Investment Dispute Settlement Mechanisms under the Recovery of CalvoismReform Practices and way forward

Abstract

As the recovery of the Calvo Doctrine is becoming more and more apparent, the reform practice of the investment dispute settlement mechanism is also affected. The world's major economies have practiced different reform models according to their actual conditions, broadly categorized into the radical abandonment model represented by Latin American countries, the partial improvement model represented by the United States, and the institutional innovation model represented by the European Union. The essence of the Calvo Doctrine's "non-intervention" core corresponds to the field of investment dispute settlement, which is mainly reflected in the host country's opposition to the superior treatment of foreign investors over domestic investors, thus excluding investment disputes from being handled by international investment arbitration bodies. China, as the initiator of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, should follow the trend of Calvo Doctrine recovery in the current reform of the investment dispute settlement mechanism, re-examine the international investment arbitration mechanism based on dialectical analysis of different reform proposals of various economies, explore and build a preventive and alternative approach based on investment dispute prevention and dispute mediation, and respond to the needs of the international community. To address the crisis of the legitimacy of the current investment arbitration under the revival of the Calvo Doctrine, we will explore the investment dispute settlement mechanism under the "One Belt, One Road" initiative from a new perspective with a distinctive Chinese solution.