The process of globalisation involves communication of signals particularly in the spheres of trade and investment. These messages are from traders and investors, and seek to galvanise local host State attention, displace local interests and priorities, as much as augment and enrich them. As such, such communication flows are set at the interface of national sovereignty and globalisation. This interface has traditionally been the subject of national filters. However, such communication flows also command internal filters that involve elements of responsibility from the traders and investors themselves. Commercialisation that is facilitated in the interests of mankind as a whole needs to stay away from its interests alone. There is therefore here a freedom in communication flows that is accompanied by a state of responsibility, and is quite independent of the State sovereignty filter. In international economic relations this internal filter needs to be buttressed as much as national and multilaterally arrived at filters.
In this first issue of the third volume of the MJIEL a seminal piece on trade issues as they relate to the energy sector, an empirically based critical insight for Chinas investment regime, and the experience of China in the safeguards field, are considered.
Asif H Qureshi Editor-in-Chief