China Law Blog

The 2008 China Maritime Law Special Topic Research annual meeting will be in Wuhan, China, this weekend, November 8 and 9. The conference will be at the absolutely gorgeous Shangrila Hotel in Wuhan. The meeting is jointly sponsored by the All China Bar Association Maritime Law Section, the Yangtzi River Maritime Law Association, The Hubei Province Bar Association, The Hubei Province Vessel Construction Trade Association and The Wuhan City Bar Association. This will be the first time this annual meeting will be held in an inland city.

The following topics will be discussed:

-- Legal issues relating to vessel construction.

-- Shipping contracts and customs issues.

-- Disputes arising from the release of cargo without a bill of lading (my firm is involved in a case on that in China right now)

-- Insurance issues arising from transport of dangerous cargo.

In addition to maritime lawyers, the meeting will draw attendees from all areas of legal and business life in China concerned with these issues, including judges from the Supreme Court and various Chinese high courts, together with representatives from the shipbuilding, marine insurance, shipping, logistics and freight forwarding industries.

This meeting was planned before the recent world wide economic downturn. This downturn has hit the shipping industry very hard, with dry bulk freight rates falling by over 80% in just the past two weeks. The decline in freight volume and rates is now having knock on effects in the shipbuilding industry. China is caught in the middle of this, since it has been rapidly expanding its shipbuilding capacity in an attempt to overtake Korea as the largest shipbuilder in the world.

China Law Blog's own Steve Dickinson has been asked to speak (in Chinese) to the group on the various issues raised by the economic downturn, particular with respect to shipping rates (defaults on shipping contracts) and shipbuilding (defaults on shipbuilding contracts).

One of the things Steve will be emphasizing to this very likely all-Chinese audience is the need to move quickly to collect on outstanding debt. We are finding that Chinese companies, for a whole host of reasons, are incredibly slow to mount full scale efforts to collect on their debts. Just this week, we were contacted by two Chinese companies seeking to collect 6 and 7 figure amounts from American companies arising from long ago non-payments. In both cases, the Chinese companies had waited so long that the US companies had already ceased operations, without ever having declared bankruptcy. Though it is sometimes possible to collect in such cases, there is a greatly increased difficulty to do so.