1. Introduction 1.1. Background In recent years, the contracting activities in the field of international investment have been increasing rapidly, the discussions over international investment agreements are also heating up. There are three major forms of international investment agreements, which include bilateral investment treaty (BIT), regional and plurilateral investment treaty, and multilateral investment treaty. Post World War II, although a multilateral investment treaty was conventionally considered as the most effective instrument for promoting international investment, the practices of multilateral investment treaty were not successful, the OECD's "Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)" was a representative example. As of today, a comprehensive multilateral investment treaty still does not exist in the world. Contrast to the stagnation on multilateral investment treaty, the number of the bilateral investment treaties (BITS) has increased rapidly. Since the date when the first bilateral investment treaty was entered into in 1959, the number of bilateral investment treaties has been increasing significantly year by year, and currently the bilateral investment treaty has already become the most popular form of international investment agreements. The number of bilateral investment treaties had been concluded during 1959 to 1989 was less than 400, but in the following 20 years, more than 2,000 bilateral investment treaties had been signed. To the end of 2008, the number of BITs reached 2,676, and 176 countries were involved. At present, bilateral investment treaty is the most widely used form of international investment agreements. The first Chinese bilateral investment treaty was concluded between China and Sweden in 1982. And according to the news from "Coping with Financial Crisis, Encourage Enterprises to 'Go Global’ Special Press Conference" which was hold by Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China on 29th April 2009, until then China has signed 125 bilateral investment treaties with more than 100 countries, ranking second to Germany in a global scale. The latest information available about Chinese BITs was news reporting that China and United States of America (hereinafter United States or U.S.) had started the negotiation over bilateral investment treaty in June, 2008. To this date, the negotiation is still in progress. This thesis focuses on several issues in these BITS. United States, in pursuing the liberalization of investment, always in its BITS insists on eliminating performance requirements and extending national treatment to pre-establishment phase. However, the provision of performance requirements rarely appears in Chinese BITs and the national treatment was only granted to foreign investment in post-establishment phase. Therefore, in the negotiation of China-U.S. bilateral investment treaty, a problem was created—whether China should adopt extensive prohibition on performance requirements and national treatment in pre-establishment phase in China-U.S. BIT? Or should China adopt extensive prohibition on performance requirements and national treatment applied to pre-establishment phase in Chinese BITs? The following 5 chapters in this focus on discussing this question.