LongBench v2 / 66f36490821e116aacb2cc22 / According to the report, how to promote the construction of smart courts?

Contents
Preface.
................................................................................................ 67
I. China’s Court System and Reform Process.
.................................... 68
II. Fully Implementing the Judicial Accountability System............... 74
III. Advancing the Reform of Organizational Structure of Courts..... 86
IV. 
Strengthening the System and Mechanism of  
Judicial Protection of Human Rights............................................ 93
V. Promoting people’s access to and benefits from the judiciary..... 105
VI. 
Solidly Advance the “Basically Solving the Difficulties in 
Enforcement” Campaign.............................................................119
VII. Deepening Judicial Openness and Judicial Democracy............ 126
VIII. 
Promoting Scientific and Classified Management over  
Judicial Personnel.................................................................... 136
IX. 
Improving the System and Mechanism of  
Judicial Service and Securing National Development.
............... 143
X. 
Improving the Judicial Management System and the  
Jurisdiction System...................................................................... 148
XI. Advancing the Construction of Intelligent Courts...................... 155
Conclusion........................................................................................ 160
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Preface
The rule by law is the fundamental method for administering the country 
and managing governmental affairs, while justice is a key cornerstone of 
the system of rule by law. Comprehensively deepening judicial reform 
has great and profound implications for improving and developing the 
socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics and promoting the 
modernization of governance system and capability in our country. Since 
2013, by always taking the fundamental realities of our country into 
consideration and keeping pace with the times, and with the aim to make 
the public experience fairness and justice in each judicial case, the people’s 
courts have unswervingly and comprehensively deepened judicial reform, 
and improved their adjudication and enforcement in an all-round way, and 
comprehensively enhanced the efficiency, competency, and public credibility 
of the judiciary, achieving fruitful results.
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I. China’s Court System and Reform Process
Institutional Basis of Court Reform in China
According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the 
Organic Law of the People’s Courts of the People’s Republic of China, 
the people’s courts, as judicial organs of the State, exercise adjudicative 
power in accordance with laws independently, free from any interference 
by administrative organs, social organizations, and individuals. The State 
sets up the Supreme People’s Court, local people’s courts at different levels 
and special people’s courts such as military courts. In accordance with laws, 
these people’s courts adjudicate civil, criminal and administrative cases and 
other cases prescribed by laws, and carry out judicial activities including the 
execution of civil and administrative decisions. Sole judges, collegial panels, 
judicial committees, and compensation committees are the judicial organs 
prescribed by laws.
The Supreme People’s Court, as the highest judicial organ of the People’s 
Republic of China, is responsible for adjudicating various cases that have 
material effects nationwide or are subject to its adjudication according to 
law, formulating judicial interpretations, supervising and guiding the judicial 
work of local people’s courts at different levels and special people’s courts, 
and managing certain judicial administration work of the courts nationwide 
within the scope of its functions and powers as per laws.
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Local people’s courts at different levels include primary people’s courts, 
intermediate people’s courts and higher people’s courts. Special people’s 
courts include military courts, maritime courts, IP courts, financial courts, 
etc.
A people’s court at a higher level supervises the judicial work of the people’s 
courts at the next lower level. In litigious activities, the people’s courts adopt 
the systems of public trial, collegiate panel, challenge, people’s assessors, 
defense, and judgment of the second instance as final, etc.
Basic Process of Court Reform in China
Since the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy, along with 
all-round economic and social development, continuous advancement of 
democracy and rule by law, and the public’s ever-increasing demands for 
and expectations of judicature, the original judicial system has become 
unable to meet the need of new situations. As early as in the 1990s, China’s 
courts started the reforms focusing on enhancing the function of court trials, 
expanding the openness of trials and improving judicial professionalization. 
Since the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (“CPC”), 
the Supreme People’s Court has initiated a series of reforms in the areas 
of organization and system of courts, judge system, litigation procedure, 
method of trial, enforcement system, judicial management, etc., and 
promulgated three “Five-year Reform Program for People’s Courts” in 1999, 
2005 and 2009 respectively. The said three Programs served as the basis of 
China’s court reform before 2013.
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The Decision of the Central Committee of the CPC (“CCCPC”) on Some 
Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform adopted 
at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th CCCPC set an important task of 
advancing rule by law in China and deepening the reform of the judicial 
system. The Decision of the CCCPC on Some Major Issues Concerning 
Management of State Affairs under the Rule of Law in an All-round Way 
adopted at the 4th Plenary Session of the 18th CCCPC set the establishment 
of a socialist system of rule by law with Chinese characteristics and the 
building of a socialist country under the rule of law as the general objective 
of advancing management of state affairs under the rule of law in an all-
round way, and put forward a series of major reform measures in scientific 
legislation, strict law enforcement, judicial impartiality, universal law 
abiding and other areas. The judicial reform has become an important 
component of the program of comprehensively deepening the reform in 
China and has been included in the overall development strategy of the 
State.
In order to further deepening the reform of people’s courts, the Supreme 
People’s Court promulgated the Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening 
the Reform of People’s Courts on February 4, 2015, putting forward 65 
reform measures, which was served as the Fourth Five-year Reform 
Program for People’s Courts 2014-2018. As of the end of 2018, 65 reform 
tasks had been carried out in an all-round way, 256 reform documents had 
been formulated. Among these reform documents, 173 were issued by the 
Supreme People’s Court separately, 46 were issued by it jointly with the 
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related departments of the Central Government, and 37 were formulated 
with its promotion or participation.
At the 19th National Congress of the CPC, major strategic arrangement was 
made as follows: “deepening the comprehensive and supporting reform of 
the judicial system and fully implementing the judicial accountability system 
so that people can experience fairness and justice in each case”, which 
marks a new stage of the judicial system reform. Based on the realities of 
courts, the Supreme People’s Court formulated the Opinions on Deepening 
the Comprehensive and Supporting Reform of the Judicial System in the 
People’s Courts, namely the Fifth Five-Year Reform Program for People’s 
Courts 2019-2023 as an important program for instructing the people’s 
courts to deepen the comprehensive and supporting reform of the judicial 
system in the next five years.
Organization and Implementation of the Court Reform in China
In early 2014, China set up the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively 
Deepening Reform headed by President Xi Jinping, which is responsible 
for the overall design, arrangement, coordination, promotion and 
implementation of the reform. In March 2018, it was renamed as the 
Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission. Between 
January 22, 2014 and December 31, 2018, the Central Leading Group for 
Comprehensively Deepening Reform (hereinafter referred to as “CLGCDR”) 
and the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission 
(hereinafter referred to as “CCDRC”), in aggregate, held 45 meetings, 
considered and passed 35 documents relating to important reforms of 
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people’s courts.
The CCDRC has six special sub-groups, which are responsible for 
considering important issues relating to reforms in the relevant areas, 
coordinating and advancing the formulation and implementation of special 
reform policies and measures. The Leading Group for Reform of the Social 
System (also called Central Leading Group for Reform of the Judicial 
System) is responsible for deepening the reform of the judicial system.
The reform of the judicial system covers a wide range of issues and has 
high policy sensitivity. In consideration that the improvement of classified 
management of judicial personnel, improvement of judicial accountability, 
improvement of job security of judicial personnel and promotion of 
centralized management of personnel, financial and material resources of 
local courts below the provincial level are basic measures of the reform 
of the judicial system, according to the principle that major reforms shall 
be first conducted on a pilot basis, China launched pilot reforms in respect 
of the aforesaid four issues in some provinces, autonomous regions and 
municipalities directly under the Central Government in three batches, to 
accumulate experience for advancing the reform in an all-round way. Since 
June 2014, the first judicial system reform pilots have been initiated in 7 
provinces and municipalities directly under the Central Government, namely 
Shanghai, Jilin, Hubei, Guangdong, Hainan, Guizhou, and Qinghai. Since 
June 2015, the second judicial system reform pilots have been initiated in 
11 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central 
Government, namely Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, 
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Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Shandong, Chongqing, Yunnan, and Ningxia. Since 
March 2016, the third judicial system reform pilots have been initiated in 
Beijing and other 13 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly 
under the Central Government and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region 
Production and Construction Corps. Since July 2016, these four major 
reforms have been implemented nationwide in an all-round way. 
The Supreme People’s Court set up a leading group for judicial reform 
headed by Chief Judge Zhou Qiang, responsible for organizing, leading, 
arranging, and coordinating the judicial reform of courts, holding plenary 
and special meetings, overall planning of key issues of reform, considering 
reform proposals, discussing and deciding on major issues. Each higher 
people’s court sets up a leading group for judicial reform, responsible for 
supervising, guiding, arranging, and coordinating the judicial reform of 
courts within its jurisdiction. Each higher people’s court’s proposal of pilot 
program for judicial reform is subject to examination and approval by the 
Supreme People’s Court, and if it involves any major reform, by the Central 
Government.
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II. Fully Implementing the Judicial Accountability System
It is both an objective requirement of the law of justice and a core content 
of the reform of the judicial system that one who tries a case shall have the 
power to decide the case and be responsible for his decision. In September 
2015, the Supreme People’s Court issued certain opinions on improving 
the judicial accountability system in the people’s courts, establishing a 
new type of operating mechanism of adjudicative power, to instruct the 
courts nationwide to advance the reform of the judicial accountability 
system. In December 2018, the Supreme People’s Court issued opinions on 
further comprehensively implementing the judicial accountability system, 
providing more guidance on issues such as improving the mechanism of 
trial supervision and management and the mechanism of unified application 
of law, to promote full implementation of the judicial accountability 
system. Since the full implementation of the judicial accountability system 
reform, in courts nationwide, the number of first-line judicial personnel has 
increased over 20%, the average number of cases handled by each person 
has increased over 20%, and the rate of conclusion of cases has increased 
over 18%.
