China is now one of the world's most important outward investors. The salient features of the country's cross-border direct investments (discussed in the first section) include that its foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown rapidly, that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) play a dominant role...

There is a controversy about the extent to which bilateral investment treaties (and double taxation treaties) lead to increased FDI flows. This text – the overview chapter of a volume that brings together the literature on this subject – draws the conclusions for these various contributions