Posts tagged ‘China’
U.S. Senate Passes Counter-Productive Countervailing Duties Bill
Last month, the U.S. Senate passed Bill S. 1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011 (“the Act”), which is aimed at penalizing foreign producers in favour of their U.S. domestic counterparts.1 The Act has been introduced but has not yet passed through the House of Representatives. Section 4 of the Act outlines the method by which the Secretary of the Treasury will determine if a foreign currency is “fundamentally misaligned”, and if it makes that determination, sections 10 and 11 provide the mechanism by which the government would be able to impose countervailing duties (CVDs). In general terms, CVDs are a tool, permissible in international trade law, whereby a government is able to impose a duty on imported goods when the exporting country’s government has provided the exporter a subsidy.
China is the obvious target of the Act. Populist politicians in the U.S. in recent years have relied on criticizing China in the hopes of appealing to citizens who believe that the primary cause of high unemployment rates in the U.S. is the migration of manufacturing jobs overseas.2 The problem with the Act, however, is that it fails to comply with the U.S.’s WTO obligations, and will most likely be successfully challenged by China if it ever becomes law. The Act attempts to classify an undervalued currency as a “subsidy” to exporters. The Agreement on Subsidies…
Diaoyu or Senkaku? The Volatile Sovereignty Dispute between China and Japan
Much has been discussed in recent media about the deteriorating relations between two economic giants in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan and China, over the sovereignty of a group of uninhabited islands known as the Diaoyu Islands in Chinese and Senkaku Islands in Japanese. They are composed of five small volcanic islands and three rocky outcroppings, all lying between Taiwan and the island of Okinawa. The islands have little economic value, home only to certain species of moles and domestic sheep, although there are rich amounts of fish and oil and gas deposits in both the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone. Despite the complex relationship between China and Taiwan, both governments agree that the islands belong to Taiwan.
Dispute over the islands culminated into diplomatic war on September 7, 2010, when a Japanese Coast Guard Patrol Boat found a Chinese trawler travelling 12 km northwest of the islands, which is claimed by Japan as within its territorial waters. The ship’s crew and captain were arrested by the patrol boat and detained by Japan to be prosecuted under Japanese domestic law.
The move infuriated Beijing and diplomatic relations between the two countries deteriorated. It sparked public outrage as anti-Japanese protests were held in various cities across China. The same occurred in Japan, where thousands of Japanese demonstrators protested in Yokohama as Chinese President Hu Jin Tao arrived in the city…
China in Africa: Can Africa’s legal institutions cope?
The classic story is that there was once a large, poor, but resource-rich country emerging from a period of conflict, whose government decided to focus on development and modernization. They began a dialogue with a rich Asian country which had already become a major importer of their oil. This rich Asian country proposed a bargain with the poor nation: in exchange for its natural resources it would receive a line of credit and the ability to import technology, and have companies from the rich nation build infrastructure. Readers may or may not be aware that the poor country with oil is actually China and the rich country is Japan. It is also very much the mutually beneficial dynamic that has come to characterize China’s engagement with many African countries. However, serious questions have been raised regarding China’s role in Africa, and in particular whether African countries have strong enough legal and regulatory institutions to deal with the increased Sino-investment.
Economists project that China will soon become Africa’s largest trading partner with trade figures set to hit a record high of more than $100 billion in 2010. The International Monetary Fund recently predicted that growth for Sub-Saharan Africa, which typically includes 47 countries (excluding North Africa), should reach 5% this year, up from an earlier prediction of 4.5%.[1] In 2011, it said, growth could rise to 5.5%.[2] Increased trade…
BY Brett Hodgins
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Environment
Law of the Sea
Public International Law
Satirical
A League of Their Own
In recent years China’s prominence on the world stage has grown rapidly. With consistently high GDP growth, a swelling middle class, and high-profile international events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics or the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, many recognize China as an emerging superpower. But this growth has not been consistent across all fronts, and in some respects China lags far behind other world powers. Recent events have made one area in particular stand out in this regard: oil spills.
On July 16th in the Chinese port city of Dalian, the explosion of two oil pipelines caused thousands of barrels of oil to begin gushing into the sea. The slick has since expanded to cover hundreds of square kilometres of water and spread upwards of 90km down the coast. The spill – and China’s cack-handed response – is clearly modelled after the U.S.’s ongoing gulf coast saga – but it’s a pale imitation. Unlike the American spill, there seems to be no threat of the oil being carried to other nations’ coasts. Yet even Australia has managed to pull off a massive spill affecting its neighbours. If China wants to get into the oil spill big leagues, they’ll have to find a way to go international.
But while the international oil spill scene is characterised by intense competition, there is a notable lack of corresponding cooperation. It’s…
Judicial Reform Coming to China! International Community Elated!
April 1: This morning, China’s Minister of Justice Wu Aiying held a press conference in which she declared the need for greater judicial transparency. The announcement came in the wake of a decision involving four executives of the mining corporation Rio Tinto, who were accused of bribery and stealing trade secrets. The defendants were sentenced to 7-14 years in prison, including 10 years for Australian Stern Hu.
“There are important questions about due process raised by this case,” Ms. Wu commented, “particularly since large parts of the case were heard behind closed doors.”
Ms. Wu announced that she intended to introduce a broad set of reforms to the Chinese justice system, which would greatly strengthen the principles of judicial impartiality, transparency, and fairness.
“If we are able to pass these reforms, after rigorous debate in the People’s National Congress, it will be a great step forward for the cause of justice in China.”
She also noted that tendency of Chinese courts to give exceptionally harsher sentences to those who plead not-guilty (leading to nearly universal pleas of guilty, as in the Rio Tinto case) goes against the principle that a defendant should be presumed innocent. She expressed concern that such cases as these were hurting the reputation of China’s justice system internationally.
Several high-profile international cases had indeed strained relations between China and various Western countries recently. China’s execution on December…
BY Daniel Haboucha
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Corporate Social Responsibility
Economics
Human Rights
Trade
The ideological battle between Google and the People’s Republic of China
Two weeks ago, Google publicly opposed the Chinese government by declaring that it would no longer censor its online services in China. It made this announcement shortly after a cyber-attack targeted the Google email accounts of Chinese dissidents, an attack which reports suggest may have originated from the Chinese government. Google went so far as to threaten to leave China if the government does not relax its internet censorship laws, sparking an angry response.
This latest crisis in Sino-Google relations has taken on international significance beyond just the opening of another front in the ongoing trade disputes between China and the United States, and it represents more than just the latest development in the long-lasting ideological clash between the Chinese government and western internet service providers Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. And while this isn’t the first time an American corporation has sought to impose its will on a foreign government, this may be the first such standoff that has an ideological or public international law dimension to it. Among other things, it prompted US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to declare last week that the United States intends to advance “internet freedom” at the United Nations.
One interesting question that comes out of this is whether corporations of Google’s stature will be able to shape the policies of state actors in much the same manner as they can those…
