International Freight Forwarders Legal Status

In this dissertation, the writer attempted to answer the question—how to distinguish the legal statuses of the international forwardingcompanies in the various business scopes, by analyzing the provisions on the entrusting and agency and NVOCC in Chinese laws and Regulations.With the development of the international trade and international transportation, Freight Forwarder has enlarged its operating scope and developed to be NVOCC from traditional Freight Forwarder whose responsibility was only as an agent. Therefore, in all the scopes of the forwarding business, there are mainly two kinds of business, one is the forwarding business, and the other is the NVOCC business.The civil relationship between Freight Forwarder, Principle and the Third Party Logistic are stipulated by the PRC Civil Law and Contract Law. The writer analyzed the different statuses of Freight Forwarder and the corresponding responsibilities with the main thread that Freight Forwarder develops business in the name of the Principle or itself.In case Freight Forwarder acts as an independent operator, it concerns two contracts and two set of bill of ladings. The writer places emphasis on the civil legal position of NVOCC; analyzing the rights and duties of theNVOCC under different contract identity from the two angles—one is thenature of NVOCC; the other is the legal status of Bill of lading issued by NVOCC. Besides, this dissertation also studied the positions of NVOCC provided by Regulations on International Maritime Transport of the People's Republic of China.In the end, the writer talked about the Third Party Logistic, placing emphasis on the relationship between the Logistic and Freight Forwarding, in order to make Freight Forwarder has a good understanding about its future tendency, and make it clear that Freight Forwarder must transform to The Third Party Logistic, which is the objective situation.The writer listed the main opinions about this dissertation in the preface; explaining the basic frame of this dissertation in the postscript; giving deep thanks to her tutors, friends and coworkers who have helped her in finishing this dissertation. In the end, the writer hopes that this dissertation can draw a satisfactory period for her three-year-graduate study in Shanghai Maritime University.