas (Engineering Contractors Book), written by a group of highly experienced Chinese legal advisers to major Chinese contractors, identified some of the risks to Chinese companies when doing contracting projects overseas. As this and other sources have written, Chinese contractors are often engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) contractors in BRI jurisdictions.
Read full article. https://supremepeoplescourtmonitor.com/2021/06/22/invisible-belt-road-disputes/
