Sunday, May 14, 2023

Revised Draft Posted: "Chinese State-Owned Companies and Investment in Latin America and Europe"

 

Pix Credit Audience Chamber Piazza della Signoria Apartments of the Priors c. 1543

 



In the United States at least, there has been an increasing worry about the state of U.S. relations (economic and political) with Latin American states. Increasingly that is measured by the extent of Chinese development of its own political and economic relations with Latin American and Caribbean states. European, more than most, worry about this shift in the sources of overseas investments from the perspective of their now decades long objectives to embed human rights more directly in economic activities and political life.
US military leaders have also expressed fears about Beijing's influence on Mexico's communications industry, where 80 percent of telecoms are provided by Chinese companies, according to General Glen VanHerck, commander of both US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command. China is also extending its reach into the 'Lithium Triangle' which spans Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. This region contains about 54% of the world's lithium, the element nicknamed 'white gold' which is crucial to renewable energy technology and electric car batteries. The Chinese battery company Catl recently struck a deal worth more than $1 billion to develop Bolivia's lithium reserves. Some analysts have speculated this resource-grab constitutes a 'lithium monopoly in the making'. The benefits gained from these investments are coupled with the willingness of Latin American countries to accept loans worth tens of billions of dollars from China. (here)

At the center of Chinese overseas investment are their state owned and controlled enterprises. These CSOEs are both creatures of the political-economic system from which they are constituted and economic actors seeking to maximize return for investment in a risk reducing environment.  CSOEs are instruments of state power and political-economic objectives, as well as value maximizing market participants.  They seek to avoid risk and maximize value--but their calculation of risk and value are a function of the normative system from which they are constituted.  That, in turn, affects their engagement with human rights and sustainability impacts of their operations.

To better understand the CSOE especially as they operate in host states, is especially necessary as global and national systems for compliance, accountability are refines, and as national security regimes increasingly constrain the extent and form of inbound public investment. 

It is with that in mind that I take this opportunity to let people know that I have posted a new discussion draft, "Chinese State-Owned Companies and Investment in Latin America and Europe." The analysis centers political ideology and its formal expression through law, regulation, guidance, and operational supervision (theory does matter in this context, perhaps a lot). Nonetheless, at its core, the study is about risk--its ideology and the way it is expressed through governance expectations and principles. One speaks here about legal risk (to align the discussion with the 1st Pillar of the UN Guiding Principles), but also of business risk (aligning the markets driven, private law structures of the UNGP 2nd Pillar).

Pix credit here
More importantly, the sort of risk that one encounters here, in comparing the liberal democratic and Marxist-Leninist models of human rights and sustainability, is intimately tied to the principle of "prevent-mitigate-remedy, and its administrative-compliance overlay.  In a sense, when one speaks to human rights and sustainability, and especially climate change, one is using the  qualitative language of rights to speak to the quantitative probabilities of risk of harm, and more importantly risk of irremediable harm. The function of those principles, then, framed through the prevent-mitigate-remedy principle is to provide a formula for valuing those risks, and for placing them within a hierarchy of risk tolerance. Increasingly in liberal democratic regimes, risk tolerance for strategies that do not privilege prevention (and then mitigation and last remedy) are reduced, or in some cases, risk aversion is implicitly or explicitly the result of the application of the "principles" analysis.  That is fair enough and represents the culmination of conversation about value choices.  Nonetheless, Marxist-Leninist systems approach risk, and risk tolerance in a different way.  That difference is in part a function of differences in the conceptualization of both human rights and sustainability as a function of development and collective prosperity. But it is also in part a reflection, effectively, of what might be preferences for mitigation-remediation (or otherwise exit if the costs of prevention exceed the anticipated vale of an activity), at least indifference as between the strategies as a function of expected value. That poses some challenges for any project that seeks global consensus on  what had once been the unchallenged valuations and framework of liberal democracy.   

The Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion follow. The text of the draft may be accessed HERE. Engagement always welcome as this moves from draft tp more finished versions. 


