Abstrakt
It is symbolic that the legal framework for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was beginning to take shape exactly 40 years after the start of Chinese legal reform. In July 2018, at a conference on legal cooperation between Belt and Road participants, Chinesee Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi said that this framework should be based on the rule-of-law doctrine and respect for both international law and the national law of the participating countries.
The 40th anniversary of the beginning of Chinese economic and legal reforms gave him occasion to comment on the current state of the Chinese legal system: in his view, 90 per cent of Chinese laws and regulations arc now fully compatible with international standards. The emphasis Wang Yi laid on the rule of law was accompanied by a commitment to respect human rights: as evidence of China's efforts in this field he mentioned the new Civil Code, the Act on Judicial Review of Administrative Acts and judicial reform.
Judicial reform in particular is presented as proof of strengthening individual rights in the Chinese legal system and also as a step toward building an international dispute settlement mechanism for the BRI.