Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I International economic law: conceptions of convergence and divergence
- PART II WTO treaty interpretation: implications and consequences
- PART III Responding to international economic law commitments
- PART IV Transformations in international economic law
- 11 Foreign investors vs sovereign states: towards a global framework, BIT by BIT
- 12 How ‘trade in services’ transforms the regulation of temporary migration for remittances in poor countries
- 13 Reconceptualising international investment law: bringing the public interest into private business
- Index
- References
11 - Foreign investors vs sovereign states: towards a global framework, BIT by BIT
from PART IV - Transformations in international economic law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I International economic law: conceptions of convergence and divergence
- PART II WTO treaty interpretation: implications and consequences
- PART III Responding to international economic law commitments
- PART IV Transformations in international economic law
- 11 Foreign investors vs sovereign states: towards a global framework, BIT by BIT
- 12 How ‘trade in services’ transforms the regulation of temporary migration for remittances in poor countries
- 13 Reconceptualising international investment law: bringing the public interest into private business
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
In his letter to Queen Victoria of Great Britain in 1838, Commissioner Lin Tse-Hsu, the Chinese Imperial Customs Commissioner in Canton, wrote:
Magnificently our great Emperor soothes and pacifies [the Middle Kingdom] and the foreign countries, regarding all with the same kindness. If there is profit, then he shares it with the peoples of the world; if there is harm, then he removes it on behalf of the world …
We have read your successive tributary memorials saying ‘In general our countrymen who go to trade in China have always received His Majesty the Emperor's gracious treatment and equal justice.’ … The profit from trade from afar has been enjoyed by them for two hundred years …
But … there are those who smuggle opium to seduce the Chinese people and so cause the spread of the poison to all provinces. Such persons who only care to profit themselves, and disregard their harm to others, are not tolerated by the laws of heaven and are unanimously hated by human beings. His Majesty the Emperor [is enraged].
… By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? … Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries – how much less to China! … […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- International Economic Law and National Autonomy , pp. 243 - 268Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
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