This chapter provides a snapshot of the recent developments on Chinese security interest law. Several questions will be explored. Firstly, were there any needs for changes? Secondly, what are the recent changes? Thirdly, have these changes achieved the purpose? I will offer some critical reflections of the law in terms of clarity, simplicity, convenience, and fairness. Not only are the relevant background and statutory framework of the security interests explained, but its theoretical structure and several practical issues will also be discussed. For instance, where a loan has been secured by both a personal guarantee and a mortgage, in the absence of any agreement, will the creditor have a free choice on which one to enforce first? Another question to be addressed is in situations where more than two securities had secured a loan (including a personal guarantee and mortgages) on a joint and several liability basis, in the absence of any agreement, can a security provider indemnify from the others after it fulfilled its security obligation in case of the debtor’s insolvency ?

Infrastructure plays a crucial role in a country’s political, economic, and social development, but it is often accompanied by enormous costs and risks. This chapter examines the real impacts and sustainability of China-financed infrastructure in Africa. Learning from the lesson of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway and the experiences at home, China does not depend on either state sponsorship or pure market to carry out infrastructure cooperation. Seeing the interdependence between infrastructure and industries, Chinese mobilize multiple stakeholders and combine various resources to improve commercial feasibility of infrastructure projects in Africa. Meanwhile, diverse manners of coordination are flexibly adopted to address specific challenges in each project and country. Resource-for-infrastructure deals were made possible not only for national reconstruction of oil-rich Angola, but also for industrial empowerment of agrarian Ethiopia. As the volume of infrastructure financing soars, debt stress has also become a concern, especially regarding the monumental railway projects in Ethiopia and Kenya. Correspondingly, lending terms and coordination efforts for these projects are revised. Yet, China’s strategy of raising productivity through infrastructure construction to foster virtuous circle of development in Africa remain unchanged in spite of pragmatic adjustments.

Chapter 4 analyses whether private mechanisms for implementing land rights in development projects can fill the gaps within the formal legal framework allowing communities to leapfrog those gaps to negotiate with power-holding concessionaires and financiers? This chapter introduces the devices for analysing this question: project finance mechanisms and company agreement-making. Focusing on project finance mechanisms requires understanding the private legal rules that bring life and value to the project’s assets. These forgotten elephants in the room are the devices within private contracts and policies and behaviours around which they are implemented, all of which matter for the recognising and implementing of indigenous peoples’ rights to land. Evidencing these interfaces means looking at the ordering of a project financing to see how it inherently treats indigenous rights issues within contractual mechanisms that operationalise lender safeguarding policies. Referring to sample clauses, I provide an overview of documentary interfaces between project finance devices and land rights issues where vulnerability to dispossesion is high and private discretion and priority is elevated.

In the days after Congo crossed the threshold to independence from Belgian colonial rule, a crisis erupted that quickly consumed the world’s attention. On Thursday 30 June 1960, demonstrations in the capital Leopoldville marred the celebrations of the country’s newfound statehood. These initial disturbances were controlled by the Force Publique – an at times baleful security organisation that had held sway over the local population since its creation in the late nineteenth century by the despotic Belgian King Leopold II. The following Monday, the situation deteriorated. Disgruntled Congolese troops in the Force Publique mutinied against their remaining Belgian officers and dragged the entire country into a state of chaos.

Chapter 6 makes the case for periodic delivery of the EITC. Returning to the Advance Earned Income Tax Credit as a failed experiment in periodic delivery, the chapter describes the advantages of periodic payment, outlines the pros and cons of different possible periodic payment structures, and identifies challenges that would arise in a transition from lump sum to periodic distribution. It describes how decoupling the credit from income tax return filing would reduce low-income taxpayer reliance on unfavorable borrowing practice and remove the incentives for return preparers to engage in misbehavior. It also proposes ways that the IRS might improve its procedures for verifying benefit eligibility, and the need to balance that with an application process that is simple for taxpayers to understand.