Chinese State-Owned Companies and Investment in Latin America and Europe

Larry Catá Backer ( )[1]

 

Abstract: The Chinese state owned enterprise (CSOE) presents an anomaly in the operation of the well-ordered construction of a self-referencing and closed system of liberal democratic internationalism, especially as that system touches on business responsibilities under national and international human rights and environmental law and markets driven norms. The anomaly is sourced in the increasingly distinct and autonomous framework principles within which it is possible to develop conduct-based systems respectful of both human and environmental rights which are emerging as between liberal democratic and Marxist-Leninist systems. This essay considers the forms and manifestations of these disjunctions where CSOEs are used as vehicles for the projection of Chinese economic activity beyond its borders. The essay first situates the CSOE within the political ideology of its home state.  The CSOE cannot be understood except as a specific expression of that ideology suited to the times and the context in which it operated. The essay then examines the outward projection of the CSOE national model. To that end the essay focuses on the formal structures for CSOE supervision by state organs that operationalize the guiding ideology through which they are conceived and operated. This provides the basis for a deeper consideration of the way that the projection of CSOEs abroad is structured within a conceptual cage of policy objectives: specifically, emerging conceptions of socialist human rights, including environmental rights and obligations, and an operational framework in the form of the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative. It is only in the complex interplay of these layers of law, principle, regulation, and guidance described above, that one can begin to see the outline of the normative cage within which human rights can be understood and practiced by CSOEs. The normative focus is on development, collective prosperity and security, and on compliance with local law and localized international standards. These serve as the basis for assessing FDI  risk guiding decisions about the conduct of economic activity. The essay concludes with a suggestion of the greater rift between Marxist-Leninist and liberal democratic approaches—the differences in embracing risk models grounded in prevent-mitigate-remedy strategies. What emerges is closely aligned with the normative framework of CSOEs—the most pronounced effect tends to center on investment decisions closely aligned to state objectives; operationally CSOEs tend to favor collective (development oriented) value in assessing human rights effects.

 

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中央企业境外投资应当遵循以下原则:* * * (二)依法合规。遵守我国和投资所在国(地区)法律法规、商业规则和文化习俗,合规经营,有序发展。[The overseas investment of central enterprises shall follow the following principles: * * * (2) Compliance with laws and regulations. Abide by the laws and regulations, business rules and cultural customs of my country and the country (region) where the investment is located, operate in compliance with regulations, and develop in an orderly manner].[2]

 

对于境外特别重大投资项目,中央企业应建立投资决策前风险评估制度,委托独立第三方有资质咨询机构对投资所在国(地区)政治、经济、社会、文化、市场、法律、政策等风险做全面评估。[For particularly major overseas investment projects, central enterprises should establish a pre-investment risk assessment system and entrust an independent third-party qualified consulting agency to conduct a comprehensive assessment evaluation of the political, economic, social, cultural, market, legal, and policy risks of the country (region) where the investment is located].[3]

 

In all contexts, business enterprises should: (a) Comply with all applicable laws and respect internationally

recognized human rights, wherever they operate; (b) Seek ways to honour the principles of internationally recognized human rights when faced with conflicting requirements; (c) Treat the risk of causing or contributing to gross human rights abuses as a legal compliance issue wherever they operate.[4]

 

SOEs should observe high standards of responsible business conduct, including with regards to the environment, employees, public health and safety, and human rights. Their actions should be guided by relevant international standards, including: the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which have been adopted by all OECD member countries.[5]

 

 

1. Introduction: Scope of Inquiry: Chinese SOEs, Human Rights, and Sustainability

 

The Chinese state owned enterprise (CSOE) presents an anomaly in the operation of the well-ordered construction of a self-referencing and closed system of liberal democratic internationalism, especially as that system touches on business responsibilities under national and international human rights and environmental law and markets driven norms. That anomaly is perhaps quite clearly evident in the application of international framework systems.[6] The anomaly is sourced in the increasingly distinct and autonomous framework principles emerging as between liberal democratic and Marxist-Leninist systems within which it is possible to develop conduct-based systems respectful of both human and environmental rights. Anomaly produces deviation in theory and practice. That deviation is commonly measured in the distance between anomalous concept and practice from the sometimes rough consensus of what is thought of as the common (liberal democratic) standard. Marxist-Leninist anomalia, and especially that which has developed in the 21st century and embodied in the CSOE, produces regulatory and operational friction in two distinct fields of governance at the heart of the UNGPs. The first is formal, identified with the UNGP’s 1st Pillar State Duty to Respect Human Rights (and its balancing of the authority of national and international law and norms).[7] These are the terrains of public law. The second is identified with the UNGP’s 2nd Pillar Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights (and its private law based markets driven internationalism).[8] It exists as well in the distance between the OECD-SOE principles of distinguishing between public and economic objectives in advancing the ideal of more or less open borders as a function of level playing field principles.[9]  And it is augmented by the OECD-MNE framework that generalizes OECD-SE principles.[10] That friction is especially augmented where the public and private spheres meet[11] —incarnated as the state owned enterprise, the operational premises of which are also divided by ideological basis between the expectations of a liberal democratic sensibility, and that of (Chinese) Marxist-Leninism.[12]

