On April 24, 2014, the Academic Salon of the Institute of International Law of Wuhan University was held as scheduled in Room 323. Dr. Dong Shijie from the China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies gave a wonderful report entitled “Law Application of the Marine Joint Development Zone”.

The contents of Dr. Dong Shijie's report are mainly divided into five parts: the concept of law application in the marine joint development zone, the law application of cross-border joint development, the legal application of joint development in the disputed sea area, the application of law in the case of the joint development of the Timor Sea, and the inspiration invoked to China.

First of all, Dr. Dong Shijie introduced the application of law for marine joint development. It refers to the establishment of jointly developed treaties and the legal rules and principles stipulated in the treaties that can be applied in the joint development zone. The main matters in development areas need to be regulated by law: product sharing contracts, oil exploration and development activities, customs, immigration and quarantine, employment, employee health and safety, tankers, tax laws, criminal acts, civil acts. Then, based on the analysis of the texts of the existing treaties, Dr. Dong Shijie introduced the general rules that should be followed when applying for cross-border joint development and joint development of disputed sea areas. That is, the laws applicable to cross-border joint development are joint development agreements and the rules established by the joint development agencies which are applicable to the entire joint development, but the domestic laws of the two countries are only applicable in the sea areas under their respective jurisdictions. In the disputed sea area, in addition to the rules formulated by the joint development agreement and the joint development institution, the domestic law shall be applied in the joint development zone, and the rules shall be followed: the applicable criminal law shall be determined according to the country of nationality or permanent residence of the parties; customs, immigration and quarantine laws applied to personnel, ships and articles are that of the member state’s jurisdiction where the personnel, ships and articles enter from marine joint development zone, so does tax law.

Subsequently, in view of the joint development case of the Timor Sea covering cross-border joint development and joint development of disputed sea areas, Dr. Dong Shijie analyzed it separately, and detailed the analysis on joint development documents between Australia and Indonesia, and between Australia and East Timor.

Finally, in the conclusion section, Dr. Dong Shijie summarized several factors affecting the application of laws in the marine development zone: the types of joint development, the mode of joint development, and the division of joint development zones. It also made a prospect for the application of laws jointly developed by China and Vietnam, Brunei and North Korea.

In the questioning session, Teacher Du Zhihua made suggestions on the “law application” and the logical structure of the report; Mr. Shi Lei made suggestions on how to deal with the relationship between the approval of the joint development agreement and domestic law, and suggested whether it is possible to conduct domestic legislation on joint development.

The academic salon was hosted by Professor Nie Jianqiang, Deputy Director of the Institute of International Law at Wuhan University. Yang Zewei, Yu Minyou and other teachers from the Institute of International Law and some doctoral and master students attended the academic salon.