Liberalising the Chinese Market : State-Owned Enterprise Disciplines in the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment

The newly-concluded EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), characterised by a number of market liberalisation clauses, is the black sheep in the investment agreement family. This article pins down one principal investment liberalisation discipline provided in the CAI – the state-owned enterprise (SOE) rule. The article concerns the capability and problems of the new SOE rule in addressing market access issues arising from the competition and incumbency of SOEs. Dedicated SOE disciplines are not an innovation of the CAI. Nor does the rule seem strikingly different from state-of-the-art treaty practice. However, delving into the nuances, the article finds that, when it comes to market liberalisation, the CAI blurs out the stringent, clear-cut approach the (CP)TPP model is intended to establish. Further, for both bodies of rules leave plenty of room for interpretation, the effectiveness of the new SOE rule, in general, remains uncertain and susceptible to politicization