 

In the early decades of this century, it was possible to finesse difference. During that period, the liberal democratic vision of SOE conduct, of human rights, of internationalism, and of environmental policy and sustainability could suppose itself unchallenged. And that self-reflexive stance was indeed much in evidence within the liberal democratic heartland during those first two decades of this century. The assumption, almost uncontested and accelerated after 1989, was that all states, irrespective of their governing ideologies, would be required, one way or another to receive and conform to  the ordering principles of liberal democratic internationalism and their manifestations in rights regimes.[13] In the context of Chinese economic interaction, it was most visible in the context of projecting liberal democratic human rights sensibilities into China through the private law governance regimes of foreign multinational enterprises operating in Chinese territory,[14] and in the use of public law administrative and regulatory extra-territorialism through projects like the once well discussed “Brussels Effect.”[15]

 

But beneath the surface of this converging internationalism, the currents of opposition were becoming increasingly evident.  One more benign strain was interpretive—it signaled adherence to the core documents and principles of internationalism, including those which centered human rights, but insisted on interpretive flexibility.[16] The other presented a more fundamental challenge, and became inevitable when the People’s Republic began operationalizing its post-Mao Zedong era socialist modernization objectives[17] through a Reform and Opening Up Policy,[18] which in its manifestation as its “Going Out” strategy.[19] By 2022, the areas of normative conflict, already smoldering in its post-Soviet manifestation in 1993,[20] produced not just resistance but a more fully formed ideology of Socialist human rights[21] as a more specific manifestation of a broader challenge to liberal democratic normative leadership over the narratives of internationalism.[22]  At the same time, one saw manifested a quite robust counter-thrust in the context of Chinese human rights policies and their operationalization in the Xinjiang Uyghur Administrative Region,[23] which itself generated a vigorous push back.[24] The stakes are high. Control of narratives of business, of the analytics of risk, and of the way that human rights and sustainability are embedded within these narratives and risk calculus can help shape the normative-practice environment within which global economic activity can be understood and managed. [25]

 

It is in this normative environment, one moving farther and farther from global normative human rights convergence, that one might more effectively consider the tensions and challenges in the human rights and environmental governance  of CSOEs both within China and its political governance ideology, and when CSOEs operate abroad in an ideological ecology the application of which may not be compatible with its own. The excerpts at the start of this essay sketched out the borders of that terrain: the nature of CSOPEs as both economic and political actors; the different conceptions of the role of the state shareholder within Marxist-Leninist and liberal democratic regimes; the application of notions of sovereignty to hierarchies of law; the spaces for authoritative governance through public or private legal regimes and the now open contests for the control of the narrative of the SOE when they are projected abroad.   CSOEs might be required to obey the laws of the home and hist states, but not international law except to the extent that it has been domesticated.  The risk analysis expected of CSOEs before projection of operations abroad-- political, economic, social, cultural, market, legal, and policy risks—embed international and foreign human rights and environmental norms, but the calculus does not foreground them. The CSOE may be guided by international and multilateral instruments in the calculus of risk and in the formulation of behavior expectations, but it is clear that those will be interpreted within the guiding ideology and political principles of the home state. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that at the level of pragmatics, the differences will be deeply felt in every case of CSOE operations. Nonetheless, where international and multilateral instruments play a significant role CSOE investment risk calculus, investment protection and exit strategies[26] may serve as the template rather the capstone of the liberal democratic human rights architecture for business based on human rights infused compliance based prevent-mitigate-remedy principles.[27]

 

The essay first situates the CSOE within the political ideology of its home state.  The manifestation of Marxist-Leninist ideology now operationalized through the New Era principles refined and announced at the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) 20th Party Congress, shape the relationship of state to CSOEs, the responsibilities, authorities and expectations of each in important ways. The theory of CSOEs emerging in the Chinese Leninist New Era from the start of the leadership of Xi Jinping is then considered, situated within the political ideology and objectives of Chinese outbound investment organized through the Belt & Road Initiative and its AIIB financing mechanism. The object is to focus on China as a home state for outbound investment, with respect to which there appears little literature.[28] The essay then moves from the structure of CSOEs to the human rights structures within which CSOEs are expected to operate.  Again this requires amalgamating political imperative under the leadership of the CPC, with those behaviors identified as human rights.  In that context the essay considers the shape and consequences of the emerging framework of Chinese human rights internationalism. The essay then considers application drawn from CSOE-host state interaction principally drawing from the experience in Latin America,[29] but also in and Europe. What emerges is closely aligned with the normative framework of CSOEs—the most pronounced effect tends to center on investment decisions closely aligned to state objectives; operationally CSOEs tend to favor collective (development oriented) value in assessing human rights effects.    

