Ningbo's first one-stop water-based dispute resolution center officially begins operation.

On July 24, the first city-wide full-chain water dispute resolution platform covering seafarers and shipping companies—the Ningbo Water "One-Stop" Dispute Resolution Center—jointly established by the Ningbo Maritime Safety Administration, Ningbo Maritime Court, and Beilun District Social Governance Center, was officially inaugurated and put into use at the Beilun District Social Governance Center (Comprehensive Governance Center) in Ningbo. Leaders from relevant units such as the Zhejiang Maritime Safety Administration, Ningbo Maritime Court, and Ningbo Municipal Committee of Political and Legal Affairs attended the unveiling ceremony.

Ningbo Zhoushan Port is the world's largest port by cargo throughput, with an active shipping industry and a large number of maritime workers. Over 5,000 merchant ships pass through daily, with nearly 400 shipping companies and 13,000 registered seafarers in the Ningbo jurisdiction. Various water-related disputes and resolution needs objectively exist. However, resolving water disputes inherently requires cross-departmental and cross-sectoral collaboration. Seafarers often spend long periods at sea, making offline rights protection and evidence collection costly. Additionally, limited public awareness of rights protection pathways, coupled with cumbersome and lengthy processes, often leads to prolonged unresolved disputes.

To address these challenges, in 2024, the Ningbo Maritime Safety Administration began exploring diversified dispute resolution pathways, establishing 11 grassroots resolution stations based on local maritime offices, seafarer service stations, and legal service points. By 2025, they successfully mediated over 40 water-related disputes, including seafarer labor disputes, ship sales, and maritime accidents, involving nearly 4 million yuan. Notably, the administration's "Fengqiao-style" resolution team, in collaboration with the Ningbo Maritime Court, successfully resolved a three-year-long ship sales registration dispute, which was selected as a model case for diversified water dispute resolution by the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Transport. They also worked with the Beilun District Human Resources and Social Security Bureau to efficiently handle three seafarer labor disputes, recovering over 1.11 million yuan in wages for seafarers. These successful cases have provided valuable experience for Ningbo's water dispute resolution efforts.

As practice deepened, grassroots resolution stations gradually revealed shortcomings such as insufficient coordination, dispersed professional resources, and limited capacity to handle complex ship transactions, large-scale labor disputes, and major water traffic accident disputes. In response, the Ningbo Maritime Safety Administration actively collaborated with the Ningbo Maritime Court and the Beilun District Social Governance Center to promote the deep integration of specialized water dispute resolution platforms with local comprehensive governance platforms. This aimed to establish a complete governance chain of "prevention at the front end, mediation in the middle, and bottom-line support at the back end," leading to the creation of the city-level "One-Stop" Dispute Resolution Center.

The newly upgraded city-level water "One-Stop" Dispute Resolution Center integrates 11 related units and assembles a dedicated water dispute resolution team of 68 professional mediators, forming a cohesive force for handling water disputes. The center's scope of acceptance covers various water-related disputes, including water traffic accident handling, seafarer labor disputes, and maritime personal injury compensation, while also providing psychological counseling services. The center innovatively streamlines the entire process of mediation, arbitration, trial, and judicial confirmation, enabling the public to "enter one door and handle everything." If parties reach an agreement through mediation, judicial confirmation can be completed on-site. If mediation fails, arbitration or trials can be conducted directly at the center's arbitration or trial courts without additional appointments or submission of case materials. Judicially confirmed documents have enforceable power, and subsequent enforcement can involve maritime authorities retrieving ship and shipping company asset clues, forming a closed-loop service of "mediation as the bottom line, judicial protection, and enforcement implementation," significantly reducing the time for public rights protection. "For complex water disputes involving multiple parties, we will also activate a liaison mechanism, organizing multi-department experts for joint 'consultation' and simultaneous resolution to improve the quality and efficiency of handling complex disputes," said Luo Xiaobin, Director of the Legal Affairs Division of the Zhejiang Maritime Safety Administration.

While offline services are being comprehensively upgraded, the center has also built an online "cloud mediation" system equipped with dedicated remote mediation hardware. Seafarers can submit rights protection applications, upload evidence materials, participate in video consultations, and complete remote judicial confirmation through the online platform without needing to stop their ships, return to port, or go ashore, breaking the time and space constraints of maritime navigation while balancing normal ship operations and seafarers' legitimate rights protection.

On the day of the unveiling, participating units held discussions on establishing a long-term mechanism for diversified water dispute resolution, exchanging ideas on strengthening departmental collaboration, expanding online services, and preventing conflicts at the source. Moving forward, the Ningbo Water "One-Stop" Dispute Resolution Center will continue to deepen the effectiveness of tripartite collaborative governance, continuously improve the full-chain services of source prevention, diversified mediation, and judicial support, and provide a Ningbo model for modernizing grassroots governance.