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The article discusses actual and potential legal responses to Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from the viewpoint of different stakeholder. It mentions create transparency regarding legal responses to BRI in the past and in relation to future options and China's global investment projects are nowadays often seen as a threat and many countries are taking steps to limit Chinese inbound investments ostensibly for national security reasons.

The terminological and doctrinal features of the term "conflict of laws" are hardly ever discussed in greater detail. Normally, conflicts of laws are understood as inter-jurisdictional conflicts regarding the applicable law. However, on the basis of an analysis of the relationship between Chinese customary law and "regular" Hong Kong law, this article shows that only those conflicts which are resolved through a choice-of-law process should be regarded as conflicts of laws in the private international law sense. The choice-of-law process is the defining feature of (substantive) private international law, which distinguishes this area of law from others. This article also demonstrates that Chinese customary law and "regular" Hong Kong law do not form separate bodies of law, but are rather sets of rules which derive from different sources of law within the same legal system. A choice-of-law mechanism is not required to determine application priorities. In Hong Kong, Chinese customary law is therefore treated, but not chosen, like foreign law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on flexibility in legal rules. According to the author, flexibility is being regarded as a distinguishing feature of the common law. It notes that flexible rules refer to the open-ended rules that do not offer guidance as to what the law is in relation to particular issues. The difference between legal certainty and legal flexibility is discussed.