 

 

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6. Conclusion

 

At this point it would not be unexpected to think about the Chinse human rights CSOE environment in the same way as the confused characters at the 1st Act finale of Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri, a cacophony of bells gonging, canons booming, crows cawing, and hammers pounding simultaneously. The sonority produced can be heard on the ears, but at least everyone is on stage. That is the point here. And it reflects the age—a reflection that reveals a movement away from a global consensus about the overarching objective of deep normative convergence, conceptual and operational, to one marked by fracture and dissonance conceptually, though one that may also be marked by pragmatic convergence at the operational level.  

 

This exploration of human rights and environmental sustainability in the CSOEs drives home that conclusion. Conceptually, the CSOE emerges from the foundational concepts of property in Chinese Marxist-Leninist theory. They are vessels within and through which the state organs, under the leadership and guidance of the vanguard CPC, may better manage the utilization of the means of production for the accomplishment of the important project of socialist modernization.  Socialist modernization, in turn, is itself a conceptual vessel within which the Party-State develops policy the object of which is the perfection of the material, social, cultural,  and political to prepare the way for the fulfillment of the core objectives of the revolutionary social leading forces—the establishment of a communist society.

 

Those vessels, then are operated in a constant iterative state of engagement between their operations, with respect to which they are vested with a certain degree of autonomy in meeting their goals, and supervision by state and CPC organs which are meant to ensure that macro choices and policies are aligned and further short, medium, and long term policy.  The relationship between CSOEs and state organs are formal and institutional. The relations between the state organs, the enterprise and the CPC are far more interlinked at all levels of operation. In this way, the CPC can assert a deep supervisory role both directed toward the enterprise at all levels of its operation, and toward state organs at all levels of their supervisory and guidance responsibilities. In this sense, then, the constructs for evaluating and developing policy with respect to SOEs relevant to non-Marxist Leninist SOEs are either profoundly irrelevant or incomprehensible. And it is at this juncture that one encounters the substantial dissonance in the area of trade and trade relations between liberal democratic and Marxist Leninist systems, usually articulated on the so-called “level playing field” discussions.

 

But the dissonance affects other core normative and operational concepts as well. The first touch on the role and character of markets. Here again a fundamental difference. Liberal democratic systems start with the proposition that economic policy is driven by markets, and that the role of the state is to insure the integrity and good operation of those markets. Chinese Marxist-Leninist systems start with the proposition that markets are instruments that may be used to more efficiently realize state based normative projects. Markets, in this sense, are the means through which asset vessels (CSOEs) may exercise autonomy to best extract value from their activities, but only for and constrained by the overarching (macro) political-policy objectives specified by state and party supervisory organs.

 

The second touches on human rights and sustainability issues, including climate change. Again liberal democratic states start from the proposition that individual human autonomy must be privileged and that human rights is driven (in the marketplace of ideas) through civil and political rights regimes. Chinese Marxist-Leninism starts from the fundamental notion of the centrality of collective rights driven by the need to realize socialist modernization in the quest to bring the nation closer to the perfection represented by an ideal communist society. If human rights are both collective and driven by development (socialist modernization) then both state and enterprise organs must privilege those objectives over the possible adverse effects of the resulting operations against the rights of individuals. Better put, such rights are understood as a function of the need for collective effort to make the lives of all people better through development strategies. Here one finds the dissonance between Marxist-Leninist and liberal democratic states at their apogee. The mediation between the individual and the collective in this context is possible only through law. Thus, the focus of CSOE human rights on compliance with local law. It can also be mediated through palliative measures—and thus a focus on charitable work targeting populations affected by CSOE operations. Again, in this later case, some convergence is possible, but by focusing on the remedial and mitigative effects of philanthropy rather than by focusing on the conceptual basis for the action. On the other hand, the collectivity and production enhancement embedded in sustainability, environmental principles and climate change provide a space where, at least at the level of operational behavior, the possibility for substantial alignment may be realized. But even here, the possible gap between systems that focus on rights and individuals focus, and those that focus on collectives, development and legality, may sometimes produce deviation that may be hard to bridge, especially where the conflict occurs between CSOEs and host states.  

