Hong Kong or Singapore: who to trust on China’s belt and road disputes?

As President Xi Jinping’s infrastructure investment strategy intensifies, so too do legal disputes between investors, governments and Chinese players

As the two cities vie to be the destination of choice for settling these disputes they face an uneasy task: keeping China comfortable while assuring foreign parties they won’t be unduly influenced

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Experts say one of the biggest influences of the Belt and Road Initiative will be the export of the Chinese approach to contracting and the rule of law. Photo: Simon Song

Published: 1:30pm, 23 Mar 2019Updated: 11:51am, 25 Mar 2019

China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative includes some of the world’s most complex infrastructure projects – ports, pipelines and railways stretching from Beijing to Berlin.

As the initiative intensifies, so too have the legal disputes between investors, foreign governments and Chinese players, making the rules about how disputes are decided more important than ever.

Hong Kong and Singapore, two of the world’s most trusted centres for resolving international legal disputes, are competing to be the location of choice for settling belt and road disputes.

Hong Kong’s major international arbitral institutions, including the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), last year established commissions to handle belt and road cases.

Meanwhile, Singapore and China in late January agreed to set up an international mediation panel to resolve disputes over belt and road projects, “a new way of settling cross-border commercial disputes that better reflects Asian values and is tailored to Asia’s needs”, according to Edwin Tong, Singapore’s senior minister of state for law and health.

“The belt and road projects are large, high-value projects and have the added feature of often occurring in countries that are more susceptible to political risk,” said Justin D’Agostino, the Hong Kong-based chair of ICC’s Belt and Road Commission.