For all its merits and shortcomings, the Peace of Westphalia is a crossroad of European history. It represents one of the very rare moments of concerted action on the part of its nations to rearrange the disarray of their jigsaw puzzle. It must be said that Europe has not exactly been blessed with such tokens of united will-power. Only three or four serious efforts are worth mentioning as having had any lasting consequence: Westphalia(1648), Vienna(1814–15), Versailles (1919) and, with some restrictions, San Francisco (1945–46).

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China abrogated all unequal treaties imposed on it by foreign countries and abolished every illegal extra-territoriality enjoyed by foreigners in China, which has created optimal conditions for the country to increase its exchanges with foreign countries independently and to begin to establish an efficient and effective conflicts law system.1 For nearly three decades, however, for various reasons China's legislative bodies did not pay sufficient attention to developing conflicts law and the academic study of the subject in China was protracted. Except for a few bilateral treaties,2 which contained a few conflict rules, one could hardly find similar provisions in the other international treaties concluded or acceded to by China. Conflict rules were absent in domestic legislation except a few rules to be found in unopened regulations and documents. After 1978, with the development of an open-door policy toward the outside world, China's domestic legislation of conflicts law was finally placed on the agenda of the domestic legislation in 1983.

This contribution will focus on conflicts of treaties in public international law. The following question will be addressed: which of two treaties should be given priority according to public international law in the case of a conflict between those two treaties?

What duties of loyalty apply under Dutch law to a company's officer in respect of a business opportunity? In other words: should the officer refrain from ‘stealing’ an opportunity from the company, whereby stealing would consist of the transaction being entered into by the officer on his own behalf instead of on behalf of the company? This articles examines the answers to this question under Dutch law.