| Author: | Yang, Haifan |
| Title: | Study of selected legal issues of the terminal operators for carriage of goods by sea in Chinese law |
| Advisors: | Zhu, Ling (LMS) |
| Degree: | M.Phil. |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Subject: | Freight and freightage -- Claims Maritime law -- China Marine insurance -- Law and legislation -- China Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies |
| Pages: | xi, 119 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | During the entire process of the carriage of goods by sea, the terminal operator (TO) plays a crucial role since it provides ancillary services such as loading, discharging and warehousing for clients before and after the voyage. In Chinese commercial practice, the consignee/shipper or carrier (or carrier's agent) concludes a terminal operation contract (TOC) or a port warehousing contract/ port storage contract (PWC/PSC) with the TO and pays for the services. Due to the repeal of "Rules on the Operation of Goods at Ports" (Ports Operation Rules) in 2016, the issues concerning the TOs are now tackled by general laws, such as the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China (CC) and Maritime Law of the People's Republic of China (CMC), which is definitely insufficient. Furthermore, with the development of the shipping industry and containerisation, disputes involving the TO have arisen in decades and will keep rising. However, there lacks a systematic legal study of the various legal issues that the TO may encounter in practice. Besides, there also lacks an in-depth analysis of the cargo claims involving the TOs, which is the most frequently occurred disputes in practice. There is some fragmented research about the TOs. Nevertheless, the CC is implemented this year (2021), and the CMC is under revision, which leads to some of the previous research being contrary to the possible legislation in the future, thus losing the reference value. Against this background, this thesis, after summarising and analysing disputes that the TO may encounter in judicial practice in the past ten years (2010-2020), is dedicated to carrying out a comprehensive study of the most common cargo claims encountered by the TO, including the cargo damage/shortage, misdelivery and liability of the TO in these cases. We find that the current rules about TO's cargo claims are fragmented and ambiguous. Even with the new Civil Code regulations and the provisions in the revised CMC draft, these problems cannot be solved entirely. Therefore, the issues of TO's liability during its operation requires a more detailed explanation. The contributions of this thesis are two-fold. Firstly, this thesis summarises the various legal disputes that the TO may encounter in its production and sorts out the existing legal rules and court judgments of these disputes, which can clarify to a certain extent the settlement of disputes related to terminal operations after the repeal of Ports Operation Rules. Secondly, this thesis delves into disputes in cargo claims faced by the TOs, including cargo damage/shortage and misdelivery. This thesis summarises the courts' views on some important issues in cargo claims, analyses the deficiencies of the existing laws, and provides suggestions for improving the rules. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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