Treaties and pacta sunt servanda: A shared concept for the PRC?

This chapter examines how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) approaches the rule of pacta sunt servanda in public international law. By examining the approach and practices of the state in its relations with its neighbours, as well as its approach to various treaties agreed over the years, it is established that the PRC seeks to give effect to pacta sunt servanda in a manner quite different from the way in which other states, particularly Western states, conceive the rule. This unorthodox approach to pacta sunt servanda is reflected in the PRC’s response to historical treaties. The PRC considers some historical treaties, which it designates as ‘unequal’ in nature, as not binding under international law. Three bases are put forward: rebus sic stantibus; that the treaties impose unequal obligations and rights on the parties; and that they were imposed under the threat of force or by similar means. The feature of this approach is that the PRC takes what might be termed a ‘revisionist’ approach to treaties into which it entered from a position of relative weakness to that which it now occupies.