International Freight Forwarders Legal Research

Recent change of the admittance policy to international freight forwarding market will bring more and more freight forwarding companies, and also will lead to more booming of the whole circle. On the other hand, with China's entry into WTO, especially after four years' transitional period, it was permitted at the end of 2005 for foreign capital to invest solely at international freight forwarding services, which is a great challenge for small and middle sized companies. However, under this market background, a sound set of legal forwarding system has not founded yet, which causes large diverge on lots of practice disputes.The enlarging and complicating trend of the International freight forwarding service scope makes its legal status transfer from traditional agent to one party of the contact, so does its definition in the law. Different status will bring about the change of its responsibility. Therefore, to analyze different legal status is a precondition for solving the relevant disputes. The article, from the aspect of civil theory and trade practice, discusses criterion for identification of different status, and also in combination with the representative cases, discusses difficult problems in the practice.At present, the legal status of the international freight forwarder is divided into two types. One serves as a traditional agent, the other acts as one party of the contact. Based on that, the article further divides it into three types, i.e. the traditional agent, the operator and the provider of comprehensive service. Their correspondent responsibility and liability differs a lot.The article is aimed at analyzing and solving legal problems in the freight forwarding practice. With reference to the advanced international freight forwarding rules and regulations, the article focuses on problems in practice. First, the article discusses the definition and the legal assortion of freight forwarders. Then, it focuses on the analysis on the impact of the Contract Law of China to international...