 

As such, one might usefully think about CSOEs as vigorous actors in global market, and as actors sensitive to human rights and sustainability concerns. At the same time they are not actors detached from their state “owners” in the way that is understood in OECD and OECD embracing jurisdiction. The consequences then suggest that at their limit, and because of the strong connection, a necessary connection between the enterprise, state organs and the CPC, may produce increasingly apparent context in which form the perspective of host states, the CSOE might be most usefully treated as an instrumentality of the state engaging in political activity through their economic relations using markets as instruments or means to those ends. At the same time there is a space where it may be possible to develop systems and expectations of operations that satisfy the conceptual and practical objectives of both systems.  The conversation about the construction and operation of that space, however, has barely begun.




[1] W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar Professor of Law and International Affairs; Pennsylvania State University. An earlier version was first presented at the Workshop--Book Project: “Human Rights and environmental sustainability in state-owned enterprises in Latin America and Europe”  (21 September 2021) with great thanks to Markus Krajewski and Judith Schönsteiner for their organization and the vision around which this project was organized.

[2] China State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Overseas Investment by Central Enterprises (18 January 2017) [国务院国有资产监督管理委员会 中央企业境外投资监督管理办法], art. 6(2) (hereafter Measures for Supervision of Overseas Investment 2017).

[3] Ibid., art. 25.

[4] UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect, and Remedy’ Framework (New York and Geneva: United Nations, 2011) (hereafter “UNGP”). 

[5] Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned

Enterprises (Paris, OECD, 2015), Annotations to Chapter V: Stakeholder relations and responsible business, p. 60 (hereafter OECD-SOE).

[6] Perhaps principal among them in the discourse, the UNGPs, the OECD-SOE, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (Paris, OECD, 2011) (hereafter OECD-MNE).

[7] UNGP, supra, Principles 1-10.

[8] Ibid., Principles 11-24.

[9] On one expression of the Chinese variation, Larry Catá Backer, 对各类市场主体一视同仁 ["Treat All Market Players Equally"]: Developing the Formal Legal Framework for Markets-Based Activities in China, Law at the End of the Day (23 October 2019); available [https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/treat-all-market-players-equally.html].

[10] Canadian National Contact Point: Final Statement on the Request for Review regarding the Operations of China Gold International Resources Corp. Ltd., at the Copper Polymetallic Mine at the Gyama Valley, Tibet Autonomous Region (April 8, 2015); available [http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/ncp-pcn/statement-gyama-valley.aspx?lang=eng].

[11] See, e.g., Tom Holland, “China's 'go out' policy means trouble,” South China Morning Post (26 April 2007) (“In recent years Chinese state-backed companies have bolstered their chances of winning lucrative resource contracts by pledging to invest generously in local infrastructure in countries where few other businesses would dare venture.. . By extending no strings attached loans to African governments, Beijing has also been accused of undermining international efforts to promote sound governance.” Ibid.).

[12] Backer, Larry Catá (2017): “The Human Rights Obligations of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs): Emerging Conceptual Structures and Principles in National and International Law and Policy”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 50, No4: pp. 827-888.

[13] Cf., Anthony J. Langlois, The Politics of Justice and Human Rights: Southeast Asia and Universalist theory (Cambridge University Press, 2001). 

[14] See, e.g., Larry Catá Backer, “Economic Globalization and the Rise of Efficient Systems of Global Private Law Making: Wal-Mart as Global Legislator,” Connecticut Law Review 39(4) (2007) 1739-1784

[15] Anu Bradford, “The Brussels Effect,” Northwestern University Law Review 107(1) (2012) 1-67.

[16] See, e.g., Final Declaration of the Regional Meeting for Asia of the World Conference on Human Rights, Report of the Regional Meeting for Asia of the World Conference on Human Rights, A/Conf.157/ASRM/8; A/Conf.157/PC/59 (29 March – 2 April 1993; Bangkok, Thailand) (hereafter, Bangkok Declaration 1993).

