Chapter Two identifies the current legal and regulatory arrangements related to China’s electricity sector by examining the institutions and governing authority, pricing and tariff regulations, and investment approval. These regulatory aspects often determine the market features and characteristics of an electricity system. This chapter provides the foundation for understanding the design of critical supporting mechanisms adopted by the Renewable Energy Law and their implementation, which are discussed in the subsequent chapter.

Chapter 9 examines whether armed reprisals are permissible or excusable in certain circumstances.

This chapter discusses restrictions on the import of Russian oil and natural gas into the U.S. and Europe. The chapter also situates this discussion in the context of European dependence on Russian energy supplies and resulting difficulties in enacting energy-related sanctions and trade restrictions. It discusses how a price cap was implemented in order to make energy-related sanctions placed on Russia more effective. Finally, it considers how policymakers are attempting to balance current energy needs with longer-term goals like reducing dependence on Russian energy supplies and building towards a more sustainable future.

The theory of law put forward in this book is founded on the idea of interdependence. Interdependence generates goods taking the form of a community. In law a community involves common legal obligations pertaining to goods. The WTO Agreement establishes a “club good.” Its essence is the equality of opportunity for economic operators in members’ markets. These legal arrangements have given rise to enormous networks of global supply and value chains. At the same time, however, they have generated unease at de-industrialization and exposed critical vulnerabilities. Whereas at the time of the WTO’s founding in 1995 the unconditional interdependence called for in the WTO Agreement might have been regarded as beneficial, today it is seen as less so. Consequently, the club good of the organization appears to be splintering into individual goods composed of specific trading relationships. Consequently, support for the organization and its dispute settlement system has ebbed. Nevertheless, there appears to be recognition of residual worth in the WTO Agreement and its dispute settlement system, which may continue to serve as a locus for transformative solutions.

Interdependence-generating goods will not arise unless actors view arrangements as right or correct. This perception gives rise to a preoccupation in communities with what is just. It necessitates the development of a theory of justice that coordinates with the theory of community developed above. Justice in relation to goods can be thought about in two forms: either as a matter of the good’s distribution ex ante or its correction ex post. Nevertheless, this two-fold structure is simplistic in that it fails to account for the fact that justice must promote an ideal of just relationships. The theory of justice developed in this chapter therefore posits that the interaction of distributive and corrective justice over time gives rise to transformative justice. The transformation in question relates both to the nature of the good and the attendant conception of a wrong. The chapter details how transformative justice is an outcome visible in both international and WTO law. At the same time, the chapter suggests that WTO law’s transformative justice is not perfectly just, a deficiency that gives rise to a continuing impetus at reform.

Chapter Ten provides an overall evaluation of China’s energy law and regulation and its effectiveness in achieving the carbon neutrality goal. The analysis of the book indicates that China’s energy laws and regulations have significantly evolved due to the energy market reform and the government’s policy emphasis on low-carbon development. The evolving energy law and regulation have created legal obligations towards energy decarbonisation from different sources of law and regulation, which can be interpreted and applied effectively. However, despite the progress made, the book’s analysis highlights several shortcomings of China’s current energy laws and regulations in facilitating the energy transition and achieving carbon neutrality. To address these challenges, Chapter Ten suggests areas for further legal development and research.

This chapter explores the extraterritorial application of the U.S. sanctions: namely, the ability of those sanctions regulations to reach non-U.S. actors or activities taking place outside of the United States. The chapter examines a recent trend towards increasing extraterritorial enforcement by the U.S. sanctions authority. In particular, the chapter discusses the objections of China to such extraterritorial application of U.S. sanctions laws. Of particular focus are Russia’s and China’s attempts to de-dollarize and resort to alternative financial networks to lessen the impact of these sanctions.

In this chapter, Richard Collins assesses the contribution of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea’s dispute settlement procedures to the resolution of maritime disputes. In particular, this chapter explains that recent decisions of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) have grappled with a range of international legal issues that are not directly related to the law of the sea, such as sovereignty, human rights, and sovereign immunities. This chapter observes that this development has led some commentators to criticise ITLOS for jurisdictional overreach. This chapter pushes back against this criticism. It argues that ITLOS’ engagement with international law regimes going beyond the law of the sea is a necessary recognition of the integrated and interconnected nature of the modern international legal system and, ultimately, leads to a strengthening of the rule of law.

Chapter 15 examines how the law of international responsibility relates to the jus ad bellum. It also examines the scope of the crime of aggression under the ICC Statute

Chapter 11 looks at how new technologies and methods of warfare relate to and impact on the law relating to the use of force. They include cyber warfare, hybrid warfare, drones, autonomous weapons and hypersonic weapons.