On the afternoon of September 17th, 2021, the seventeenth keynote speech of the "Fudan Transnational Corporations and Law Forum", a panel discussion titled  "State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) in International Economic Law", was held successfully online. There are four panelists, namely, Dr BI Ying, Associate Professor of Zhejiang University Guanghua Law School; Dr CHE Luyao, Assisting Professor at the School of International Law, China University of Political Science and Law; Dr DING Ru, Associate Professor at the School of International Law, China University of Political Science and Law; and Dr SUN Nanxiang, Associate Research Scholar at the Institute of International Law, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The theme of Professor BI's presentation is "The Trends and Responses of International Lawmaking on SOEs: An Attempt Based on 'Corporate Social Responsibility'". She kicked off the speech with a brief introduction of the trends of international lawmaking on SOEs from different analytical frameworks, especially the well-known "Economy-Politics" two-dimension framework developed by Niklas Luhmann and Gunther Teubner. In light of the recent developments concerning the doctrine of "Corporate Social Responsibility", Professor BI considered adding a third dimension, "Society", into the Luhmann-Teubner framework would contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the role played by SOEs and the norms developed to regulate the activities of SOEs.

Dr CHE's delivered a speech titled "Rules on SOEs and Competitive Neutrality: Application, Expansion or Deviation?". She categorized international economic rules on SOEs into three types: the ones that merely apply the doctrine of competitive neutrality, the ones that expand the regulatory scope of this doctrine, and those that deviate from the intended objectives. Based on this typology of SOE rules, Dr CHE further analyzed the similarities and differences between these rules and the doctrine of competitive neutrality, as well as their impacts.

The theme of Professor DING's speech is "Emerging Subsidy Rules Related to SOEs: The Interactions of Multilateral, Regional and Intra-regional Efforts". After briefly introducing the background amid which the international economic rules on SOEs have emerged, Professor DING analyzed the interactions among the multilateral, regional and intra-regional subsidy rules related to SOEs from the perspectives of time and the contents of rules. Subsequently, she focused on the "universality" and "inclusiveness" of different rules on SOEs in the identified interactions and came up with proposals for future institutional construction.

Dr SUN's speech is titled "New Rules on Business Considerations, Non-discriminatory Treatments and SOEs". After having introduced the trade remedy investigations that Chinese SOEs have encountered in the United States and the development of rules on SOEs in free trade agreements, he analyzed different regulatory modes of SOEs through analogy and the similarities between the regulatory modes of SOEs and other models of corporate governance. He then came up with suggestions for resolving the current predicament confronting the Chinese SOEs, from the perspectives of developing new rules of SOEs, reforming the domestic institutions and improving the internal governance of SOEs.

Professor CAI Congyan of Fudan University Law School contributed insightful comments on the presentations of the four panelists. All the four panelists responded correspondingly and had an in-depth discussion among themselves and between them and the audience in the Q&A session.

Next Friday, September 24th, 2021, the Forum will host the eighteenth keynote speech titled "The Legal Risk of IP Infringements of Games Entering Overseas Markets" by Mr XING Cheng, Senior Legal Counsel of International Business Law Center of Tencent Corp., Ltd.