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PROF. CHIN LENG LIM
Choh-Ming Li Professor of Law

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(852) 3943 5557

(852) 2994 2505

chin.leng.lim@cuhk.edu.hk

Room 648
Faculty of Law
6/F, Lee Shau Kee Building
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sha Tin, NT, Hong Kong SAR

Chin Leng Lim is the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Law. He is a member of the Institut de droit international and of the Curatorium of the Hague Academy of International Law, an honorary senior fellow of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, visiting professor at King’s College London, and an editorial board member of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly. His latest books are The Aims and Methods of Postcolonial International Law, Pocketbooks of the Hague Academy of International Law (Brill Publishers, 2024) and Treaty for a Lost City (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He is co-editor, with Joel Trachtman, of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to World Trade Law (Cambridge University Press, 2026) and was an invited co-editor for the “Symposium on the Bandung Conference at 70: International Law’s Many Third Worlds”, (2025) 119 A.J.I.L. Unbound, 194-230. Professor Lim joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2017 following a decade as Professor of Law at Hong Kong University where he served as a member of HKU’s Senate and Court and in various other capacities in both the central administration and faculty administration. 

Recent invited lectures:

  • Economic Sanctions and Access to Arbitral Justice, Hague Academy of International Law/Académie de droit international de La Haye, Regional Course (2025)
  • International Arbitration, Xiamen Academy of International Law, General Course (2025)
  • The Aims and Methods of Postcolonial International Law, Hague Academy of International Law/Académie de droit international de La Haye, Special Course, Summer Session (2023)

Books include:

  • The Aims and Methods of Postcolonial International Law, Pocketbooks of the Hague Academy of International Law, (Brill Publishers, 2024)
  • Treaty for a Lost City (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
  • The Cambridge Companion to International Arbitration, with a Foreword by Lord Neuberger (Cambridge University Press, 2021), ed.
  • Lim, Ho and Paparinskis on International Investment Law and Arbitration, with a Foreword by Emmanuel Gaillard, 2d. ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 1st..ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
  • Alternative Visions of the International Law on Foreign Investment (Cambridge University Press, 2016), ed.
  • International Economic Law after the Global Crisis, with Mercurio eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
  • The Trans-Pacific Partnership (Cambridge University Press, 2012) with Elms and Low eds.; and the early work, written while a degree candidate,
  • The Paradox of Consensualism in International Law, with a Foreword by Martti Koskenniemi, Developments in International Law, Vol. 31 (Brill Publishers, 1998), with Elias

The following is a selection only of some published papers including as book chapters:

  • “Law of the Sea Arbitration”, in Köchler (ed.), Maritime Order in the Global Era (IPO Vienna, 2026), 225
  • “Incompatible Arbitration Agreements”, (2025) 141 LQR 35
  • “Bandung between Civilisational Equality and National Liberation”, (2025) 119 AJIL Unbound 216
  • “Introduction to the Symposium on the Bandung Conference at 70: International Law’s Many Third Worlds”, (2025) 119 AJIL Unbound 194 (with de la Rasilla)
  • “The Aims and Methods of Postcolonial International Law”, (2024) 437 Recueil des cours 9
  • “Neutral Rights and Collective Countermeasures for Erga Omnes Violations”, (2023) 72 ICLQ 361 (with Mitchell)
  • “International Trade and Foreign Investment”, in McInerney-Lankford and McCorquodale (eds.), The Roles of International Law in Development (Oxford University Press, 2023), 339
  • “Developments in International Investment Law and Policy in Asia”, 2019 Yearbook of International Investment Law and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2021), 323
  •  “Taming Leviathan as Merchant”, (2020) 19 World Trade Review 402, with Matsushita
  • “Reaching for Utopia, Geneva as Inspiration for Investment Disputes?”, in Lewis et al (eds.), A Post-WTO International Legal Order: Utopian, Dystopian and Other Scenarios (Springer Switzerland, 2020), 167
  • “The Function of the Transnational Chinese Contract”, (2019) 20 Journal of World Investment & Trade 313
  • “Finding a Workable Balance”, Kingsbury et al (eds.), Megaregulation Contested (Oxford University Press, 2019)
  • “Fragrant Harbour and Oyster Mirror”, 2015-2016 Yearbook of International Investment Law and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2018), 375
  • “Worldwide Litigation over Foreign Sovereign Assets”, (2016) 10 DRI 145
  • “The Strange Vitality of Custom in the International Protection of Property and Contracts”, Curtis Bradley (ed.), Custom’s Future (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
  • “Trade Law and the Vienna Treaty Convention’s Systemic Integration Clause”, in Chaisse and Lin (eds.), International Economic Law and Governance: Essays in Honour of Mitsuo Matsuhita (Oxford University Press, 2016), 94
  • “Injuncting Foreign Sovereigns in Aid of Arbitration”, (2014) 130 LQR 193
  • “Foreign Sovereign Counterparties to Hong Kong Contracts”, (2014) 9 Capital Markets LJ 157
  • A trilogy of notes culminating in “Beijing’s ‘Congo’ Interpretation, Commercial Implications”, (2012) 128 LQR 6; (2011) 127 LQR 495; (2011) 127 LQR 159
  • “You Don’t Miss Your Water ’Til Your River Runs Dry”, (2012) 18 Stanford Jo L Bus & Fin 72 (with Senduk)
  • “The Conventional Morality of Trade”, in Carmody et al (eds.), Global Justice and International Economic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
  • “East Asia’s Engagement with Cosmopolitan Ideals”, (2011) 56 McGill LJ 821
  • “Cast Light and Evil Will Go Away: The Transparency Mechanism for Regional Trade Agreements Three Years After”, (2011) 45 Journal of World Trade 375 (with Crawford)
  • “Withdrawing from Custom and the Paradox of Consensualism in International Law”, (2010), 21 Duke Jo Comp & Int’l L 143
  • “Competing WTO and RTA Jurisdictional Claims”, in Tomer Broude, Amy Porges & Marc Bush (eds.), The Politics of International Economic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2010) 282 (with Gao)
  • “China and the Doha Development Agenda”, (2010) 44 Journal of World Trade 1309 (with Wang)
  • “Inter Arma Silent Leges? Black Hole Theories of the Laws of War”, in Ramraj (ed.), Emergencies and the Limits of Legality (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 385
  • “Neither Peacocks nor Sheep: T.O. Elias and Postcolonial International Law”, (2008) 21 Leiden Jo Int’l L 295
  • “Saving the WTO from the Risk of Irrelevance”, (2008) 11 Jo Int’l Econ L 899 (with Gao)
  •  “The Uses of Pacific Settlement Techniques in Malaysia-Singapore Relations”, (2005) 6 Melbourne Jo Int’l L 313
  • “On the Law, Procedures and Politics of United Nations Gulf War Reparations”, (2000) 4 Singapore Journal of International & Comparative Law 435

