CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

CYIL 14 (2023) STATE CAPITALISM AND INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT LAW Particularly interesting is a thought-provoking chapter by Josef Ostransky. According to him, the framing of “normal” or “liberal “versus “state” capitalism is grounded in the view that the normal capitalism is depoliticized, and state plays little or no role in it. At the practice shows, the claim of depoliticized international investment law is too simplistic. Moreover, for Ostransky, “the capitalism which modern international investment law is part of has always been state capitalism.” In this way, he challenges frequent stereotypes about a clear dividing line between two models of economic governance. Another important finding is an interplay between the lack of international regulation of state capitalism with the effort to create a rival international order. China has noticeably attempted to reshape the global governance landscape through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Another phenomenon of the emergence of state capitalism as a global economic system is building its own international institutions. The most visible example is likely the establishment of China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). However, Georgios Dimitropoulos and Mohammed Al-Ahmadani provide another intriguing case study. Their contribution looks into the interplay between state capitalism and the interaction of international commercial courts. It shows how state capitalism as legal paradigm has started developing an intermediate layer of institutions – international commercial courts, alongside special economic zones. The book is also beneficial in reminding the reader that state capitalist instruments bring not only opportunities, but also a series of risks and challenges that may lead to low returns and weak profitability, or security risks – it needs better governance standards, greater transparency, inclusivity. Home-country political institutions often decide where and how SOEs internationalize, including the location for foreign expansion, mode of entry, or the number of foreign investments. In response to increasing security risks, the government have introduced domestic regulation to monitor and to/or control the foreign investment which is discussed by Manu Misra in her chapter Foreign Investment in Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) by State-Controlled Entities (SCEs) and Investment Screening Mechanisms (ISMs) . 2 On a critical note, two contributions are written only on the WTO/trade law aspects ( Discipling State Capitalism under International Economic Law: Non-Discrimination vs. Competitive Neutrality by Rob Howe and Chinese State Capitalism in the World Order: An International Law and International Relations Perspective by Jiagyu Wang). Despite the quality of those chapters, they are out of the scope of the book, and it would be more appropriate to have investment-related contributions instead. The second critical comment concerns the factual mistake that the United Kingdom is still considered a European Union Member State by Michal Dekastros despite the Brexit in 2020. In his chapter Sovereign Wealth Funds and Foreign Investment Screening under International Investment Law he explains the UK investment screening in a subchapter on the EU and in further parts he discusses the UK development together with other EU Member States (and in contrast to the United States).

2 Similarly, e.g. SVOBODA, O. The End of European naivety: Difficult Times ahead for SCEs/SOEs Investing in the European Union. In: CHAISSE, J. L., GÓRSKI, J., SEJKO, D. (eds.), Regulation of State-Controlled Enterprises: An Interdisciplinary and Comparative Examination , Singapore: Springer 2022.

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