The legitimacy crisis confronting the international investment regime has called for reforms to eliminate the asymmetric and troubled nature of investment treaties. These instruments grant extensive investor protections without offering reciprocal safeguards for host States wishing to preserve regulatory space. This article argues that any reform designed to redress imbalances in the existing regime should first aim at narrowing the personal jurisdiction of investment tribunals. Problematically, access to most investment treaties depends on broad nationality requirements, which have enabled investors to use corporations or passports of convenience to obtain treaty protection. This practice exacerbates the unbalanced relationship between host States and investors. It increases host States’ exposure to investment treaty claims and allows investors to circumvent newer, more State-oriented investment treaties. Using as an example the novel anti-nationality planning approach embraced in the 2019 Dutch Model BIT, this article suggests effective treaty mechanisms that States can adopt to restrict the range of investors that are entitled to claim.

As part of the conditions for WTO accession, China is committed to a number of additional obligations stipulated in the accession documents. This article will mainly focus on the contingent trade instruments in this context, which WTO Members are entitled to take against products of Chinese origin. In this regard, the WTO rules to be examined include the buffering mechanism under Sections 15 and 16 of the Accession Protocol and the textile-specific safeguard mechanism under paragraph 242 of the Working Party Report. The discriminatory and non-beneficial nature of the latter makes it the most unfair component in China's accession. In some cases, these China-only instruments also go against some fundamental WTO principles. For example, revivals of grey-area measures and the bilateral approach are fairly evident therein, which are no longer advocated and even prohibited under the WTO system.