Implementing accountability system for sole judges and collegiate 
panels handling cases. Fully respecting the status of sole judges and 
collegiate panels as statutory judicial organs, most of the courts at all levels 
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have established an accountability system in which “one who tries a case 
shall have the power to decide the case and be responsible for his decision”, 
and have revoked the system of asking for instructions and examination and 
approval level by level. The written judgments formed through adjudication 
by collegiate panels or sole judges are issued upon signature by collegiate 
panel members or sole judges. Except the cases considered and decided 
by the judicial committees, court/tribunal presidents no longer review or 
sign the written judgments on the cases of which they have not directly 
participated in the trial. Since the reform, in courts nationwide, the number 
of cases on which the judgments are directly made by sole judges and 
collegiate panels has reached over 98% of the total number of cases, and 
the number of cases referred to judicial committees for discussion has fallen 
sharply. In Shanghai, since the launch of the reform, the ratio of the cases 
directly decided by the sole judges or collegiate panels has reached 99.99%, 
and only 0.1% of the cases concluded have been submitted to the judicial 
committees for discussion.
Flexibly organizing the judicial team. According to laws and based 
on actual circumstances, the primary people’s courts organize judicial 
teams with judge as the core member, and judge assistant, clerk and other 
auxiliary judicial personnel as the supporting members, describe the duties 
of judges, judge assistants and clerks, and improve the case handling 
mechanism with clear power and responsibility, consistency between power 
and responsibility, both division and cooperation, and orderly operation, 
by taking into overall consideration the separation of complicated cases 
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from simple ones and the specialization of adjudication. By following the 
idea of separating complicated cases from simple ones, Chaoyang District 
People’s Court in Beijing has organized 26 quick-track sentencing teams 
for simple cases, each of which concludes over 650 cases annually, and 
45 specialized judicial teams for finance, intellectual property rights, real 
estate, bankruptcy and other meticulous trial of complicated cases, which 
have fairly tried a large number of major doubtful and complicated cases. 
Futian District People’s Court in Shenzhen, Guangdong, has created a new 
mode of organizing judicial team as follows: in a quick-track sentencing, 
quick trial and quick enforcement team, each judge is supported by multiple 
assistants; in an ordinary judicial team, there are 3 relatively fixed basic 
case-handling units, each of which consists of 1 judge and 2 assistants, so 
that the judicial team is both stable and flexible and the judicial resources 
allocation is optimized. In 2018, all kinds of judicial teams in this court 
concluded 107,301 cases, with a YoY increase of 16.32%, and the quality 
and efficiency of trial continuously improved.
Reforming the case allocation mechanism. The courts at all levels have 
established a case allocation mechanism where random allocation plays a 
major role and assignment a supporting role. Cases are randomly allocated 
to judges based on the area and complexity of cases. If the judge handling 
a case needs to be replaced due to challenge or due to job transfer, health, 
risk of corruption, etc., the replacement is subject to review and approval 
by relevant court/tribunal president, and the replacement result shall be 
notified to the litigants in a timely manner and made public on the working 
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platform. The courts in Shanghai have formulated guidelines on random and 
automated allocation of cases and has realized random allocation of civil 
and commercial cases. The Suburb People’s Court in Sanya, Hainan has 
introduced an automated case allocation system, whereby, after scientifically 
presetting saturated workload of judges, cases are randomly allocated 
upon automated calculation of workload based on case-handling quota 
and unconcluded cases of judges, to address the problem of unbalanced 
allocation of cases through informatization.
Innovating the auxiliary trial work mode. The courts at all levels 
have organized work teams specializing in service of process, property 
preservation, enforcement examination and control, document uploading, 
online announcement and other affairs. They manage auxiliary trial affairs 
in a centralized way to improve work efficiency. The courts in Beijing, 
Shanghai, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, etc. actively explore ways of 
handling notice service, material scanning, file filing and other auxiliary 
affairs by purchasing social services, to improve the efficiency of handling 
cases with the aid of external service providers. Shenzhen Intermediate 
People’s Court in Guangdong has formulated guidelines on courts’ purchase 
of social services, setting out the scope, procedures, and standards for courts 
to purchase social services, and listing seven categories of 41 services which 
may be outsourced in litigation service, adjudication and enforcement, 
court management, logistics support, judicial transparency, informatization, 
culture construction, and other areas. In 2018, by outsourcing mediation 
assistance service, it successfully mediated 15,829 disputes before litigation; 
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by using social services, it scanned hard-copy materials and generated soft-
copy ones of over 200,000 cases, constantly improving the efficiency of 
handling cases. Siming District People’s Court and Lujiang Notary Public 
Office in Xiamen, Fujian has created the first litigation-notary collaborative 
innovation center in China, clarifying that notary offices may assist people’s 
courts with procedural and auxiliary judicial services.
Improving the mechanism for regular handling of cases by court/
tribunal presidents. The courts nationwide have implemented the judge 
quota system. According to the requirements that registered judges must 
handle cases, the presidents (including vice presidents) of courts/tribunals 
at all levels generally engage again in trial work upon registration as judge. 
In April 2017, the Supreme People’s Court issued guidelines on further 
promoting the presidents of courts/tribunals at all levels registered as judges 
to handle cases, establishing a mechanism for strict constraint, evaluation 
and supervision on case-handling by court/tribunal presidents and improving 
the mechanism for court officials mainly to adjudicate major doubtful and 
complicated cases, to give full play to the exemplary and leading role of 
court/tribunal presidents in handling cases. In 2018, in Jiangsu, the number 
of cases adjudicated by court/tribunal presidents as handling judge or chief 
judge accounted for 50.84% of the total number of cases before the courts 
across the province. 
Improving the new trial management and supervision mechanism. In 
April 2017, the Supreme People’s Court issued opinions on implementation 
of the judicial accountability system and improvement of the trial 
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supervision and management mechanism to instruct the courts at all levels 
to improve the new supervision and management system. The courts at all 
levels have formulated a list of powers and responsibilities of court/tribunal 
presidents and related regulations to set out the scope and method for court/
tribunal presidents to exercise their power to supervise and manage trials, 
and to actively build a supervision and management mechanism covering 
the entire court, all staff, and whole process through informatization. The 
court/tribunal presidents may only express their opinions on specific cases 
publicly through professional judge meetings and the judicial committee, 
and such opinions shall be wholly recorded on the working platform, so that 
powers are delegated without indulgence and exercised under supervision. 
The courts in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Sichuan and other regions, by 
relying on artificial intelligence and big data, explore how to achieve online 
supervision through automated recognition, labeling, system recommending, 
node control, authority freezing and other means. Tianjin Higher People’s 
Court issued 29 categories of judicial standards in four batches covering 
adjudication process, power exercise, judicial transparency, litigation service 
and other areas. Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan, by closely 
centering on five major links of case filing, adjudication, conclusion, appeal, 
and enforcement, and relying on online working platform, has achieved 
silent supervision on 183 work nodes and 68 monitoring nodes, in order to 
assist judges in handling cases.
Improving the chief judge meeting system. Most of the courts at all levels 
have established the chief judge meeting system to provide judges with 
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advice on correct application of law and provide opinions for reference by 
collegiate panels. In December 2018, the Supreme People’s Court issued 
guidelines on improving the working mechanism of chief judge meetings 
in people’s courts to improve the rules of procedure of professional judge 
meetings. Chongqing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court has established 
the systems of joint meeting of judges in the tribunals and the cross-
departmental meeting of judges, with the number of cases submitted to 
the judicial committee for discussion being reduced by 42% year on year, 
thereby giving full play to the service and consultation functions of the 
meetings of judges and the function of filtration of the cases submitted to the 
judicial committee for discussion.
Reforming the system of judicial committee. The Supreme People’s 
Court has formulated guidelines to strengthen the function of the judicial 
committees in summarizing experience in adjudication, unifying the 
application of law and discussing and deciding on major issues in respect of 
adjudication. Except as otherwise provided by laws, the decisions made by 
judicial committees on cases and the grounds therefor shall be made public 
in the written judgments. The people’s courts above intermediate level 
shall hold criminal trials, civil-administrative trials and other professional 
committee meetings, based on professional background of and division of 
work among judicial committee members, as needed by adjudication. In 
addition to the cases required by the law and the major and complicated 
cases involving foreign affairs, security and social stability of the State, the 
judicial committees shall focus on the application of law in major, difficult 
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and complicated cases. Since the launch of the reform, the number of cases 
submitted to the judicial committees in the people’s courts at all levels for 
discussion has decreased significantly. In the Higher People’s Court of the 
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, since the launch of the reform of 
judicial committee system, the number of judicial committee meetings held 
has reduced by 14.3% year on year, and the number of cases discussed has 
reduced by 45.1% year on year, and the function of the judicial committees 
has become more focused on summarizing experience in adjudication 
and discussing and deciding on major issues in respect of adjudication. In 
all courts in Hainan, since the launch of the reform of judicial committee 
system, the number of cases discussed by judicial committee has reduced by 
41.75% year on year.
Establishing the system of guiding cases, the system of similar case 
search report, and the like. The Supreme People’s Court has established 
the system of guiding cases and formulated the detailed implementing rules 
for guiding cases. As of the end of 2018, a total of 106 guiding cases has 
been published in 20 batches. The cases tried by the courts at all levels that 
are similar to any guiding cases published by the Supreme People’s Court 
in terms of basic circumstances of the cases and applicable laws shall be 
adjudicated by reference to the main reasons for the adjudication of such 
guiding cases and refer to such guiding cases in the statement of reasons 
for judgments. Most regions have established the system of reference cases, 
the system of guiding cases, and the like. Hainan Higher People’s Court 
has established a database of reference cases, so as to effectively reduce 
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the phenomenon of “different judgments on similar cases”. The courts in 
Hunan requires handling judges to prepare related cases search reports in 
connection with the cases in dispute over law application or possibility of 
“different judgments on similar cases”.
