This Week in Asia

Meet the 8 Chinese judges who'll sit on belt and road cases

According to the Supreme People's Court in Beijing, disputes regarding the "Belt and Road Initiative"- President Xi Jinping's plan to fund infrastructure links throughout Eurasia - will be handled by two China International Commercial Courts (CICC).

The group is not very diverse - they are all Supreme People's Court judges and all but one are members of the Communist Party. The exception is Shen Hongyu; she is a member of the Jiusan Society, which is one of China's seven pseudo-parties whose job is effectively to agree with the Communist Party while appearing independent.

Workers in the Thar desert, Pakistan, build a Chinese-backed power plant. Photo: Bloomberg

Government propaganda promotes Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature Belt and Road Initiative at a subway station in Beijing. Photo: AP

Others point to the fact that China has enforced a couple of uncontroversial judgments from foreign courts to suggest it will create more procedures to do so.

Chinese and Pakistani flags at the Chinese-backed Gwadar port in Pakistan. Photo: Bloomberg

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2018. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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