With the help of the Supreme People’s Court’s newly-opened fishing vessel inquiry platform, courts at all levels can identify and track people connected to fishing vessels who are subject to enforcement by searching for various details such as their identities, or the status of their mortgages or leases on the vessels.

The platform, opened on Dec 18, is a joint effort made by the SPC and the Ministry of Agriculture to improve courts’ enforcement of law and further regulate the management of fishing vessels.

It is also a move to fully implement the Opinions on Certain Issues Concerning the Establishing and Improvement of the Enforcement Linkage Mechanism and the requirement of the national symposium on enforcement work. The SPC discussed establishment of the platform with the Ministry of Agriculture and signed a memorandum to create an online inquiry and control mechanism for enforcement on Nov 16, 2015.

The platform enables sharing of information about people subject to enforcement for failing to obey the regulations pertaining to fishing vessels.

The SPC and the Ministry of Agriculture plan to exchange messages regularly in the initial stage, and then explore a real-time information exchange mechanism.

At present the platform is mainly used for information inquiry but will develop more functions such as restriction on transfer over time.