Improving the accountability system for illegal adjudication. The 
Supreme People’s Court has issued the relevant regulations, expressly 
providing that a judge shall be responsible for his/her performance of duties 
of adjudication, and for the quality of cases handled by him/her for life, and 
that a judge shall be held liable for illegal adjudication if he/she intentionally 
violates the laws in adjudication or commits any gross negligence resulting 
in any wrong judgment and causing any serious consequences; specifying 
the circumstances and conditions for exemption from responsibility for 
adjudication; on the principle that one who has powers shall assume 
corresponding responsibilities and one who is derelict in his duty shall be 
held liable, specifying the responsibility for supervision and management 
that a court/tribunal presidents shall assume if he/she improperly exercises 
any power of supervision and management over trials due to intentional 
or gross negligence; and improving the procedures for the determination, 
investigation, review and affixation of responsibility in respect of misjudged 
cases to strictly hold judges liable for illegal adjudication.
Establishing the system for punishing judges. In October 2016, the 
Supreme People’s Court issued the opinions on the establishment of a 
system for punishing judges, which require the establishment of a system 
for punishing judges under which the people’s courts and judge punishment 
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committees assume their respective responsibilities. 27 provinces 
(autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government) 
have established judge punishment committees at the provincial level 
comprising judge representatives from courts at the three levels and 
civilians, which shall be responsible for reviewing whether any judge has 
breached the responsibility for adjudication or committed any intentional 
or gross negligence or should assume the liability for illegal adjudication, 
and proposing punishments to be meted out, thus realizing both goals of 
imposing punishments in a timely manner according to law and ensuring job 
security.
Improving the judge performance evaluation system. The Supreme 
People’s Court has issued guidelines on improving the judge performance 
evaluation system and the performance-based bonus distribution mechanism, 
requiring that performance-based bonus may not be linked to judge’s 
rank and shall be distributed mainly based on the level of responsibility, 
the quality, number, and difficulty of cases handled, and other factors 
and in favor of first-line case handling personnel. The courts at all levels 
shall formulate a judge performance evaluation system that is simple and 
easy to implement, by always combining objective quantification and 
subjective evaluation with a focus on quantitative evaluation, taking into full 
consideration of the differences between regions, trial levels, specialties and 
departments, in light of their respective local conditions.
Establishing the system of recording and circulating notices of criticism 
on the interference by officials and insiders of judicial organs with 
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judicial activities and handling of specific case and holding them 
accountable. The General Affairs Offices of the CCCPC and the State 
Council have jointly issued the regulations on recording, circulating notices 
of criticism on and investigating officials’ interference with judicial activities 
and handling of specific cases and holding them accountable. The Supreme 
People’s Court has formulated the measures for implementing the system 
of recording the interference by officials and insiders of judicial organs 
respectively with judicial activities and handling of specific case and holding 
them accountable. The courts at all levels shall each establish a special 
database of interference with cases by outsiders and insiders in their case 
information management systems. The staff members of people’s courts shall 
record in a complete, truthful and timely manner all the correspondences, 
letters and oral opinions relating to any specific cases passed on by various 
people outside the legal proceedings. Each people’s court shall summarize 
and analyze the information in its database of interference with cases by 
outsiders involving interference by officials on a quarterly basis, prepare a 
special report thereon and submit the same to the departments concerned 
and the people’s court at the higher level. Any staff member of a people’s 
court who fails to record such information or to record such information 
truthfully or any official in charge who incites any staff member not to 
record such information or not to record such information truthfully shall be 
subject to disciplinary actions depending on the actual circumstances. Since 
the establishment of the system, the interference with judicial activities and 
handling of specific case has been significantly reduced, providing stronger 
institutional protection for the independent and fair exercise of adjudicative 
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power by people’s courts by law.
Improving the mechanism for protecting judicial personnel in 
performing their duties by law. In February 2017, the Supreme People’s 
Court issued implementation measures for protecting judges in performing 
their statutory duties by operation of law, which expressly provide that no 
administrative organ, social organization or individual may interfere with 
the adjudication of cases by judges as per law; no entity or individual may 
request any judge to do anything beyond the scope of his/her statutory 
duties; except for legal causes or according to legal procedures, no judge 
may be transferred to a different post, removed from office, dismissed, 
demoted or discharged or subject to any other punishment; any person 
who interferes with or obstructs any judicial activity, threatens, disturbs, 
takes revenge on, frames up, insults, defames or commits violence towards 
any judicial person or any close relative thereof shall be subject to serious 
punishment immediately according to law; and any person who insults or 
defames any judge by submitting any false report, lodging false accusations 
or fabricating false charges through the information network or otherwise 
shall be held legally liable under the law, so as to create a favorable 
institutional environment for judges to perform their duties.
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III. Advancing the Reform of Organizational Structure of 
Courts
Improving an optimized, coordinated and efficient organizational system 
and functional system of courts is an important part and goal of the 
judicial reform of the people’s courts, and an important support for the 
modernization of judicial system and judicial capability. Since 2013, China’s 
courts have actively promoted the reform of organizational system and 
internal organs of courts, optimized the jurisdiction and power allocation, 
and promoted the combination of specialized trials and flat management, 
laying a solid foundation for serving the big picture, exercising judicial 
power for the people, and judicial impartiality.
Setting up Circuit Courts of the Supreme People’s Court. At the end 
of January 2015, the Supreme People’s Court set up No. 1 and 2 Circuit 
Courts in Shenzhen and Shenyang respectively; at the end of December 
2016, it set up No. 3, 4, 5 and 6 Circuit Courts in Nanjing, Zhengzhou, 
Chongqing and Xi’an respectively. These Circuit Courts of the Supreme 
People’s Court, as standing local judicial organs dispatched by the Supreme 
People’s Court, adjudicate the cases assigned by the Supreme People’s 
Court according to law. The judgments and rulings made by these Circuit 
Courts have the equal effect as those made by the Supreme People’s Court. 
Since their establishment and as of the end of 2018, the six Circuit Courts 
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have concluded 33,335 cases, accounting for 50.35% of the total number 
of cases concluded by the Supreme People’s Court, and have received a 
total of 117,090 visitors who brought complaints and appeals before them 
and resolved relevant disputes before litigation. By vigorously carrying out 
the circuit adjudication and actively innovating working mechanism, these 
Circuit Courts have effectively realized the original intention to delegate the 
adjudicative power, facilitate initiation of lawsuits by the people, improved 
work efficiency, effectively promoted social harmony and stability, and 
served and protected the rule of law in respective circuits, thus being 
nicknamed by the people as the “supreme people’s court at the doorstep”, 
playing an important role in improving the socialist judicial system with 
Chinese characteristics and promoting the rule of law in a comprehensive 
manner.
Enhancing the construction of a specialized IP judicial system. In order 
to further enhance judicial protection of intellectual property rights (IP) 
and unifying the adjudicative criteria for IP cases, with the approval by 
the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, IP courts were 
established in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai on November 6, December 
16 and December 28, 2014 respectively. The Supreme People’s Court has 
issued the relevant judicial interpretations, defining the jurisdiction of IP 
courts over cases, and providing guidelines on the appointment of IP judges, 
participation in litigious activities by technological investigation officers of 
IP courts and other issues. The IP courts have built a new image of China 
in judicial protection of IP through fair adjudication of typical cases, timely 
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publication of typical cases and otherwise. As of the end of 2018, these 
three IP courts had accepted a total of 90,578 cases and concluded 74,007 
cases. In addition, the Supreme People’s Court has also promoted the 
establishment of 19 IP courts in 16 provinces and cities such as Jiangsu, in 
order to realize centralized jurisdiction over some IP cases across regions. 
On January 1, 2019, the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court, which 
was established according to the decision of the Standing Committee of the 
National People’s Congress, was officially opened, for unified adjudication 
of highly professional and technical civil and administrative appeals such 
as those involving patent, to form a national mechanism for adjudicating IP 
appeals. The above-mentioned reform measures have effectively promoted 
the specialized adjudication of, centralized jurisdiction over, and intensified 
procedures for IP cases, and improved the IP judicial system with Chinese 
characteristics.
Launching pilot reform of trans-regional courts in Beijing and 
Shanghai. In order to ensure lawful and fair adjudication of trans-regional 
cases, the Beijing No. 4 Intermediate People’s Court and the Shanghai No. 
3 Intermediate People’s Court were established in Beijing and Shanghai 
respectively in December 2014, as pilot trans-regional people’s courts, 
through which experience has been accumulated in exploring how to establish 
a new pattern of litigation system in which general cases are adjudicated 
at local courts and special cases are adjudicated at trans-regional courts. 
These two courts are responsible for adjudicating major civil, commercial, 
administrative, environmental and resource protection, food and drug safety 
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and certain criminal cases involving different administrative regions, to 
ensure fair adjudication of cases involving local interests. From 2015 to 
2018, the number of first-instance administrative cases brought against a 
district/county government and subject to the centralized jurisdiction of 
and accepted by the Beijing No. 4 Intermediate People’s Court increased 
by 650%. As appointed by the Supreme People’s Court, from October 26, 
2017, this court began to accept the appeals of environmental-protection 
administrative cases adjudicated by relevant courts in Tianjin, marking 
an important step in cross-provincial jurisdiction of cases. The number of 
administrative cases accepted by the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People’s 
Court increases by over 30% per year. In 2018, the number of settled and 
dropped administrative cases before this court increased by 126.67% over 
the previous year. These two trans-regional courts have fairly adjudicated a 
series of cases with major social impacts, effectively addressing the issue of 
“at home v. away in litigation” and enhancing the public credibility of the 
judiciary.
Setting up Shanghai Financial Court. According to the decision of the 
Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, on August 20, 
2018, Shanghai Financial Court was formally established with special 
jurisdiction over finance-related civil-commercial cases and finance-related 
administrative cases subject to the jurisdiction of an Intermediate People’s 
Court. The Supreme People’s Court has issued judicial interpretations, 
clarifying the specific jurisdiction of the Shanghai Financial Court. As of 
the end of 2018, Shanghai Financial Court had accepted 1,897 cases, with a 
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total subject value of RMB 25.2 billion, mainly involving disputes related 
to liability for misrepresentation as to securities, financial loan contracts, 
corporate bond trading, repurchase of pledged securities, financial leasing 
contracts, for-profit trust, etc.
Setting up Internet courts in Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou. 
