Regulations of the people’s republic of China on the prevention and control of Marine Pollution from Ships (No.7) 30 May 2011 No.11-005 We refer Members to previous circulars on the Regulations of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the Prevention and Control of Marine Pollution from Ships ("the Regulations"), and the postponement of the requirement that owners/operators of (a) any ship carrying polluting and hazardous cargoes in bulk or (b) any other vessel above 10,000 gt enter into a pollution clean up contract with a Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) approved pollution response company before the vessel enters a PRC port. These requirements were postponed pending additional rules to be issued by the MSA. These Detailed Rules on the Implementation of the Regime of Agreement for Ship Pollution Response have now been issued by the China MSA, on 20 May 2011, with an accompanying Notice and mandatory contract which owners/operators must enter into with a clean up contractor as approved by the China MSA. A copy of the mandatory, model contract which includes the different levels of contractors (as contained in Attachment III to the contract) is contained in the Annex to this Circular. Approved clean up contractors will be categorised by the MSA in accordance with their qualifications and response capabilities and will be assigned level 1, 2, 3 or 4 status. Operators will need to contract with an approved clean up contractor in accordance with the size and type of vessel. However, the list of clean up contractors approved in each Chinese port has still not been issued by the China MSA. The MSA Notice states that the lists of level 2, 3, and 4 contractors - which will appear on the following dedicated MSA website: www.osp.cn1 1 - will be issued by 31 August 2011 with the list of level 1 contractors to be issued during the course of the year. The requirement to contract with an approved clean up contractor will then be enforced in all Chinese ports from 1 January