Research On Legal Issues Related To The Subject Of Liability In Ship Collision

China is not only a big maritime power but also a country with a strong international shipping industry. To satisfy the national maritime development and the military-civilian integration strategy, marine transportation has been developing vigorously, mean while lots of complicated tort cases have also occurred,especially ship collision is the most typical case.It is very important to define subject of liability of ship collision in order to implement the shipowner's remedy.Therefore, from the perspective of the liability of ship collision, the paper mainly discusses the legal issues related to the subject of liability in ship collision,which is also the key to confirm the liability for damage in ship collision cases.On the basis of focusing on discussing the above contents, the paper firstly explains basic theories specific to ship collision torts like ship's personification, the ship responsibility system, the risk society theory etc., analyzes the legal relations existing in the literal meaning of "ship responsibility",and the combines tort liability law to reveal the important position of the principle to affirm the subject of liability in compensation for damages caused by ship collision; secondly, the paper further probes into the legal status of connected subjects who are closely related to the interests of the ship such as the owner of the ship, the ship operator,the charterer etc. and makes a separate discussion on situations like demise charter, collision occurred during piloting etc.; in the end, combining the current maritime practice and the development trend in the new era, the paper comes up with three suggestions for legislation about ship collision, namely systemizing the rule to identify the subject of liability in ship collision, confirming the legal status of the ship operator in legislation and correspondingly enlarging the adjustment range of the concept of ship collision by replacing "ship collision"with "collision at sea",trying to improve the current legal system in China about the liability of ship collision.