"Belt & Road", "Big Bay" & Innovation

What separates "Belt & Road" countries or "Big Bay" cities are visibly their borders or outer limits; and invisibly the conflicts of law and different dispute settlement mechanisms that govern relationships. To connect them, there is a need to design, build and maintain both the hard and soft infrastructure that the market wants. Key activities to deliver value should be planned and executed.

As institutions or people invest in cross-border projects, they need their return on investment. To be able to forecast and evaluate risks and to identify the principles, rules, and processes to prevent adverse impacts and to resolve disputes is risk management. The main challenge, at the public level, is to harmonize the law and to establish a common (alternative) dispute settlement mechanism timely, and at the private level, to strike deals including the applicable laws and (alternative) dispute settlement mechanisms in contracts anytime now.

If the interested public sectors take leadership to provide value-added services, one possible law-relation option on rights and obligations, in my view, could be based on the "equity+special circumstances" rule. I believe the general principles of law of countries and cities, and their application boil down to that. And it would be ideal to have a common third party (alternative) dispute settlement mechanism run by neutral and competent personnel .

Before there is any regional arrangement in that regard, private institutions and individuals are generally free to choose a law and any alternative dispute mechanisms that they are not connected with to govern their conventional contracts. As the decentralised ledger technology (DLT) and its business applications eg in supply-chain management are developing fast, it is foreseeable that the blockchain-backed electronic networks and databases providers will establish their practice regarding the applicable law and dispute settlement mechanism, which may impact on other public developments. After all, the "Belt & Road" and "Big Bay" initiatives and their execution by early movers are service innovation that go far beyond general stakeholders' expectations!

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