Article
Fragrant Harbour and Oyster Mirror: Beijing's Treaty Policy toward Hong Kong and Macao
Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy 2015-2016
(2018)
Abstract
This chapter discusses the controversy in Sanum v. Lao wherein a Macanese investor sought Beijing’s treaty protection before an investment arbitration tribunal. It discusses, more widely, Beijing’s regime governing the application of Chinese treaties to Macao and Hong Kong, and it discusses the Sanum affair’s broader lessons for the application of investment treaties in the face of a bespoke devolution treaty. Finally, it discusses how, by now, two tribunals and the Singapore courts have persistently failed to recognise a requirement under two devolution agreements – the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration and the Sino-British Joint Declaration - for the consultation of Macao and Hong Kong as a pre-condition to the application of a Chinese treaty to these special administrative regions. The Chinese devolution treaties form an integral part of the resolution of certain well-known historical controversies over the legal status of various Nineteenth-Century extraterritorial treaties. In the latest episode, both the tribunal in Sanum and Singapore’s Court of Appeal were led to give scant treatment to the effect of the Sino-Portuguese devolution arrangement; ostensibly on the basis that it cannot bind third countries. This chapter describes how both the tribunal and the Singapore Court of Appeal forced, instead, a treaty succession solution given by the moving treaty frontiers rule and analyses how the Lao PDR’s arguments have failed to properly clarify the broader issue.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter January 4, 2018
Publisher Statement
This material, which is the pre-copyedited version only, was originally published in Yearbook on International Investment Law & Policy 2015-2016 by Lisa E. Sachs and Lise Johnson (eds), and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. The following is a link to the book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/yearbook-on-international-investment-law-and-policy-2015-2016-9780198809722?cc=jp&lang=en&
Citation Information
C. L. Lim, "Fragrant Harbour and Oyster Mirror: Beijing's Treaty Policy toward Hong Kong and Macao", in L. Sachs et al, Yearbook of International Investment Law & Policy 2015-2016 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 375-411