The Research On Legal Status Of International Freight Forwarders In China

Since the businesses of international freight forwarders are very complex and special, the legal status is especially critical when dissension is caused by certain behaviors. The legal status of a forwarder will determine to a larger extent what right they have and what obligations and responsibilities they undertake. Therefore, this paper studies the international freight forwarder company's status from the legal perspective.The international freight forwarder in this context can be either the agency or the indepentent operator. The structure and contents of this paper are as follows:Part 1 mainly describes the development of the international freight forwarding business and adopts the comparison method to compare the definition defined in China against the definitions of the international freight forwarding in other countries.Part 2 mainly introduces the status quo of the international freight forwarders in both the countries with the Common Law system and the countries with the Civil Law system and the definition of the legal status in different countries.Part 3 addresses the status quo of the international freight forwarding business in China and also analyzes how the legal status of the international freight forwarders is defined from the theoretical and practical perspectives; it also analyzes the impact of the Rotterdam Rules on the international freight forwarders; at last, the author makes some suggestions for improving the international freight forwarding rules and regulations.