A Study On Secondary Registry And Related Legal Issues Of Its Establishment In China

Secondary registry is a ship registration system parallels with the traditional ship registration system (first registry) in a country's ship registration regime which is a new ship registration system for domestic ship owners. Secondary registry is somewhat similar to open registry. The word secondary is used for the identification from the traditional ship registration system. The vessels registered under the first registry engage in domestic shipping with strict terms while the vessels registered under the secondary registry engage in international shipping with comparative favorable terms.Compare to traditional close registry and open registry, secondary registry has advantages. Secondary registry not only provides favorable ship registration terms, but also put emphasis on the effective administration and control of the vessels registered. Secondary registry have the merits of both close registry and open registry. It can make up for the deficiencies of both close registry and open registry. Secondary registry is reasonable and in line with the needs and tendency of the development of modern shipping.As the financial crisis close to the end, the global shipping industry has endured the severe winter and is looking forward to a period of readjusting and developing. To the shipping industry in China, this period means challenges as well as opportunities. The global shipping industry center is diverting to oriental area and especially to China. We should take this opportunity to set up secondary registry in our country according to the status quo of China and the reasons why the vessels owned by Chinese choose to register abroad. We should bring secondary registry into play and make this system a boost to the development of our shipping industry by long-term mechanism. We should also take this opportunity to promote the construction of the soft environment of our shipping industry and make the legal environment more favorable.This dissertation makes a study on secondary registry and build up Secondary registry on this basis. This dissertation also gives some suggestions to the perfection of related legal regime and legal environment.This dissertation includes five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the concept and classification of ship registration system and preliminary analyses the meaning of the ship registration system in the legal sense. Based on these, this chapter then gives an introduction to the concept and classification of secondary registry and analyses its characteristics. Chapter 2 studies on secondary registry from a historical perspective. This chapter analyses the background and reason of the cause of secondary registry. This chapter also introduces and comments on the secondary registration systems in Isle of Man in England and Norway. Chapter 3 elaborates on the legal attributes. This chapter clarifies the legitimate basis, legal nature, legal functions and legal effect of secondary registration system. Chapter 4 analyses the possibility of the establishment of secondary registration system in China. This chapter confirms the possibility of this system in China and gives suggestion on the time of its establishment by the analysis on the positive influence and congruous the of this system to China and the reason why Yangshan port in Shanghai postponed the establishment of secondary registry. Chapter 5 makes detailed system design for secondary registration system in China and gives some suggestions to the perfection of related legal regime and legal environment.