Internet court is a major institutional innovation whereby China’s courts 
actively address the judicial needs in the Internet era and implement the 
Internet power strategy. On August 18, 2017, September 9, 2018, and 
September 28, 2018, Hangzhou Internet Court, Beijing Internet Court, and 
Guangzhou Internet Court were successively established. In September 
2018, the Supreme People’s Court issued judicial interpretations of trials 
before Internet courts, clarifying the jurisdiction, appeal mechanism, online 
litigation rules, and requirements for construction of litigation platform 
of Internet Courts. Internet Courts have actively promoted the “online 
resolution of online disputes” and facilitated the online verification of 
litigant’s identity, online collection of evidentiary materials, online service 
of legal instruments, etc., thus significantly improving judicial efficiency. 
In Hangzhou Internet Court, the online case-filing rate has reached 89.2%, 
the online court-session rate has reached 59.9%, the online case-concluding 
rate has reached 83.6%, the online trial session has averaged 28 minutes, 
and the trial period has averaged 41 days, saving 60% and 50% of the time 
respectively compared with the traditional trial mode. With an emphasis on 
summarizing and refining the rules for adjudicating Internet-related cases, 
the Internet Courts have successfully and efficiently adjudicated a number of 
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difficult and complicated Internet-related cases of new types, including the 
ownership of big data, the liability for contracting fault in online shopping, 
and the ownership of copyright in AI works, thus strongly promoting the 
rule of law in cyberspace governance.
Reforming the organizational system of military courts. Military courts 
are judicial organs set up by the State in the army. According to the overall 
arrangement by the Central Government, the basis for the setup of military 
courts was changed from branches of services and systems into combat 
zones. After the said reform, the new organizational system of military 
courts includes the PLA Military Court (at the level of higher court), the 
Military Court of the East Combat Zone of the PLA, the Military Court of 
the South Combat Zone of the PLA, the No. 1 and No. 2 Military Courts 
of the West Combat Zone of the PLA, the Military Court of the Northern 
Combat Zone of the PLA, the Military Court of the Central Combat Zone 
of the PLA and the Military Court Directly under the Headquarters of the 
PLA (at the level of intermediate court), and 26 military courts of the PLA 
in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou and other cities (at the level of primary 
court).
Promoting the reform of internal organs of people’s courts below the 
provincial level. The Supreme People’s Court, in conjunction with the 
related departments of the Central Government, has actively promoted the 
reform of internal organs of people’s courts below the provincial level. In 
line with the principle of synergy, optimization and efficiency, the structure 
of people’s courts shall be streamlined, the number of internal organs shall 
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be strictly controlled, the adjudicating departments shall be scientifically 
set up, and non-adjudicating departments with overlapping functions and 
similar services shall be integrated, in order to promote flat management. 
As of the end of 2018, Tianjin and Shanghai had completed the task of 
reforming internal organs. The number of internal organs of the intermediate 
and primary people’s courts in Tianjin has been reduced from 361 before the 
reform to 234, a reduction of 35.2%; the number of internal organs (excluding 
people’s tribunals) of 17 primary courts in Shanghai has been reduced from 
298 to 197, a reduction of 33.9%. For the reform of internal organs of the 
primary courts in other provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities 
directly under the Central Government), relevant plan is going through 
reviewing, approving and filing procedure.
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IV. Strengthening the System and Mechanism of Judicial 
Protection of Human Rights
To respect and protect human rights is an important principle set forth in the 
Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, and an important content 
of the socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics. China’s courts 
have achieved positive results in the development of the mechanism of 
judicial protection of human rights through pushing forward the reform of 
the criminal litigation system centering on trials, strictly implementing the 
legal principles that crimes shall be punished only under the law, judgments 
shall be made upon evidence and presuming innocent until proven guilty, 
actively preventing cases in which people are unjustly, falsely or wrongly 
charged or sentenced, protecting the lawyers’ right to practice according 
to law, achieving positive results in building the mechanism of judicial 
protection of human rights.
Pushing forward the reform of the criminal litigation system centering 
on trials. The Supreme People’s Court, in conjunction with the Supreme 
People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of 
State Security and the Ministry of Justice, issued the guidelines on pushing 
forward the reform of the criminal litigation system centering on trials and 
the documents on strictly excluding illegal evidence in handling of criminal 
cases. The reform of the criminal litigation system centering on trials 
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emphasizes making judgments upon evidence, excluding illegal evidence, 
presuming innocent until proven guilty, and other principles, and requires 
strengthening the substantiation of court trials, improving the mechanism for 
supervising investigation and prosecution activities through trials, preventing 
extortion of confessions by torture, collection of evidence through illegal 
means and other illegal acts from the source, and promoting the formation of 
a criminal litigation pattern with litigation centering on trial, trial centering 
on court trial, and court trial centering on evidence, so that the facts of cases 
found during investigations, prosecutions and trials will be proved to be 
true according to law. The Supreme People’s Court implemented on a pilot 
basis the following provisions in 18 intermediate people’s courts across the 
country in June 2017 and required the tentative implementation of them 
in all courts nationwide on and from January 1, 2018: holding pre-trial 
meetings, excluding illegal evidence, and conducting court investigation 
according to ordinary procedures in the first instance in handling criminal 
cases. All regions have fully implemented the principle of making 
judgments upon evidence, solidly promoted the substantiation of court 
trials, and improved the system for summoning key witnesses, , appraisers 
and investigators to testify before courts, so as to give full play to the role 
of witnesses’, investigators’, and appraisers’ testifying before courts and 
effectively resolve the disputes between the prosecutors and the defenders. 
In 2017, the courts in Guangdong accepted 1,582 applications for excluding 
illegal evidence, initiated the process of excluding illegal evidence for 1,424 
times, and excluded 235 pieces of illegal evidence, more than the sum of 
the previous three years. Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan 
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took the lead in carrying out the reform of substantiation of court trials in 
the country, by fully implementing the provisions regarding holding pre-trial 
meetings, strictly excluding illegal evidence, summoning key witnesses to 
testify before court, admitting evidence at the court, announcing judgment 
at the court, trying all cases with lawyer’s defense, separating complicated 
written judgments with simple ones, opening exemplary court trials, etc., 
so as to ensure that court trials play a decisive role in finding the facts, 
admitting evidences, protecting the right of action and making judgments 
fairly. In these exemplary court trials, a total of 1,469 witnesses, including 
818 general witnesses, 114 appraisers, 455 investigators, 17 experts, and 
65 victims, testified before courts. Wenzhou Intermediate People’s Court in 
Zhejiang has improved the mechanism for protecting personnel testifying 
before court, issued detailed rules on investigators’ appearance in court 
as witnesses, provided remote rooms for offering testimonies, devices for 
concealing faces of witnesses and other appropriate facilities, established the 
mechanism for protecting the rights and interests of witnesses in conjunction 
with the public security and procuratorial organs, and formulated the 
standard of subsidies for witnesses testifying before court. Since 2015, the 
courts in the city have given notices to require 1,434 people in 915 criminal 
cases to appear in courts, and 915 people in 581 criminal cases have actually 
appeared in courts to testify, with the rate of testimony before courts being 
63.8%.
Preventing and correcting cases in which people are unjustly, falsely or 
wrongly charged or sentenced. The Supreme People’s Court promulgated 
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the guidelines on improving the mechanism for preventing criminal cases 
in which people are unjustly, falsely or wrongly charged or sentenced, 
providing that in a case in which there lacks sufficient evidence to convict 
the defendant of a crime, the people’s court shall pronounce the defendant 
innocent according to law, rather than imposing a relatively light penalty 
or otherwise imposing penalty on the defendant by leaving some leeway. 
On December 2, 2016, No. 2 Circuit Court of the Supreme People’s Court 
publicly pronounced the judgment on the case of Nie Shubin suspected of 
intentional homicide and raping women, overruling the judgment of the 
lower court and pronouncing Nie Shubin innocent, thereby correcting the 
judgment on this major doubtful and complicated case that had lasting 22 
years, and reflecting that the people’s courts attach great importance to 
judicial protection of human rights and seriously observe the legal principles 
that judgments shall be made upon evidence and presuming innocent until 
proven guilty and other legal principles. Since 2013, the people’s courts 
have corrected the judgments on 46 major criminal cases involving 94 
people, in which cases, people were unjustly, falsely or wrongly charged or 
sentenced, including the case of Nie Shubin, the case of Hugjiltu and the 
case of Zhang Hui and Zhang Gaoping (nephew and uncle), thereby greatly 
enhancing the public’s confidence in judicial impartiality. From 2014 to 
2018, the people’s courts at all levels pronounced 4,868 defendants innocent 
as per law, ensuring that the innocent will not be prosecuted under law.
