Regarding the requests on Country Report, we worked out this Country Report of P. R. China.

　　This report deals with three maritime-related aspects as specified in the request paper: governmental maritime administration organizations, basic data on marine transport, and research organizations on maritime affairs and ocean-related issues. Because of the limitation of accession to the updated statistics, all the data are collected up to 1999.

　

　　In China, the Ministry of Communications of P. R. CHINA is in charge of maritime affairs. Under the ministry, there are three departments dealing with different aspects of maritime matters within the scope of their responsibilities. The Maritime Safety Administration deals with maritime safety and marine pollution. The Department of Water Transport Administration deals with the marine transport administration. The Rescue and Salvage Administration deals with marine search and rescue.

　　Besides the Ministry of Communications, there are other two governmental agencies dealing with ocean pollution, namely The Bureau of Environmental Protection and The Bureau of Ocean Administration who work with the Ministry of Communications jointly regarding the marine pollution protection.

　

　　The organizational chart is shown in Table 1.

　

　　Although we do not have the relevant data, confidently speaking, shipping plays very significant role in China's economy and its importance is becoming more and more outstanding with China's open-up.

　　Because the foreign trade is recorded in value terms while the sea-born trade is recorded in volume terms, so we can not get the percentage of the marine transport amount in the entire international trade. We did not get the cargo volume carried by vessels in the Chinese international trade, here we use the throughput of the Chinese ports as reference. Because the transhipment cargo is double recorded, so this figure must be a little bigger than the figure of the cargo carried by vessels (see table 1.1).
In 1999, the cargo volume carried by ships reached to 1180 Million tons, which amounts to 9.22% of the entire domestic transport amount which is 12804.6 Million tons (see table 1.2).

　　One thing that should be pointed out here is that the Chinese shipping witnessed a decreasing stage from 1995 to 1998, this is due to the impact of Asian financial crisis. But in 1999 we saw a big upsurge.

　　Passenger carriage by water remains a declining trend. The passenger transport volume and turnover were 200 million person-times and 1.39 billion person-kilometers, down 4.8 percent and 2.5 percent respectively from 1998 (see table 1.3). In contrast to the decline in normal passenger traffic, the mainland-island traffic and tourist traffic grew fairly fast. This shows there is still much room for further restructuring of the passenger waterway transport.

　

　　By 1999, China owned vessels with a total of more than 60 million DWT, including 40 million DWT of Chinese-flag vessels and 20.15 million DWT of convenience-flag vessels under the control of Chinese ship owners. Among 40 million DWT, 36 million DWT were engaged in international shipping (see table 2.1). According to the statistic of 1998, within all foreign trade cargo carried by sea, the share of those carried by Chinese carriers accounted to 38.6%, by Sinotrans who mainly chartering foreign vessels, accounted to 8.9%, and about 52% of foreign trade cargo were carried by foreign carriers.

　　By 1999, the fleet of domestics shipping vessels was 26.68 Million DWT, including 6.89 Million DWT coastal fleet and 19.79 inland waterway fleet.

　

　　The number of Chinese seafarers is 1.2 million, including 380,000 seafarers serving on seagoing vessels.

　

　　In 1999 the throughput of main Chinese ports reached 1.27 billion tons. Comparing with 1998, the growth rate is 16.0 percent (see table 4.1). In 1999, the Chinese open ports accommodated 69290 Chinese vessels operating on international lines, with an aggregated tonnage of 642.33 million, up 15 percent and 20 percent respectively over 1998 figure (see table 4.2).

　

　　Regarding the occurrence of marine disasters, data is not available. The number of oil pollution is 25 in 1999, and the number of red tide is 15 in 1999 (see table 5.1).

　

　　At present, there are following main organizations involved in maritime research and ocean related issues.

　

　

Notes:

・CCS	China Classification Society
・COSCO	China Ocean Shipping Company Group
・MOC	Ministry of Communication
・MOFTEC	Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation
・MRSB	Maritime Rescue and Salvage Bureau
・MSA	Maritime Safety Administration
・BNEP	Bureau of National Environment Protection

　

Recent marine pollution occurred in Chinese territorial waters or involving Chinese flag vessels

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　According to the data collected in 1998, within all foreign trade cargoes transported by sea, the share of those transported by Chinese carriers accounted to 38.6%, by Sinotrans who mainly chartering foreign vessels to carry the goods, accounted to 8.9%, and more than 52% of total foreign trade cargoes by sea were carried by foreign carriers.

　

　

　

　

　The number of Chinese seafarers: total 1.2 million, including 380,000 seafares on sea-going vessels.