The Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) is the oldest active international organization with legal capacity in the progressive unification of Private International Law (PIL). The HCCH aims to progressively unify PIL to address legal problems in the form of universal regulations. Thailand is aware of the significance and importance of co-operation in PIL, as shown by the accession of Thailand to the HCCH in 2021. This article will examine Thailand’s situation with a technique employed by Charles Dickens in his heartwarming story, ‘A Christmas Carol,’ which examined one character’s experience with reference to events in the past, the present, and the future. The past will be examined through the genealogy of PIL and the experience of Thailand before joining the HCCH. The present will address the status of Thailand in the HCCH. The future will be discussed as suggestions for Thailand after becoming a Member of the HCCH.

Chinese courts’ attitudes toward domestic surrogacy have appeared to soften and are inclined to protect the best interests of children and the legal rights of intended parents. However, many problems remain unsolved in transnational surrogacy cases, including the validity of a contract, parentage or guardianship determination, citizen conferral, and household registration. In this article, transnational surrogacy is analyzed from the perspective of private international law, particularly jurisdiction, choice of law, and recognition of foreign judgment on parental relationships and foreign public documents. In addition, some specific cases, such as transnational surrogacy for same-sex partners and transnational surrogacy without the consent of intended parents, are discussed and analyzed in detail.

The Chinese toxic milk scandal raised tremendous global concerns about food safety in China. To repair the tarnished reputation of domestic food production, Chinese authorities focused on compulsory food safety liability insurance. Unfortunately, the introduction of compulsory food safety liability insurance in the Food Safety Law of the PRC has been delayed by the disagreements of Chinese legal scholars. Chinese legal scholars have examined the legitimacy of compulsory food safety liability insurance in China mainly from the standpoint of domestic laws. The valuable insight of international laws has been ignored by them. This article attempts to fill this research gap by scrutinizing the Chinese endeavor of launching compulsory food safety liability insurance through the joint perspective of public and private international law. It further demonstrates that the ideology of human rights of public international law has already penetrated into the body of broadly-interpreted private international law.

IP litigations over mobile digital devices are soaring in many jurisdictions. Based on the observation that the same or closely related infringement claims over the IP rights embedded in a single digital product have been raised in multiple jurisdictions, some literature and legislative proposals suggest that an international jurisdiction over such litigations are necessary. This article aims to explore practical roadmaps to establish public international “conflict of laws” that can serve administering IP dispute resolution among MNCs. The author will start by reviewing both public international laws on IPRs including the Paris Convention, PCT, the Geneva Convention, the TRIPs, and their private counterparts. Institutional aspects of the WTO and the WIPO administering such as public international IP laws will also be examined. Agreeing with the proposed idea of establishing ‘public’ private international IP laws, this article will propose a more practical roadmap to establish time and cost efficient IP dispute resolution mechanism: the IP5 Collaboration Model.

This article reviews the statutory reform of Chinese private international law from the perspective of tort conflicts which concludes that notwithstanding the significant improvement, the new Private International Law Act of China are fraught with various defects. In the field of tort, Article 44 are problematic in three aspects: first, the key term‘ habitual residence’lacks an objective definition; second, the rationality of an automatic preference to the law of the common habitual residence over the lex loci delicti is open to doubt; third, there is little, if any, practicability to introduce the notion that the parties may choose the applicable law after the tort has happened. Moreover, there are a number of defects or problems with Article 45, Article 46 and Article 50 of the Act, respectively. What’s more, the Act neglects some other important types of torts which call for special treatment, say, unfair competition, and environmental pollution, nuclear damage and traffic accidents. In the end, the article puts forward the corresponding suggestions for improvement.

According to the report prepared by Legl Committee of IMO, 1978, since the disaster of motor tanker Amoco Cadiz carrying approximate 220, 000 tons of crude oil was wrecked on the coast of France and damaged the largest oil pollution accident in shipping history, Legal Committee of IMO has studied and discussed a new Salvage Convention with assistance of CMI. CMI has prepared a new draft convention under the chairmanship of professor Erling Chr. Selvig and adopted it as a report of CMI to IMO in the 32 Internaltional Conference of CMI, Montreal, May, 1981. This paper has been written to study comparatively andinterprete the questions and/or considerations of the new draft convention by the delegates participated in the Legal Committee of IMO in particular on the private legal view of it. This Salvage Convention Draft has not yet been deliberated thoroughly to agreed the revisiion of the 1910 Convention in accordance with CMI Report 1981 until session 54, March 1985. Therefore this paper has been prepared in the light of the comments made at the Legal Committee in order to interpret the legal questions and contents of the new draft.