The Reformation Of Chinese Marine Insurance Law In Perspectives Of Rotterdam Rules

Currently, the International logistics Industry has witnessed a rapid development, thanks to the high‐leveled combination of ocean shipping, air transport, road transport and rail transport, which have become the main force in the modern Logistics chain. There’s no doubt that the international logistics have made great and continuous contributions to the development of international trading and the process of global economic integration.However, compared with the rapidly developing logistics Industry, the international conventions on transportation, which are still restricted in the traditional Legislative model, have made little progress: the popular conventions such as Hague Rules, the Hague–Visby Rules and the Hamburg Rules have adopted the one–way legislative model which mainly concern the carrier accountability and thus neglect the protection of the interests of consignors. In addition, those conventions are only applicable in the ocean shipping, and rules applicable to other transportations are set in different conventions, which also have obvious internal conflicts. In order to solve those problems on international multimodal transport of goods and promote the integration of multimodal transport of goods, United Nations General Assembly appoved the UN Convention on the Contracts of International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea (known as Rotterdam Rules). Rotterdam Rules, established on the multimodal transport of goods, broke the traditional one–way legislative model and raised the responsibility of carriers. It made new rules on the responsibilities and obligation of consignors, which achieved the balance of interests of carriers and consignors and will surely make great contributions to the integration of multimodal transport of goods.The innovations of Rotterdam Rules have brought about the impacts on traditional Marine Insurance. In contrast to the innovative rules, the current Marine Insurance Law has defects and legal gaps, which needs immediate reformation. This article tries to find those defects and legal gaps especially in terms of marine liability insurance and marine cargo insurance, in the dimensions of multimodal transport of goods, the carrier liability system and the consignor liability system in Rotterdam Rules. finally, this article tries to make some suggestions on reforming the Chinese Marine Insurance Law and wishes to provide references to Chinese Insurance Industry.