Abstract
This article explores the domestic and international factors that influence the strength of investment protection and liberalization provisions embedded in China’s bilateral investment treaties (BITs). It hypothesizes that China is more likely to sign stringent BITs following the leadership’s implementation of major reform initiatives; when the partner country possesses strong democratic institutions that not only allow domestic interest groups with strong interests in legalization to press for their policy preferences, but also reduce the leaders’ aversion to signing highly legalistic international agreements that bind their behavior; when divergent diplomatic interests render informal negotiations a less viable means of dispute resolution. Statistical analyses of the stringency of the key provisions included in 71 Chinese BITs signed between 1982 and 2011 lend substantial support to the above hypotheses.
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