Writings on Hong Kong’s treaty and constitutional arrangements include:

  • Chan and Lim on the Law of the Hong Kong Constitution, with specialist contributors, 3d. ed. (Sweet & Maxwell, 2021), 2d. ed. (Sweet & Maxwell, 2015), 1st. ed. (Sweet & Maxwell, 2012), Forewords by The Hon. Mr. Justice Ma C.J. and The Hon. Mr. Andrew Li
  • “Hong Kong’s New Law”, (2021) 137 LQR 11
  • “The Hong Kong Extradition Bill”, (2020) 136 LQR 19
  • “The Sino-British Treaty and the Hong Kong Booksellers Affair”, 132 (2016) LQR 552
  • “Britain’s ‘Treaty Rights’ in Hong Kong”, (2015) 131 LQR 348

Other keynote speeches and invited lectures include those delivered at Tillar House in D.C., the Harvard International Law Journal’s Annual Symposium, the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute, the 21st Singapore Law Review Lecture and the CMS Hasche Sigle International Law Lecture. Conferences and international workshops organised include an inaugural conference held in Singapore of the Asian Society of International Law in 2007 (NUS grant supported) and a series of Hong Kong conferences:

  • “Future of the International Economic Order” in 2011 with Arner and Mercurio (HKUSRT grant supported)
  • “Present at the Beginning”, on the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty negotiations in 2011 with Elms
  • “China’s Identity in International Law” in 2016 with Carty (Research Grants Council, GRF No. 741012, HKD 1.95 million, Principal Investigator)
  • “International Dispute Resolution: Reflections and Redirections”, with Chiann Bao, in 2019, celebrating the launch of BIICL’s establishment of its overseas presence in Hong Kong

Other grants:

His writings have been cited by appellate courts, most recently in a number of arbitration-related decisions by Singapore’s Court of Appeal, the Indian Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of Colombia, by the bar associations in England and Hong Kong, in a Hong Kong legislative inquiry and in Canadian Royal Commission and International Law Commission reports. In recent years he has spoken at the invitation of China’s MOFCOM, the EU Office to HK, UKFCO, Australia’s DFAT, Malaysia’s Central Bank, international bodies (the WTO, UNESCAP, APEC, ADB, PECC, OMFIF), universities (UCL, Tokyo, Keio, Geneva, Peking, Tsinghua, Melbourne, Duke, Harvard, Penn, NYU and Tufts among them) and to professional legal audiences at events organised by ICCA, ASIL, the NY State Bar Association, IBA, KLRCA/AIAC, HKIAC, CIETAC, SHIAC, SCIA, HKIArb, and GAR. He is reported in the Economist, Vox, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and the Guardian in the UK, by Forbes, CNN, Reuters, what then was the International Herald Tribune and by the Hong Kong, Beijing and regional press and media.

Lim is a member of UNIDROIT’s Working Group on International Investment Contracts and attended various sessions of UNCITRAL Working Group III as an observer. He is also appointed to the European Commission’s list of persons suitable for appointment as chairperson of arbitrations involving the EU’s disputes under its bilateral trade agreements. Locally, he served for three terms on a trade and industry department committee advising the Hong Kong SAR’s Commerce Secretary, and also on a governmental expert group on legal services. Before coming to Hong Kong, he taught at the National University of Singapore to which he returned in 2015 as the inaugural Lionel A. Sheridan Visiting Professor. He began his career as a law tutor and lecturer and junior UN officer and had taught previously in England and Wales before a hiatus from academic life – then at Queen Mary & Westfield College, London – followed during which he worked at Geneva UN Headquarters (UNCC/Security Council ad hoc committee no. 26) and later as government international law counsel in Singapore.

Called to the Middle Temple and also to the Singapore Bar he holds bachelor’s degrees from Buckingham and Oxford (Univ. Coll.), a master’s degree from the Harvard Law School as Kathryn Aguirre Worth Memorial Scholar, and a doctorate from Nottingham where he had first taught as a part-time tutor while holding the Law Studentship under the supervision of Professor D.J. Harris C.M.G. and the late Rev. Professor Hilaire McCoubrey. Outside academic life he is a barrister with a London commercial set, specialising in international arbitration.

COURSES

  • Transnational Legal Problems (Graduates Only – JD/LLM)
  • Law & Practice of Investment Arbitration (Graduates Only – JD/LLM)
  • Transnational Law & Business (Undergraduates Only)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Public international law
  • Private international law
  • International arbitration