2.2.3. Domestic legislation on multimodal transportation
In China, there is no specific law to regulate a combined trans- port of all modes. However, as mentioned, the Maritime Code and Contract Law contain provisions for the operation of multimodal transport. Meanwhile, as shown below, other laws and regulations also apply.
The Maritime Code took almost 40 years, and went through more than 20 drafts, for its preparation to come into being. It came into force in 1993, and its many aspects, when drafting, were modeled on the Hague Rules, the Hague-Visby Rules, the Hamburg
Rules,3 and other international conventions.4 The total of 278
articles is divided into 15 Chapters. Section 8 in Chapter IV, which includes 5 articles, is devoted to regulating multimodal transport contracts, but the articles in it only apply to multimodal transport contracts that include a sea leg.
Most multimodal transport involves a sea carriage stage,5 but it
happens that sometimes a multimodal transport does not include a sea leg. In this case, the provisions on multimodal transport contracts in the Maritime Code cannot apply. To solve this diffi- culty, the Contract Law includes a section on the regulating of multimodal transport contracts. In 1993, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (“NPC”) started to draft a law on contracts. The Contract Law was not, however, promulgated until
the year 1999.6 The Contract Law consists of 23 chapters and 428
articles. It includes three parts: “General Provisions”, “Specific Provisions” and “Supplementary Provisions”. The part on “Specific Provisions” deals with 15 types of contracts, and includes contracts for transportation. Section 4 in this part specifically deals with multimodal transport carriage contracts, although it does not provide a definition of multimodal transport or multimodal transport carriage contracts. According to Article 123 in the Contract Law, if there are provisions for multimodal transport contracts provided in other laws, such provisions shall be obeyed (Contract Law, Article 123). It is not difficult to ascertain the “other laws” mentioned in this article, since the Maritime Code is in effect the only other law which provides rules for the operation of multimodal transport contracts in China. Accordingly, the multi- modal transport of goods involving a sea leg will be governed by the Maritime Code (Maritime Code, Article 102). A multimodal transport without a sea leg is subject to the provisions in the Contract Law.
Besides the above two laws, China has set up its own legal framework, which is comprised of laws and regulations that regulate different modes of transportation, as shown below (Table 1):
The Regulations, Rules or Provisions in the above table are to correspondingly implement any specific law promulgated by legislative bodies with a view to strengthening and controlling various modes of transportation. As a consequence, any provisions