Fri 09 October 2020
By Jayne He
On 10 September 2020, the Co-Director of UNSW Law’s Herbert Smith Freehills China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Centre Professor Heng Wang spoke on “The Challenges to International Economic Law in the Post-COVID-19 World: A Chinese Perspective” at Conference on Global Public-Private Law Approaches to the COVID-19 Pandemic (online conference) organised by School of Law, Singapore Management University.
In his presentation, Professor Heng Wang focused on the challenges that the international economic law may face after the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly through the perspective of China. Based on one of his latest research on China’s paradigm shift in international economic governance (please see the preprint article here and the final version here), Professor Wang talked about the two main approaches that China is currently taking, namely the “selective reshaping” approach as shown in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the “selective engagement” approach as reflected in the US-China Phase One trade agreement.
He argued that there is tension between these two approaches. For instance, selective reshaping relies on soft law while selective engagement emphasises hard law, which has stringent obligations. In a post-COVID world, he envisaged that new challenges would emerge, ranging from the lack of rules on new issues and rule fragmentation to the insufficient international coordination. The future of the international economic legal order and its implications deserve close attention.
Relatedly, Professor Wang’s latest article titled “The Belt and Road Initiative Agreements: Characteristics, Rationale and Challenges” will be published in World Trade Review next May.
More of Professor Wang’s research may be found at ResearchGate, SSRN, Twitter @HengWANG_law, and LinkedIn.