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

• Author: Wei Shen
• Pages: 379-380

Tza v. Peru 379

VII JEAIL 2 (2014)

Wei Shen

∗

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

     

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

  

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

Conceptuality or Textuality?

Understanding the Notion

of Expropriation in the

Context of Tza Yap Shum v.

The Republic of Peru

∗ KoGuan Chair Professor of Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Law School. LL.B. & LL.M. (ECUPL), LL.M.

(Michigan), LL.M. (Cantab), Ph.D. (LSE). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6935-1365?lang=en. The author

is very grateful for Adrián Cisneros Aguilar’s assistance in preparing and confirming an English version of the

Final Award which was only published in Spanish. The author also thanks Adrián Cisneros Aguilar, Casey Watters,

Matthias Vanhullebusch and Angeliki Lanara for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. All errors

are the author’s own responsibility. The author may be contacted at: shenwei@sjtu.edu.cn / Address: No. 1954

Huashan Road, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Law School, Shanghai 200030 China.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14330/jeail.2014.7.2.04