Improving the quick-track sentencing procedure for criminal cases and 
the system of imposing lenient penalties on those who admit their guilt 
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and accept punishments. With the authorization of the Standing Committee 
of the National People’s Congress, since August 26, 2014, China has 
launched a two-year pilot reform on quick-track sentencing procedure for 
criminal cases in 217 primary courts in Beijing and 17 other cities. During 
the period of the pilot reform, the pilot courts tried and concluded 52,540 
criminal cases using the quick-track sentencing procedure, involving 54,572 
defendants in total, accounting for 35.88% of criminal cases in which not 
more than one-year sentences were pronounced by such pilot courts in the 
same period, and 18.48% of the criminal cases tried by such pilot courts 
in the same period; among such cases, 95.35% were concluded within 10 
days, 65.04 percent higher than those subject to the summary procedure, and 
the judgments on 96.05% of such cases were announced at the court, 41.22 
percent higher than those subject to the summary procedure. Haidian District 
People’s Court in Beijing has explored the mode of whole-course quick-track 
sentencing procedure to effectively reduce the time of circulation of cases 
at all the stages. Under the said mode, the average duration of the judicial 
procedure in which the defendants were under detention was 33 days, about 
70% shorter than that of the similar cases concluded using the summary 
procedure prior to the reform. Among all the cases subject to the quick-track 
sentencing procedure, the rate of plaintiffs filing appeals who also lodged 
civil lawsuits was 0, the rate of defendants filing appeals was 2.01%, the rate 
of procuratorial organs filing protests was only 0.01%, and the overall rate 
of filing appeals or protests was 9.52 percent lower than that of the criminal 
cases taken as a whole. According to a third party assessment conducted by 
the China University of Political Science and Law, the defendants’ rate of 
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satisfaction with the effect of the quick-track sentencing procedure reached 
97.69%. Through shortening pre-trial detention and passing sentences on 
defendants quickly and leniently, the quick-track sentencing procedure can 
give full play to the function of social correction, and help the offenders 
reform themselves and return to the society. In September 2016, the 22nd 
Session of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People’s Congress 
reviewed a report on the pilot reform, fully affirmed the efforts in these 
pilot reforms, and decided to incorporate the pilot reform of quick-track 
sentencing procedure for criminal cases into the pilot reform of imposing 
lenient penalties on those who admit their guilt and accept punishments 
and to continue the pilot reform. Between September 2016 and September 
2018, a total of 281 pilot courts was identified, and 205,510 criminal cases 
were concluded by applying the system of imposing lenient penalties on 
those who admit their guilt and accept punishments, accounting for 53.5% 
of the criminal cases concluded by the pilot courts during this period. On 
October 26, 2018, at the 6th Session of the Standing Committee of the 13th 
National People’s Congress, a decision was made on amending the Criminal 
Procedure Law to incorporate the achievements made in the pilot reform 
of imposing lenient penalties on those who admit their guilt and accept 
punishments into the newly amended Criminal Procedure Law and promote 
them nationwide.
Deepening the reform on standardization of sentencing. At the end 
of 2013, the Supreme People’s Court promulgated the guidelines on 
measurement of penalty by people’s courts to regulate the judges’ discretion 
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in measurement of penalty, which require setting up an independent debate 
procedure regarding measurement of penalty, and promoting standardization 
of measurement of penalty throughout the country. In 2016, the Supreme 
People’s Court further extended the kinds of charges and punishments under 
the pilot program on standardization of measurement of penalty by including 
dangerous driving and other seven charges into the scope of application of 
the pilot program and extending the kinds of punishment from imprisonment 
and criminal detention to fines and probation. The Supreme People’s 
Court designated some courts to carry out the pilot program to ensure the 
standardization of measurement of penalty and the punishment meted out 
being appropriate to the crime committed. With this reform implemented, 
the methodology in sentencing has become more standardized and scientific, 
and the sentences received have become fairer and more balanced, bringing 
about a procedure with more transparency and fairness. 
Strictly regulating commutation of punishment, parole and temporary 
execution of sentences outside prison. In April 2014, the Supreme People’s 
Court issued the judicial interpretations regarding the hearing procedures 
for commutation of punishment and parole, requiring establishment of the 
system of public hearing on commutation of punishment and parole and the 
system of periodic publication of typical cases. In 2015, the information 
website on the cases of commutation of punishment, parole and temporary 
execution of sentences outside prison granted by the courts nationwide was 
opened, to publicize the information of the whole process from case filing 
to judgment entering of the cases involving commutation of punishment and 
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parole, so that commutation of punishment and parole is conducted under 
the supervision of the public. In November 2016, the Supreme People’s 
Court promulgated specific rules on law application in cases involving 
commutation of punishment and parole，further clarify the application 
of commutation of punishment and parole，and unified the criteria of 
deciding such cases, ensuring that fairness and equality are well addressed 
therein.In November 2017, the Supreme People’s Court launched a national 
online platform for processing cases involving commutation of punishment 
and parole.The new platform promotes the case information sharing and 
online case-handling collaboration among the people’s courts and People’s 
procuratorates and the penalty execution authorities and between the 
people’s courts at all levels,ensuring the whole process of adjudicating 
cases involving commutation of punishment and parole traceable and under 
supervision.
 Amending and improving court rules. In February 2015, the Supreme 
People’s Court and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued a circular, 
providing that when appearing in the court, the criminal defendants and 
appellants no longer need to wear their identification uniforms of detention 
houses and the criminals in jail no longer need to wear their prison uniforms, 
and that when the people’s court brings a criminal defendant or appellant 
under detention to trial, the detention house shall turn over the criminal 
defendant or appellant in formal or informal wear to the people’s court to 
reflect modern judicial civilization. On April 13, 2016, the Supreme People’s 
Court promulgated the newly amended Court Rules of People’s Courts of the 
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People’s Republic of China, further specifying the code of conduct in courts, 
in order to maintain court order, strengthen judicial protection of human 
rights, and make the courts be more open, convenient, civilized and safer 
and become venues where the people can experience fairness and justice.
Improving the mechanism for protecting lawyers’ rights in practice 
in accordance with law. In December 2015, the Supreme People’s Court 
promulgated	 instructions on protecting lawyers’ rights in practice, 
requiring protection of lawyers’ rights to know, access case files, appear in 
court, debate, defense, apply for gathering evidence, apply for excluding 
illegal evidence, lodge appeals on behalf of their clients, and providing 
protection and convenience to lawyers in performing their duties under 
the law.The mechanism of soliciting lawyers’ opinions in the review of 
death penalties has been established, which require protection of lawyers’ 
rights, including the right to access case filing information and case files, 
and provide that lawyers can directly make defenses to the judges of the 
Supreme People’s Court, so as to ensure the fairness of review of death 
penalties. In October 2017, the Supreme People’s Court and the Ministry of 
Justice  promulgated provisions on conducting pilot project of mandatory 
legal representation in all criminal cases and launched the pilot in Shanghai 
and Zhejiang. On December 30, 2015, the Supreme People’s Court opened 
the lawyer service platform, on which the lawyers can, among other things, 
file cases, access case fillies and contact judges on online. As of the end 
of 2018, 1,924 courts nationwide had opened a lawyer service platform, 
providing services to lawyers for a total of 1.27 million times. The lawyer 
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service platform of the Supreme People’s Court has provided 22,067 law 
firms and 89,338 lawyers with services such as online case filing, online 
access to case files, case inquiry, online payment, online refund, electronic 
service, and contact with judges. In 2018, the number of visits to the lawyer 
service platform was 43,527, which quadrupled the sum of the year 2017. 
The courts at three levels in Zhejiang each established a lawyer service 
center to provide access to case information and files, meeting with judges, 
rest, dressing and other services, and explored the establishment of special 
facilities at law firms for handling lawsuit-related matters on line.
Improving the system of state compensation. The Supreme People’s Court 
has formulated the interpretations on certain issues relating to the application 
of law in cases of criminal compensation, improved the cross-examination 
procedure for compensation cases, standardized the measurement of 
consolation payment for psychological injuries, and expressed opinions on 
further improving state compensation in criminal cases in which people are 
unjustly, falsely or wrongly charged or sentenced, so as to give full play 
of the function of remedy of state compensation. From 2014 to 2018, the 
people’s courts at all levels accepted 31,434 cases of state compensation. 
The victims unjustly, falsely or wrongly charged or sentenced or the close 
relatives of those executed in criminal cases such as the case of Hugjiltu, the 
case of Zhang Hui and Zhang Gaoping, the case of Nie Shubin and the case 
of Liu Zhonglin, have received compensation in a timely manner according 
to law. For example, Liu Zhonglin has received a state compensation of 
RMB 4.6 million from Liaoyuan Intermediate People’s Court in Jilin, the 
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authority liable for compensation.
Improving the judicial assistance system. In July 2016, the Supreme 
People’s Court promulgated the opinions on strengthening and standardizing 
the work of national judicial assistance conducted by the people’s courts, 
requiring unity of acceptance and handling of cases, scope of assistance, 
procedure of assistance, standard of assistance, fund guarantee and 
appropriation of funds, to realize the administration of the assistance 
system by law and the handling of assistance cases according to judicial 
procedures. On September 18, 2016, the Supreme People’s Court set up 
the judicial assistance committee, and the local people’s courts at all levels 
also set up their judicial assistance committees. In the work of judicial 
assistance, the courts in Tianjin have strengthened the joint actions with the 
assistance provided by other judicial authorities, social organizations and 
other provinces and cities, to realize seamless connection between judicial 
assistance and social security, and improve the accuracy, coverage and 
timeliness of judicial assistance. The courts in Sichuan have simplified the 
judicial assistance application process, and developed an online judicial 
assistance platform, to realize online and standardized handling of cases of 
judicial assistance.
Standardizing the judicial procedure for handling properties involved 
in cases. In October 2014, the Supreme People’s Court promulgated judicial 
interpretations regarding the enforcement of property involved in  criminal 
judgments for the purpose of standardizing the enforcement of properties 
involved in criminal cases, including confiscation and recovery of properties, 
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appraisal at the current price, handling of disputes in enforcement, etc. 
Between 2015 and 2018, the Supreme People’s Court has, in conjunction 
with the related authorities of the Central Government, constantly pushed 
forward the establishment of inter-departmental information platforms 
for centralized management of properties involved in cases, improved the 
procedures of advance disposal and pre-trial return of properties, defined 
the interested parties’ right of action, and improved the remedy mechanism 
and the accountability system. In May 2015, the first inter-departmental 
center for the management of properties involved in criminal lawsuits in 
our country was established in Zhuji, Zhejiang. The center established a 
centralized information platform for the management of properties involved 
in cases. All the public security, procuratorial and judicial departments are 
required to enter the information about the properties involved in cases 
under their respective management into the platform, thereby realizing 
electronic handover of properties involved in cases, facilitating the handling 
of cases and standardizing the procedures for handling properties involved 
in cases.
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V. Promoting people’s access to and benefits from the 
judiciary
Exercising judicial power for the people fairly is the primary work of 
people’s courts. The people’s courts have been reforming the system of 
acceptance and handling of cases, strengthening the establishment of 
litigation service centers and dispatched tribunals, improving the multiple 
disputes resolution mechanism and the mechanism of separating complicated 
cases from simple ones, promoting reforms on family law trials and taking 
other measures, to constantly enhance the exercise of judicial power for the 
people and make the people have a stronger sense of gain in the judicial 
reform.
