Against the backdrop of rising interest in if not alarm about Chinese overseas direct investment (ODI), A Casebook on Chinese Outbound Investment: Law, Policy, and Business (hereinafter, the Casebook) is designed to provide fact-based and neutral case studies to help inform teaching in professional schools, including law, policy, and business schools. Comprised of fifteen cases, based on primary source materials, and written by experts, many of whom are either from or have extensive experience in the host state in question, the Casebook provides teaching material for educators and other concerned parties. The case studies are written with specific overarching objectives in mind: to shed light on the decision-making, policies, and practices of Chinese firms; to understand how Chinese firms adapt to challenging regulatory environments; and to assess what kind of effects Chinese projects have overseas, particularly in developing states where China’s footprint may be most pronounced. This Introduction lays the groundwork to address overarching questions, including, what are Chinese companies, what are China’s international investment strategies, what are the trends in Chinese ODI, what is the relationship between Chinese ODI and the Party-State, and what are the effects of Chinese capital in host states?

This book studied under which conditions the EU and its Member States influence the accountability of transnational corporations that are based in developing and emerging states for their involvement in human rights violations. Five conclusions are drawn. First, there are identifiable corporate concerns about the competitive threat of such corporations. They form a barrier to strengthening the accountability of EU-based corporations. Second, regulation has been adopted only when the ‘perceived interests’ in the EU and its Member States outweigh these concerns. Such interests are vastly different at the EU level and Member State level. Third, regulators have tried to minimise the impact on the competitiveness of their corporations by ‘extending’ their human rights regulations internationally. Fourth, bilateral agreements contain obligations relating to human rights and can serve to contribute to the creation of a ‘thick’ transnational stakeholder consensus. Local litigation is an important element in this process. Finally, there are valuable options to bring cases against corporations from developing and emerging states in EU Member States courts.

This chapter moves beyond individual corporations and corporate types to examine the broader sociopolitical system in China. It focuses on the "fragmented authoritarianism" of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), outlining the main causes of fragmentation, including corruption, factionalism, autonomy of state-owned enterprises, local government self-interest, private firm co-optation of government actors, and internal contradictions within the CCP's own ideology. This fragmentation prevents the CCP from exercising consistent control over corporations and the broader society, leading to a much more complex and diverse corporate-political ecosystem than imagined by many Western commentators.