The Belt & Road development initiative is an open platform and covers at least 65 sovereign States. What should be the basic norm that underlies the Belt & Road economic order? In conceptualizing the fundamental social, economic and political expectations of the Belt & Road initiative and deriving a framework of enquiry of the structural design and key activities to capture and deliver value, it also discerns the respective roles that actors, institutions, countries should play in accomplishing the shorter-term mission and achieving the longer-term vision.
The domestic legal frameworks of the Belt & Road countries or regions differ. The English speaking ones practise the common law while the non-English speaking ones practise the civil law. At the private international level, the municipal judicial perspective of the applicable law in a given context, whether contractual or not, should gradually indicate the generally acceptable attributes of the basic norm.
The existing United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods 1980 (CISG) might also have an impact in denoting the basic norm. This is because, unless expressly excluded, CISG rules are deemed to apply between parties from different Contracting States to CISG. And these CISG Belt & Road States are: China (not including HKSAR), Albania, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Hungary, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Latvia, Lithuania, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mongolia, Montenegro, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Syrian Arab Republic, Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
If blockchain-backed smart contracts are applied in the Belt & Road cross-border commerce, they can enhance supply chain risk management, optimize value and lower costs. Where CISG does not apply, the basic norm in an e-Belt & Road open platform that should align values, build capacity and get support, in my view, should be practice-based and relatively simple and flexible. I would suggest to deploy an international customary rule - "equity + special circumstances" - to denote the substance of the basic norm so as to derive and determine the respective rights and obligations of the database network users!