[18] Larry Catá Backer, “Central Planning Versus Markets Marxism: Their Differences and Consequences for the International Ordering of State, Law, Politics, and Economy,” Connecticut Journal of International Law 32(1):1-47 (2016).

[19] Paul Nash, “China’s `Going Out’ Strategy,” Diplomatic Courier (10 May 2012).

[20] Bangkok Declaration 1993, supra.

[21] China, State Council Information Office, The Communist Party of China and Human Rights Protection -- A 100-Year Quest (Beijing June 2021).  On its contemporary origins, see, Franciszek Przetacznik, “The Socialist Concept of Protection of Human Rights,” Social Research 38(2) (1971) 337-361. For its implications under New Era Marxist-Leninism since 2022, see Larry Catá Backer, The Rise of Socialist Human Rights--Larry Cata Backer Remarks: "Brief Reflections on the Building of a Theory and Practice of Community with a Shared Future for Mankind and Global Human Rights Governance " [建立具有人类共同未来的社区理论和实践以及全球人权治理的简要思考] (English and Chines Versions), Law at the End of the Day (28 September 2022). It is true that in some fundamental respects, Soviet era approaches to internationalism helped forge the foundational premises that contributed to contemporary Chinese human rights—especially its focus on social, economic, and cultural rights on the one hand, and its attachment of rights systems to colonial self-determination. See, Eric D. Weitz  A world divided: The global struggle for human rights in the age of nation-states ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). But as discussed infra, the Soviet era focus on class struggle, proletarian revolution, and the fundamental position that human rights is an expression of the internal competence of states or otherwise bound up in dialectics of class struggle. See, e.g., Richard Szawlowski, “The International Protection of Human Rights: A Soviet and a Polish View,” The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 28(4):775-781 (1979). That  approach has given way to a distinct expression of the basic focus on economic, social, and cultural rights, now coupled with a focus on development and collective stability, along with collective sustainability based objectives. These are realized not through the Communist International, but within the operational structures of the Belt & Road Initiative.

[22]  习近平:共同构建人类命运共同体 2021-01-01 [Xi Jinping: Jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind] (“China's plan is to build a community with a shared future for mankind and achieve win-win and shared benefits. . .The key to building a community with a shared future for mankind lies in action. I believe that the international community should make efforts in terms of partnership, security structure, economic development, civilization exchanges, and ecological construction”);  Wang Yi, “Striding Forward Holding High the Banner of Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (1 January 2023); considered in Larry Catá Backer, 外交部副部长谢锋:推动构建人类命运共同体是应对世界之变、时代之变、历史之变的中国方案 [Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng: Promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind is China's solution to changes in the world, times, and history], Law at the End of the Day (21 January 2023).

[23] Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China” (31 August 2022); available [https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf]

[24] Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of  China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Other International Organizations in Switzerland, “Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts,” No. GJ/56/2022 (31 August 2022) (prepared by the Information Office of the People’s Government of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, August 2022) .

[25] This comes as no surprise.  John Ruggie understood the importance of narrative in framing what became the UNGPs. See John G. Ruggie, Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights (NY: W.W: Norton & Co., 2013); p. xxvi. For a perceptive recounting, see Joseph R. Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law (NY: Fordham University Press, 2007).

[26] This is particularly the case in the context of investment in Belt & Road states, where CSOE investment is  framed by the bilateral investment treaties that define the framework of China host state economic relations. See, infra.

[27] Consider Marco Fasciglione, “Implementing ‘Responsible Business Conduct’ Approaches Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights at the Time of COVID-19,” European Papers 5(3):1435-1450 (2020).

[28] “While the rise in Chinese investment in the region is mentioned frequently across the literature, our review did not yield a single work focused on China as a home state.” Cristina Blanco Vizarreta , and Weronika Betta, Business and Human Rights in Latin America: A Systematic Review of Scholarship,” Business and Human Rights Journal 7 (2022) 342-274, 361.

[29] See Enrique Dussel Peters, Monitor of Chinese OFDI in Latin America and the Caribbean 2023 (15 April 2023)  Red Académica de América Latina y el Caribe sobre China; available [https://www.redalc-china.org/monitor/images/pdfs/menuprincipal/DusselPeters_MonitorOFDI_2023_Eng.pdf]. A listing of the 600 investments by Chinese enterprises in Latin America and the Caribbean through early 2023 may be accessed at [https://www.redalc-china.org/monitor/images/pdfs/menuprincipal/DusselPeters_Monitor_OFDI_Database_2023.xlsx].



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