중국 해상법상 용선계약에 관한 고찰

As of the end of the year 2013, Korea was ranked number one in the import of China and China was the biggest trade partner of Korea, which directly shows the economic development between the two countries. Most of the import or export goods are carried by sea transportation. In this sense charter parties are widely used as an important contract type for carriage of goods by sea. Therefore maritime law can be said to be a very important source of law in international transaction. Considering the volume of the trade and the shipping power of both countries, the Korean Commercial Code or the Chinese Maritime Code should be the governing law with respect to the trade between Korea and China, though English law is still chosen as the governing law in many contracts. Nevertheless we need to enhance our understanding on the charter party law of China in preparation for the future when the Korean Commercial Code or the Chinese Maritime Code are more often chosen as the governing law of contracts. While English law, which can be said to be the origin of the charter party law, has a case law system and does not have a written code for the charter party law, China has a written code, i.e. the Chinese Maritime Code, which regulates charter party contracts. Thus, the Chinese Maritime Code can be said to have features for written codes and written contracts and it has the maritime procedure and courts under the Maritime Litigation Special Code. As a manifest feature of the Chinese Maritime law, disputes under the charter parties belong to the maritime litigation. A charter party law is a dispositive law, which is a natural feature of it. All the maritime laws of the world are interpreted in that way. A bare boat charter party is one of the typical leasing (or demise charter) contracts and the Chinese Maritime Code has relatively specific regulations for the rights and obligations of the ship owners and the rights and obligations of the charterers. It has adopted the contents of Barecon 89 in general and thus does not have its own features. For time charter parties, the Chinese Maritime Code has adopted the contents of Baltime and, for voyage charter parties, it has adopted Gencon. It does not have its own features for both time charterparty and voyage charterparty, too. Nevertheless, though the Chinese law makers tried to adopt English law widely, they were already influenced by the Japanese academia and they regulated time charter party and bareboat charter party under the concept of the vessel leasing contract and regulated voyage charter party under the concept of contract of carriage of goods.