Challenges and Opportunities of Port State Control Collaborations between Countries Enabled by the Maritime Silk Road

Port State control (PSC) is an important method which the Port State adopts to manage ship safety and marine pollution in its territory. During the process of promoting the construction of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), subject to economic development and shipping, there is a lack of unified standards and requirements among different states along MSR, which causes many problems. Firstly, the level of economic development among countries around MSR is different leading to some countries cannot afford to develop their PSC. There is a lack of cooperation among these countries. Secondly, the PSC levels of most countries along MSR are weak. Moreover, the standards of PSC and the capacity of the officers of the Port State are different. Lastly, there is a deviation in the direction of the same State’s PSC. They are even not clear on the major functions of PSC, so they may be confused by the pre-supervision and the latter examination. Therefore, taking advantage of the experience from the successful PSC organizations, the states may learn from the examples of the new mechanism under Paris MOU and Tokyo MOU, then formulate the cooperative mechanism fitting better to them. In order to fulfill this goal, we shall try to unify the standards of PSC, quantify the PSC content index, and rectify the direction of PSC among different states along MSR. In the meantime, the states shall strengthen information exchanges and further develop extensive cooperation, and improve the modes of cooperation about shipyard and ship classification society among countries. Then it will create a favorable environment for the development of shipping and the MSR construction.