 Comprehensively implementing the case filing registration system. 
Since May 1, 2015, the people’s courts have reformed the case filing 
system by introducing the case filing registration system and eliminating 
the prior examination 3. This new system requires each case meeting the 
acceptance conditions shall be placed on file and be accepted and handled, 
thereby effectively protecting people’s right to file a lawsuit and completely 
eliminating the institutional barriers causing the difficulties in case filing. As 
of the end of 2018, the courts nationwide registered over 64.89 million cases, 
with an on-the-spot case registration rate of over 95%.  Courts nationwide 
have simplified the case filing procedure and by means of notification of 
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case filing, once-and-for-all list of supplements and corrections, request 
for response within prescribed time limit and otherwise, ensure successful 
filing of cases by the litigants in one attempt.  The courts in Beijing 
introduced a mechanism of supervision and complaints rapid-handling over 
case filing, which enables the courts to promptly respond to and resolve 
litigants’ complaints and problems therein. In 2016 alone, this mechanism 
successfully resolve complaints lodged by more than 1,300 people, thereby 
ensuring the effective implementation of the case filing registration system.
The implementation of this reform has been under stronger monitoring by 
the Supreme People’s Court. Practices such as setting additional conditions 
to constrain case filing have been firmly forbidden in order to prevent the 
targeted difficulties in case filing from rebounding.
 Diversifying the case filing routines. Relying on information technologies, 
the people’s courts have been promoting a variety of convenient methods 
of filing cases, forming a new pattern of case filing with on-the-spot case 
filing as main method, with online case filing, self-service case filing, cross-
regional case filing, collaborative case filing and so forth as supplementary 
methods. People now can file a lawsuit more conveniently and quicker, and 
the efficiency of case filing has improved significantly. The courts in all 
regions have actively promoted online case filing while actively improving 
conventional channels for case filing such as on the spot of the courthouse, 
through appointment, and on site. Some courts actively explore cross-
regional case filing service, enabling the litigants to file a lawsuit in a nearby 
court or any court chosen by them, and reducing the burdens of litigants 
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supposed to travel. As of the end of 2018, 3,044 courts nationwide had 
introduced online case filing service, and 2.38 million cases had been filed 
online; 1,154 courts had provided cross-regional case filing service, and 
120,000 cases had been filed via the cross-regional filing systems ; 1,863 
courts had set up self-service case filing areas, and litigants or lawyers had 
filed 1.03 million cases by themselves.  7 courts in Beijing, Tianjin and 
Hebei have established a new mode of collaborative case filing mechanism, 
which allows litigants equal access to the inclusive, convenient and efficient 
case filing services provided irrespective of whereabouts. The People’s 
Court of Pudong New Area, Shanghai has developed a “QR code” self-
service case filing system, through which each case may be filed within 15 
minutes on average.
Enhancing modernization of litigation services. In December 2014, 
the Supreme People’s Court promulgated the guidelines on promoting the 
establishment of litigation service centers at people’s courts. As of the end of 
2018, 98% of the courts nationwide had established litigation service halls 
up to 1.82 million square meters in area, 2,995 courts had opened litigation 
service websites, 1,623 courts had launched online litigation service Apps, 
and 2,813 courts had set up 12368 litigation service hotline. The courts at all 
levels have been actively and creatively developing online platforms such 
as 24-hour self-service courts, online mediation rooms, digital case files 
services, online video systems for complaints and appeals, and have been 
equipped with Intelligent Visitors Management Systems, Court-Operated 
Robotic Assistant, litigation assistance machines, litigation risk assessment 
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machines, convenient self-service terminals, intelligent cloud cabinets, 
smart navigation and others alike. The services provided include online 
case filing, online payment of fees, online mediation, access to information, 
submission of documents, examination of case files, electronic service of 
legal process, contact with judges, etc, amounting to 48 functions which 
is 40 more than available sevices in 2009.  Along with the mechanism 
of separating complicated cases from simple ones，a combined mode, 
“cases identification + mediation + fast trial +proceeding expedition”, has 
been developed. Such mode well functions with staffs in charge of cases 
identification, venues specialized for mediation, equipped courtrooms 
for fast trials, optimized litigation-mediation coordination mechanism, 
plenty of judges and clerks specialized in fast trials, and an underlying 
electronic system. Owing to this mode, the litigation service centers have 
been transformed into one-stop hubs resolving a majority of cases filed in 
courts of first instance, fully exerting their roles as legal “clinics” of disputes 
resolution. Most courts nationwide have been carrying out reforms into this 
new mode, 2,464 courts have appointed 14,669 cases identification clerks, 
and 12,234 full-time mediators have been recruited. As of the end of 2018, 
the courts nationwide had resolved 1.71 million cases through the multiple 
disputes resolution mechanism without proceeding into trial, mediated 
1.2 million cases after case filing, and resolved 1.75 million cases through 
fast trial in litigation service centers. The courts in Anhui have established 
family affairs, labor, property and other dispute mediation divisions at 
their litigation service centers, as well as workstations of representatives 
of the Party congress, people’s congress and people’s political consultative 
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conference, lawyer’s offices and people’s mediation rooms, and carried 
out online and remote mediations, multiple disputes resolution, achieving 
remarkable success. The courts in Zhejiang have been carrying out the ‘at 
most one visit’ scheme, and have successfully alleviated citizens’ litigation 
costs and burden by promoting services both online and offline. The courts 
in Tibet, Ningxia and other regions have set up circuiting courts in vehicles 
to provide easier access to justice for the people..
Improving the multiple dispute resolution mechanisms. The multiple 
dispute resolution mechanism is an significant component of China’s efforts 
in modernizing the governance. In June 2016, the Supreme People’s Court 
promulgated the Opinions on Further Deepening the Reform of Multiple 
Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in People’s Courts, proposing a “three-
step strategy”, “the state develops strategies for developments, the judiciary 
provides legal safeguards, and advances relative legislative proceedings”. 
Modernized conception of disputes resolution has been established as 
“State-led, judiciary-advanced, society participatory, multiple routines, and 
safeguarded by rule of law”. The Supreme People’s Court, in conjunction 
with the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry 
of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 
the National Development and Reform Commission, the China Securities 
Regulatory Commission, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, 
the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, the National 
Federation of Industry and Commerce, the All-China Women’s Federation, 
and other authorities respectively, has issued over 20 documents in respect 
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of the litigation-mediation coordination mechanism, covering issues 
related to people’s mediation, family law disputes, securities and futures 
disputes, insurance disputes, and  assigning auxiliary judicial affairs to 
notary offices. These arrangements have constitutes a solid framework of 
multiple disputes resolution mechanisms. The Supreme People’s Court has 
promulgated the Provisions on Mediation Services Specially Appointed 
by People’s Courts to instruct all regions to enhance litigation-mediation 
coordination and promote timely and efficient resolution of contradictions 
and disputes. As of the end of 2018, the courts nationwide had established 
3,320 litigation-mediation coordination centers, and recruited nearly 22,194 
specially appointed mediation organizations and 78,153 specially appointed 
mediators, which had mediated 1,862,800 cases as assigned or entrusted 
by the courts. The people’s courts at all levels have established litigation-
mediation coordination platforms in various forms which have operated 
in a standard manner and exercised the functions of cases identification, 
designated mediation before and after case-filing, after-case filing designated 
mediation and judicial confirmation, etc., and improved the mechanism of 
connection between courts and administrative agencies, people’s mediation 
organizations, business-oriented mediation association, commercial 
mediation organizations, arbitration institutions and notary offices. By 
innovatively combining “Internet and dispute resolution”, they establish 
unified online mediation platforms. As of the end of December 2018, 
1,258 courts had conducted online mediation and thereby resolved 11,394 
disputes. In 2018, the courts in Beijing referred 304,000 first-instance civil 
cases to the “multiple routines of mediation plus fast trial” mechanism, 
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and successfully concluded 176,000 cases via this mechanism, accounting 
for 39% of the first-instance civil cases concluded that year. The courts in 
Zhejiang have established an “online platform for diversified resolution of 
contradictions and disputes” and formed a progressive and funnel-typed 
mechanism of filtering and resolving contradictions and disputes level by 
level. As of the end of November 2018, the platform had attracted 432,000 
registered users and 34,000 registered mediators, received over 240,000 
applications for mediation, and successfully mediated 208,000 cases, with 
a success rate of 88.17%. These courts inherited and innovated the “Maple 
Bridge Experience” by upgrading “resolving small dispute before it goes out 
the village” to “resolving dispute before it goes out the house”. Ma’anshan 
Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui has promoted the diversification 
reform further by conducting online mediation off site and remotely, 
achieving success in  95.1% online mediations. Meishan Intermediate 
People’s Court in Sichuan have fully mobilized and utilized various kinds 
of resources for dispute resolution, and solved 80.72% of controversies 
and disputes by means of alternative dispute resolution between 2014 and 
2016, with only 7.06% of cases entering into the judicial procedures to 
be adjudicated, thereby creating the “Meishan Experience” connecting 
the litigation and alternative dispute resolution. Heilongjiang Province, 
Anhui Province, Fujian Province, Shandong Province and Xiamen City, 
Fujian Province have issued local regulations on diversified resolution of 
contradictions and disputes, providing legal protection for dispute resolution 
and social governance.
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Establishing and improving the lawyer mediation system. In September 
2017, the Supreme People’s Court and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued 
opinions on the pilot program of lawyer mediation, and launched the pilot 
program in 11 provinces (and municipalities directly under the Central 
Government) such as Beijing, Heilongjiang and Shanghai. Within one year 
after the launch, the pilot courts established 657 lawyer mediation rooms, 
and included 1,290 lawyer mediation organizations and 12,360 lawyer 
mediators in their panel of specially appointed mediation organizations 
and mediators; these lawyers participated in the mediation of 54,898 cases 
and successfully mediated 25,569 cases; they made 8,529 applications 
for judicial confirmation, issued 824 payment orders, and made 3,325 
applications for enforcement of mediation agreement, effectively exploiting 
their advantages and playing their role in dispute resolution. 63% of the 
courts nationwide have established a system for lawyers to lodge appeals on 
behalf of their clients, and 78% of the courts nationwide have established 
a system for lawyers to reside in courts. As of the end of 2018, the lawyers 
residing in the courts nationwide have accepted 791,932 cases, lodged 
26,942 appeals on behalf of their clients, and participated in the resolution 
of  27,499 disputes.
