Sino-U.S. Investment Treaty: A Little BIT For You and Me

Photo "Shaking Hands" by Nicola Corboy (Some rights reserved)

In May, 2011, the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue will be resumed in Washington. Daniel Michaeli, research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank and publisher, opines in the Huffington Post that the U.S. should negotiate a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with China: “China has already signed 120 investment treaties around the world, including with Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom. The most recent ones have clauses providing foreign investors with the option to resort to binding international arbitration for intellectual property disputes, if Chinese local courts cannot resolve such issues satisfactorily (as, indeed, too often they cannot).”

According to Mr Michaeli jobs do not necessarily follow U.S. investments to China: “Recent data indicates that U.S.-based multinational corporations locate more than half of their employees in the United States, where they have 70 percent of their operations and spend 87 percent of their research and development budget.”

Read Mr Michaeli's article here.