Chapter Three provides an overview of the supporting mechanisms under China’s Renewable Energy Law and their effects in driving large-scale renewable energy investment in China. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the contributing factors, mainly from legal and regulatory perspectives, to the curtailment of renewable energy in the Chinese context. It also discusses newly adopted administrative measures to facilitate the integration of renewable energy. This chapter sheds light on the limited role of market reform in achieving large-scale renewable energy penetration in China and highlights the future direction of market development based on the latest reform objectives.

By the end of 2022, the sanctions were voluminous. But the economic and other measures deployed against Russia were not as comprehensive as other sanctions regimes had been. Technically, the sanctions remained targeted. There was no comprehensive trade embargo, for example, against Russia by the United States or the European Union. Regulated parties, however, tended toward overcompliance; companies also ceased to do business with Russia for reputational reasons. These trends meant that the implementation of targeted sanctions often resembled comprehensive ones in practice. But the Russia sanctions were not so sweeping as those imposed upon Cuba, Iran, North Korea, or Syria, for instance.

This chapter examines the first idea-complex of equality and obligation evident in WTO law by identifying each of its constituent elements and their inter-relationship as a coherent whole, that is, the way they align and thread together. The WTO Agreement’s focus on equality and distributive justice begets a primary emphasis in law on obligation, which in turn gives rise to a constitutive structure that is prospectively oriented and reasoned deductively.

In the last solo-authored edition of his seminal book, International Dispute Settlement, the late Professor John Merrills wrote that ‘the peaceful settlement of international disputes is the most critical issue of our time’.1 To the casual reader, this statement may seem an exaggeration. Surely the environment and climate change, collective security, global health, human rights, and international trade and finance, among others, may appear to be more pressing issues today. And yet, having devoted most of his professional life to the advancement of legal scholarship on international dispute settlement, Merrills was acutely aware that the study of this discipline offers the most effective litmus test to assess the strengths and limitations of international law at any given time. International disputes naturally arise whenever international law subjects disagree on matters of law or fact. Alongside disputes concerning territory and the use of force, today we witness an exponential growth of disputes on issues as diverse as human rights, environment, trade, and investment. Disputes are also becoming more complex, involving multiple parties, norms, and dispute settlement mechanisms (diplomatic or adjudicatory). At the same time, international disputes and the process of dispute settlement can act as a catalyst for the enforcement but also the development of international law. Dispute settlement and its institutions reaffirm existing norms and stabilise legal relations, but can also contribute to the crystallisation of new norms or new interpretations of existing norms because international disputes and their processes of settlement may evidence gaps or shortcomings of existing norms.

Equality and equal treatment are the principal purpose of WTO law. However, that purpose is accomplished in varying conditions, which make it difficult to regularly attain the consistency and coherence that an egalitarian and obligatory conception of the law assumes. Consequently, this chapter proceeds to demonstrate how WTO law is focused secondarily on fairness and corrective justice and how this focus begets a subordinate emphasis in law on rights, which in turn gives rise to a contractual structure that is retrospectively oriented and reasoned inductively. It also demonstrates how various features of WTO law like the non-violation cause of action and implementation are consistent with such a rights-based ethos.