Pushing forward the reform of the mechanism of separating complicated 
cases from simple cases. In September 2016, the Supreme People’s Court 
promulgated the opinions on furthering separation of complicated cases 
from simple cases and optimizing the allocation of judicial resources. In 
May 2017, the Supreme People’s Court promulgated operating rules for 
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separating complicated civil-commercial cases from simple ones and resort 
to mediation and fast trial, to instruct the courts at all levels to optimize 
the allocation of judicial resources, to innovate and improve the working 
mechanism, and to alleviate the caseloads. The Supreme People’s Court 
has formulated the criterion of model courts for piloting in separating 
complicated cases from simple cases and designated 80 such courts. In 2018, 
the number of cases concluded according to summary procedures increased 
by 38.81% compared with 2014. Courts nationwide have actively carried out 
creative mechanisms such as court trial focusing on essential factors, writ, 
and exemplary litigation to deepen the reform, address the new problem of 
rapid increase in the number of cases, shorten the case-handling period, and 
improve judicial efficiency. Most primary courts in Jiangsu have established 
divisions for fast adjudication of small claim cases, each of which comprises 
one judge and one clerk, adopts the mode of adjudication focusing on 
essential factors, simplifies the written judgments, announces judgments 
ex tempore in principle, and concludes a case within 20 days on average, 
with nearly 70% of cases dropped after mediation. Shenyang Intermediate 
People’s Court in Liaoning has actively implemented the system of pre-
trial meeting to handle procedural issues, such as notification of rights 
and obligations, petition for excusing judges, clarification the respective 
arguments of the plaintiffs and defendants, ascertaining non-disputed facts, 
identification of the points at issue, and urging the parties involved to submit 
evidences related to such points at issue. Since the launch of the reform, the 
duration of court trial has been reduced by about 50 minutes on average.
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Deepening the reform of the system of handling letters and visits 
involving lawsuits. The Supreme People’s Court has been actively 
promoting the handling of letters and visits involving lawsuits in accordance 
with the law. The courts at all levels have been improving the working 
mechanism of separating litigation from letters and visits and solving the 
people’s lawful and reasonable claims with earnest efforts. The Supreme 
People’s Court has established an online platform for complaints, enabling 
litigants to check anytime anywhere about the progress and result of a 
complaint provided that information about the complaint and appropriate 
materials submitted. This further unblocks the complaint channels and 
alleviates people’s burden. The Supreme People’s Court has launched an 
online video system to receive complaints, which is connected with the 
courts at four levels nationwide, enabling the Supreme People’s Court, local 
people’s courts and complainants to communicate face-to-face remotely, 
which reduces the visits to Beijing by about 30%. The Supreme People’s 
Court has preliminarily established a national platform for courts to 
handle letters and visits involving lawsuits, to gather relevant information 
on the nationwide scale, and functions well in respects of publication 
and submission of the information of letters and visits, supervision 
of the handling of letters and visits, and realizing quick and accurate 
communication between the lower and upper courts consequently improves 
the efficiency and unified the coordination mechanism.
Pushing forward the reform of the approaches and working 
mechanisms for family law cases. In April 2016, the Supreme People’s 
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Court issued the guidelines on carrying out the pilot reform of the approach 
and working mechanism for family law cases, exploring the ways to solve 
family disputes in a professional, socialized and people-oriented manner, and 
actively pushing forward the pilot reform. The pilot courts have made efforts 
in establishing family divisions or collegial panels for family law disputes, 
introducing domestic disputes investigator, social worker, child psychologist 
and others alike to provide mental guidance and other expertise to the parties 
involved, and advancing the integration of judicial, administrative and social 
resources, which constitutes a new mechanism for comprehensively solving 
family law disputes. On July 19, 2017, the Supreme People’s Court took the 
lead in establishing a joint meeting mechanism involving 15 authorities for 
advancing this reform. On July 18, 2018, the Supreme People’s Court issued 
opinions on further deepening the reform of the approach and working 
mechanism for family law cases. The courts in Hebei, Shandong, Zhejiang, 
Fujian, Shaanxi, Qinghai, Gansu, Tibet and other regions have established 
a similar joint meeting mechanism, contributing to the establishment 
of a working pattern where party committees exercise leadership, local 
governments fulfill their duties, courts lead, and the public participates. 
The high people’s courts in Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Anhui, Ningxia, 
Guangxi and other regions have formulated comprehensive procedures for 
adjudicating cases in regard to family law cases. The courts in Chongqing, 
Qinghai and other regions have strengthened the psychological assessment 
and intervention in handling cases, effectively preventing civil cases from 
deteriorating into criminal cases; Putuo District People’s Court in Shanghai 
has created the mechanism of “representative of children’s interests” where 
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the staff members at the Office of National Working Committee on Women 
and Children act as representatives to effectively protect the legitimate 
rights and interests of juveniles through independent investigations, 
evidence collection and participation in court trials; Linfen Intermediate 
People’s Court in Shanxi has been  exploring a mechanism of revisiting the 
parties and provides supports, so that the humanistic care from the socialist 
judiciary could be felt. Xicheng District People’s Court in Beijing and 
Yiling District People’s Court in Yichang, Hubei have been actively trying a 
cooling-off period in marriage mechanism in divorce cases.
Pushing forward pilot reform of integrated online data processing in 
respect of disputes over damages in road traffic accidents. In response to 
the prominent problem of rapid increase and lengthy resolution procedures 
of disputes over traffic accidents, the Supreme People’s Court initiated 
a comprehensive pilot project, the integrated digital database of traffic 
accidents disputes resolution, in Yuhang District, Hangzhou. In November 
2017, the Supreme People’s Court and the Ministry of Public Security, the 
Ministry of Justice, and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission held 
a joint meeting. At this meeting, they decided to jointly carry out the above-
mentioned pilot reform in 14 provinces and municipalities including Beijing. 
The pilot, integrates digital data in respect of responsibility determination by 
the traffic management authority, damages calculation by relevant entities, 
mediation, appraisal, litigation, damages paid by insurance company, and so 
on, and further realizes information sharing and joint actions, enabling case 
handled on one platform, insurance policy paid out through one click, quick 
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processing, and to make dispute resolution more convenient and quicker. In 
2017 and 2018, nearly 370,000 and 360,000 first-instance civil disputes over 
damages in traffic accidents were mediated across the country respectively. 
In some pilot regions, due to the reform, the disputes referred to courts have 
dropped by 50%.
Reforming and improving the service system for civil litigations. In 
July 2017, the Supreme People’s Court issued certain opinions on further 
strengthening service in civil litigations, proposing to comprehensively 
promote the mechanism of confirming litigants’ address for service, to 
unify the format of conformation of address for service, to standardized 
the content of such conformation and to actively explore electronic service 
and effective way of preserving proof of service, in order to improve 
the quality and efficiency of service for civil litigations, and address the 
“difficulties in service” stumbling civil trials. Zhejiang Wenling People’s 
Court, has set up a service management center, equipped it with 9 full-time 
staff members, developed management software, opened an official WeChat 
account for the service management center, strengthened cooperation with 
postal service, and preliminarily digitalized, intensified and standardized the 
management of the whole process of service, thus improving the efficiency 
of service. Jingyang District People’s Court in Deyang City, Sichuan has 
cut 50% of service costs through a variety of methods such as electronic 
service, entrusted service by notary offices, and agreements-based service, 
and judicial advice. Owing to the implementation of electronic service, for 
those cases involving insurance contracts, the duration for service has been 
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shortened by over 5 days, and the entire trial has been shortened by over 10 
days.
Enhancing the establishment of detached tribunals. In December 2014, 
the Supreme People’s Court promulgated certain opinions on further 
strengthening the work of detached tribunals in the new context to instruct 
all regions to strengthen the development of detached tribunals, in order 
to truly achieve the goal of exercising judicial power for the people. It has 
actively developed the structure of courts relying mainly on central courts 
and supplemented by community courts and circuit adjudication venues, and 
optimized the regional layout of people’s courts and distribution of judicial 
personnel. The courts in Henan have established an information center, 
networking and sharing data among all detached tribunals in the province, 
and developed the electronic signature system, the function of cross-regional 
circulation of digital case files and realized cross-county (city) filing of 
certain cases, enabling litigants to file cases with local courts or people’s 
tribunals. The courts in Chongqing have pushed forward the development of 
tribunal liaison points and established litigation stations, in order to facilitate 
the filing of lawsuits by the public.
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VI. Solidly Advance the “Basically Solving the Difficulties in 
Enforcement” Campaign
Enforcing the judgments that has come into force is the “last mile” towards 
judicial justice, significantly concerns the authority and public credibility 
of the judiciary. In March 2016, at the 4th Session of the 12th National 
People’s Congress, the Supreme People’s Court proposed to “basically solve 
the difficulties in enforcement within two to three years”. In April 2016, 
the Supreme People’s Court issued the Roadmap for Basically Solving 
the Difficulties in Enforcement within Two to Three Years, setting the 
overarching goal of “basically solving the difficulties in enforcement”. To 
achieve the goal on time, the Supreme People’s Court further set five core 
indicators for this ongoing phase: over 90% of the cases with available 
property for enforcement should be enforced within the statutory period; 
over 90% of the cases without available property for enforcement should 
discontinue the enforcement in compliance with the law; over 90% of the 
cases with letters and visits involving enforcement should be resolved or 
concluded; over 90% of the courts nationwide should achieve the foregoing 
goals; and the overall closure rate of enforcement cases in the last three 
years should exceed 80%.
