The impact of the monetary gold principle on the determination of jurisdiction in the mixed maritime disputes.

Mixed maritime disputes are maritime disputes that involve the concurrent consideration of any dispute concerning sovereignty or other rights over continental or insular land territory, which according to Article 298(1)(a)(i) of United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, should be excluded from the jurisdiction of a court or tribunal referred to in Article 287. However, by means of treaty interpretation or consensus of two parties, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and other Annex VII tribunals have increasingly broken through the limits to actively exercise jurisdiction. Judgements under the influence of this tendency will be firmly resisted by states whose sovereign interests are damaged. Moreover, these judgements will not only fail to resolve disputes, but will create more serious international law and international political disputes, such as the judgement on preliminary objections of Mauritius v. Maldives delimitation case. In this judgement, the Special Chamber of International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea circumvented the Monetary Gold principle by citing the International Court of Justice advisory opinion and United Nations General Assembly resolution, which had no legally binding force. It is proposed that this judgement could open Pandora's box of challenges to general principles of international law and jurisdiction over sovereignty disputes. For States with mixed maritime disputes to resolve the issues mentioned above, it is necessary to respond to lawsuits actively, avoid adverse consequences caused by default judgements and reach regional consensus, and avoid unfavourable International Court of Justice advisory opinions and United Nations General Assembly resolutions.

Reflections on the environmental damage compensation regime in Chinese civil legislations.

The chapter on Tort Liability of the new Chinese Civil Code has broadened the types of environmental torts and expanded the scope of environmental damages. After such changes, however, deficiencies still exist. Most significantly, environmental torts are not determined by illegality, which means whether national emission standards have been violated is irrelevant. As long as damages are caused, the principle of liability without fault shall be applied. Conflicts in Chinese environmental law have led to discrepancies and inconsistencies in related judicial decisions. In this regard, this paper argues that the "theory of tolerance limit" should be adopted to redefine the meaning of illegality and further identify the conception of liability without fault for environmental damages. In addition, the punitive damages system created by the Civil Code also lacks clarity in its judgment criteria. Since the purpose of private law is reparation rather than punishment, this paper recommends that the scope of punitive damages should be clarified through compensation for loss to maintain consistency in civil legislation.

The impact of the COVID-19 on China's fisheries sector and its countermeasures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected China's economic development, international exchanges and other aspects to varying degrees, among which the impact on China's fishery development should not be underestimated. The fishery is a traditional and vast industry in China. The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak has also exposed potential problems in China's fishery development, such as the lack of specialised aquatic product quality and safety supervision and testing institutions. New problems have also arisen, such as the decline in the market demand for fish and aquatic products, affecting fishers' income, livelihood and so on. These deficiencies require China to establish a matching legal system to correspondingly solve the current legal and political problems. This paper will systematically discuss the impact of the COVID-19 on China's fisheries sector from the perspectives of 'fishers' and 'aquatic products' after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and analyse how to deal with various problems by referring to relevant experience in light of China's national conditions and characteristics.