Thoughts on Shipping Market Supervision in New Period

By Xie Xie

As a relatively open market, the main body of shipping market includes shipping companies at home and abroad, state-owned and private shipping companies, and many shipping sub categories,which has a direct effect on the foreign trade of our country.The overall operation of China's shipping market is good, but with the change of market environment, many problems have emerged, which is ref l ected in both shipping and port areas.

The government work report in 2014 pointed out that in and post-mortem supervision should be strengthened,vertical and horizontal linkage collaborative management mechanism should be established, and simultaneous decentralization of responsibility and authority, and simultaneous supervision and deregulation should be realized. For the relationship between the government and enterprises, the threshold of market access should be less regulated, i.e. regulations for the registered capital of an enterprise, business areas, employees and offices etc.should be relaxed moderately to enhance the vitality and competitiveness of the market. Meanwhile, the in and post-mortem supervision should be strengthened, i.e. the integrity, law-abiding, responsibility and other regulated management in the process of enterprise operation.

Overall, the supervision of shipping market requires the establishment of a diversified market regulatory system.The government should on the one hand build a fair and equitable market, and on the other hand should establish the integrity system; enterprises in the good environment established by government innately have the power to maintain brand value and the integrity operation; the third party institutions should play their respective roles, and play an intermediary role in construction of industry selfdiscipline, business model and policy suggestions.

Government’s behavior in market supervision. The shipping market regulation in the future is not to increase institutions and personnel to carry out the high pressure and seamless supervision, but improve the effectiveness of regulation by model innovation. The first is to build a fair and just market. The second is to establish the integrity system. Shipping exchange, associations and scientif i c and research institutions can participate in the evaluation of the third party.

Enterprise’s behavior. As the main body of market behavior, the enterprises’ behavior depends on the external environment. Good market environment can make the bad enterprise be good while the bad market environment can make good enterprises go with the stream. In the downturn market, shipping enterprises are looking for prof i table breakthrough and innovation direction. It will be regarded as a good path to reconstruct relationship between enterprise and customer by “good faith”. Industry needs positive energy, times call for positive energy. Since there are such companies which are exploring and moving on,more enterprises will follow suit and practice “integrity-based” concept. The shipping market will turn the corner and usher in a better tomorrow.

The third party institutions’ behavior. Strengthening market regulation needs to abandon the old way of increasing regulatory personnel and funding in the past, and the new environment does not have such a condition, so the third party forces will play an important role in this process. The third party forces include industry associations, shipping exchange, scientific and research institutions, as well as a new type of think tank, forming a new-type regulatory mechanism for the shipping market. Industry associations firstly should play the role of vertical communication and horizontal coordination, making the industry policy be implemented in the industry, and the industry voice can be ref l ected to the industrial exclusive sector through industry association. Secondly, the industry association should play a role in interest aggregation and expression.Interests aggregation refers to the industry association collecting universal and common problems in the industry and conveying them to the customers served by industry, forming an unified industrial voice rather than the individual opinion of individual enterprises based on their own interests. Thirdly, industry associations should establish industrial rules and play the role of industry selfdiscipline. Shipping exchange should establish a new model of serving enterprises, on the one hand it can make enterprises which have the ability to serve enter the system through the credit threshold set by shipping exchange, and on the other hand shipping market operation big data can be formed through enterprise service. The data can help accurately understand the real operation of industry, and provide more accurate analysis of sources than before for industrial leading department introducing relevant policies.Research organizations and think tanks can carry out deep analysis based on the data, apply to the government decision support system by using the results, and provide a more realistic basis for decision-making consultation for the healthy development of the shipping market supervision.