Research On Private International Law Issues Relating To Transportation On Chinese International Boundary Rivers

The shipping industry of the boundary river between China and the neighboring countries has developed rapidly under the background of the‘Belt and Road'initiative.Boundary river transportation is essentially an international transport;the various civil legal relations arising from boundary river transportation,including cargo transportation contractual relations,ship collision relations which are considered as a foreign-related civil legal relationship.Then,it leads to the conflict of law problem naturally.At the present time,China and neighboring countries have not singed any bilateral agreement concerning boundary river transportation.Therefore,the conflict of law problems arising from boundary river transportation can only be resolved by private international law.This paper focuses on the private international law issues relating to boundary river,mainly include the problem as to which law is applicable to the civil legal relations involved in boundary river transportation,and the issue of legislating a uniform substantive law to regulate boundary river transportation.This paper is divided into four chapters:The first chapter is an overview of boundary river transportation.It briefly introduces the definition of boundary river,the delimitation of boundary river,the navigation rights of ships on boundary river and the management of boundary river shipping.It also points out the main legal problems in Chinese boundary river transportation.The second chapter analyze conflict of law problems relating to two typical civil legal relationships in boundary river transportation,namely cargo transportation contractual relationship and ship tort relationship.It is found that the contract of boundary river cargo transportation follow the same rules of application of law that is used in contract for carriage of goods by sea;however,for the legal relations of tort caused by collision and oil pollution of ships on the boundary river,due to the particularity of boundary river delimitation and navigation of ships,the principle of traditional conflict of law which is‘lex loci delicti'shall not apply anymore,instead principle of others like‘lex fori'or‘law of the flag state'shall apply.The third chapter discusses the feasibility of formulating uniform substantive law on boundary river transportation between China and neighboring countries on the basis of a comparative law analysis of the different domestic law between China,Russia and Korea which is applicable to the border transportation of Heilong River and Yalu River.The last chapter puts forward two proposals for solving the private international law issues involved in China's boundary river transportation,that is to say,the establishment of a special conflict of law articles that governs the boundary river civil legal relationship,and the development of a uniform substantive law for boundary river transportation between China and neighboring countries.