A Legal Study Of Electronic Bills Of Lading Under The Background Of Cross-border E-commerce

The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road strategy has already set up, which revives Chinese marine logistics with that favorable policy. Meanwhile, the cross-border e-commerce which provides marine logistics with practical demand has been carried out in full swing. The cross-border e-commerce rose as a new force in 2012, then, gradually grows into the most fashionable development pattern of international trade and the strongest economic growth pattern. Marine logistics has always been the prior to cross-border e-commerce with its well-developed system and popular prices. However, despite of the optimistic outlook, a lot of experts have the great anxiety of the traditional bills of lading being out of time. The so called cross-border e-commerce is a new pattern of international trade, which is paperless, multilateral and digitized. So if we don’t try our best to make a change, the evergreen bill of lading will be soon abandoned. And that’s why we should establish the legal system of electronic bills of lading as soon as possible.In fact, with the maturing of the technology and equipment, the technological factors are no longer an obstacle to the spread of electronic bills of lading. What’s the most important now is to build the faith of the people involved to the electronic bills of lading. This thesis focuses on how to build that kind of faith from legal aspects under the heat of cross-border e-commerce.The greatest innovation of this paper is to make a legal study of electronic bills of lading under the background of cross-border e-commerce. In order to combine the two factors above, the author will take the characteristics of cross-border e-commerce as framework. This paper will study how the paperless cross-border e-commerce challenges the legal forms and functions of electronic bills of lading, how the multilateral cross-border e-commerce challenges the disputes resolution of electronic bills of lading and how the digitized cross-border e-commerce challenges the safety of electronic bills of lading. Meanwhile, the author will make some study about the current commercial practices and legislations of electronic bills of lading and then make some suggestions based on the former experiences.