Since the goal of “basically solving the difficulties in enforcement” 
was proposed, the people’s courts have comprehensively promoted the 
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informatization and standardization, continuously deepened the reform of 
the system and management model of enforcement, continued to strengthen 
personnel capabilities, and reinforce the supports. From 2016 to the end of 
2018, the courts nationwide accepted 20,435,378 enforcement cases and 
enforced 19,361,165 cases, with total enforced value amounting to RMB 4.4 
trillion, and the year-on-year increase during this period reached 98.45%, 
105.09% and 71.2% respectively.
 Advancing an overarching governance structure in respect of solving 
the difficulties in enforcement.  In June 2016, The Central Leading 
Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms (CLGCDR) considered 
and approved the opinions on accelerating the development of a credit-
management system for the supervision over, alerting and punishing 
dishonest persons subject to enforcement. 31 provinces (and autonomous 
regions and municipalities) have issued endorsing documents, and  Standing 
Committees of 12 Provincial , Autonomous Regional and Municipal 
People’s Congress have passed motions to support the campaign of people’s 
courts. So far, the overarching governance structure for overcoming 
the difficulties in enforcement has emerged, featuring leadership by the 
CPC party committees, coordination by CPC Political and Legal Affairs 
Commission, supervision by the people’s congress, support from the local 
governments, organization by courts, cooperation by other corresponding 
authorities, and participation of the public. With continuous adjustments, this 
structure has laid a solid foundation for “basically solving the difficulties in 
enforcement”.
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 Developing an online property search and seizure system. In response 
to problems such as low efficiency of enforcement, limited coverage of 
properties, and high human resources costs in the traditional mode of 
property search and seizure, the Supreme People’s Court has established an 
online property search and seizure system at the central government level, 
which connects the networks of 16 central government agencies (including 
the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry 
of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Transport, the People’s Bank of 
China, and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission) and 
those of over 3,900 banking financial institutions. Through this system, the 
property information of the persons subject to enforcement officers may 
check has been expanded into 25 sub-categories under 16 categories, such 
as real estate, deposits, financial investments, vessels, vehicles, securities 
and online funds nationwide, which effectively covers majority of the forms 
of properties and related information. It greatly improves the efficiency of 
enforcement, and fundamentally changes the methods adopted. As of the 
end of 2018, the courts nationwide have searched and seized property in 
60.38 million cases via this new system, with acquiring 9.84 million pieces 
of information of houses, lands and other forms of real estate, information 
of 51.42 million vehicles, 142.1 billion shares of securities, 1.939 million 
vessels, and RMB 25.71 billion online funds, and a total of RMB 413.6 
billion frozen. Thereby, the rights and interests of the prevailing litigants are 
effectively safeguarded.
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Improving the system of joint punishments on dishonest persons subject 
to enforcement. In 2013, the Supreme People’s Court established the 
system of blacklist of dishonest persons subject to enforcement and started 
to promote joint punishments on dishonest persons subject to enforcement, 
striving to crack down on the acts of maliciously avoiding enforcements. 
Since 2016, the Supreme People’s Court has signed memorandums with the 
National Development and Reform Commission and other 60 authorities, 
advancing a credit-management system for the supervision over, alerting 
and punishing dishonest persons subject to enforcement. 150 punishment 
measures under 37 sub-categories of 11 categories are utilized to prevent 
dishonest persons subject to enforcement from serving as civil servants, 
CPC party representatives, members to the people’s congress, and members 
of the people’s political consultative conference. They may also receive 
constraints in traveling, house purchasing, investing, bidding and calling for 
bids, and so on. As of the end of 2018, the courts nationwide had publicized 
12.88 million blacklisted dishonest persons, out of which 17.46 million 
reservations of air tickets and 5.47 million of bullet train or high-speed rail 
tickets were rejected. 3.51 million dishonest persons subject to enforcement 
have fulfilled their obligations under such pressure.
Promoting online judicial auctions. In order to overcome the shortcomings 
of conventional auction methods, the Supreme People’s Court, absorbing 
and distilling the experiences of online judicial auctions in lower courts,  has 
established a new judicial auction mode that online auctions are general and 
traditional auctions are exceptional, and promulgated judicial interpretations 
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regarding online judicial auctions, requiring full promotion of online judicial 
auctions nationwide and improvement of related supporting systems from 
January 1, 2017. Up to now, 92.5% of the courts nationwide (namely 3,260 
courts) have fully adopted online auctions, and over 80% of the judicial 
auctions have been conducted online. Owing to the implementation of 
online judicial auctions, the successful auction rate and premium rate have 
increased exponentially, and the rate of failed auction and price reduction as 
well as the auction costs has dropped significantly. Online actions effectively 
eliminate the rent-seeking probabilities, cut off the illegal interest chain, 
and bring about “zero complaint” about violation of laws and disciplines 
during auctions. From its launch in March 2017 to December 2018, the 
courts nationwide have conducted over 940,000 online auctions and thereby 
sold over 270,000 items for RMB 604.9 billion, with successful auction rate 
of 70.8% and premium rate of 64.3%, and saving commissions of RMB 
18.6 billion for litigants. To tackle the low efficiency of appraisal during 
judicial auctions, courts nationwide have diversified methods of appraisal 
such as bargaining between litigants, targeted inquiries, online inquiries 
and entrusted appraisals, and have established a unified online appraisal 
platform. With appraisals becoming more standardized and informatized, 
the efficiency of property disposal has been improved and the burden on 
litigants has been alleviated.
Improving the management of enforcements. Since 2013, the Supreme 
People’s Court has been striving for a normative enforcement system, and 
has promulgated 55 judicial interpretations and regulatory documents in this 
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regard. In particular, since 2016, 37 judicial interpretations and regulatory 
documents regulating property preservation, property investigation, 
enforcement settlement, enforcement guaranty, presupposed arbitration 
and other issues have been promulgated to strengthen the system, reify the 
rules, and effectively restrain and regulate the enforcement-related power. 
Since 2014, the courts nationwide have carried out a comprehensive check 
on the enforcement cases pending in the past 20 years, and entered over 
16 million cases into the enforcement case management system, laying 
a solid foundation for an orderly, precise, comprehensive and intelligent 
management of the enforcement cases. A new mode of enforcement 
management has been established to put all courts in this country under 
“unified management, unified coordination, and unified command”, 
transforming the management into a new flat structure being more 
intensified, visualized, standardized, and intelligent. A unified enforcement 
case handling platform has been established so that all the enforcement 
officers nationwide work on the same platform, harmonizing the standards 
and procedures for enforcement cases, and strengthening the control over 
key nodes. An unified enforcement command and management platform 
has been established. With its nearly 20 functions including enforcement 
coordination, property management, complaints and appeals, and proceeding 
supervision, this platform realized the progress that enforcement information 
can be publicized at “one-stop” and case handling can be pressed via “one-
click”. In response to the difficulties in overseeing the handling of letters 
and visits involving enforcement, the unified system also included all the 
information of letters and visits involving enforcement, through which the 
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entire process of handling is recorded, traceable, and managed precisely.
Deepening the reform of the enforcement system and mechanisms. 
The pilot reform of the separation of adjudication power and enforcement 
power within the people’s courts has been advanced actively and steadily. 
The Supreme People’s Court has promulgated opinions on improving 
coordination of case filing, adjudication and enforcement, in order to 
strengthen the interactive engagements between case filing, adjudication, 
enforcement and preservation procedures. A team-based working structure 
has been established with judges as the team leader and legal assistants, 
clerks, judicial police and other auxiliary judicial personnel as the supporting 
members, which maximizes the utility of human resources for enforcement. 
The practice that property preservation applicants obtain insurance from 
professional insurers has been comprehensively promoted, which backs 
applicants struggling to provide collaterals and contributes to the increase of 
applications of property preservation measures. In response to the deficit of 
the judicial assistance fund, the Supreme People’s Court, on the basis of the 
approved pilot projects in Ningbo courts, has explored methods to expand 
the capital source, such as insuring the judicial assistance funds. In 2018, the 
granted judicial assistance fund amounted to RMB 650 million.
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VII. Deepening Judicial Openness and Judicial Democracy
Openness is the best means of anti-corruption. Since 2013, according 
to an overall integrated arrangement, by upholding to the principle of 
legality, voluntary, comprehensive  and substantive disclosure, the Supreme 
People’s Court has been simultaneously promoting the construction of four 
disclosure platforms for judicial process, court trials, written judgments, 
and enforcement procedures to improve judicial openness and transparency. 
Under the principle that disclosure is the general rule unless it meets the 
exceptional conditions defined by law, it has been promoting judicial 
openness in all areas and at all links of the adjudication and enforcement by 
the people’s courts to ensure that all contents that should be disclosed and 
delivered to the public properly. In November 2018, the Supreme People’s 
Court promulgated opinions on further deepening judicial openness to 
continuously expand the breadth and depth of judicial openness.
Promoting the openness of judicial process. In November 2014, the China 
Judicial Process Information Online was officially opened. Now, it has 
become a platform for centralized gathering and unified publishing of the 
information about the judicial process of the courts nationwide, providing 
“one-stop” disclosure service to the parties to the cases adjudicated by the 
courts nationwide. From the date of acceptance of a case, the parties to 
the case and their lawyers can, by entering their valid certificate numbers, 
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log onto the platform to check and download the process information and 
documents relating to the case at any time, and receive procedural legal 
process online. In March 2018, the Supreme People’s Court promulgated 
provisions on the disclosure of judicial process by the people’s courts 
through the Internet, clarifying that, except  information involving state 
secrets, with confidential requirement or limited access in specified by laws, 
all the four categories of judicial process information, namely procedural 
information, information about other matters rising in litigation process, 
legal documents, and court transcripts, shall be disclosed to litigants and 
their legal representatives, attorneys, and mandatory legal representation 
properly. As of the end of December 2018, the China Judicial Process 
Information Online had released 229,377,909 pieces of information about 
4,609,074 cases, with a disclosure rate of 99.43%, and had received over 
34,530,649 page views and sent 18,145,449 pieces of text messages; and on 
this platform, the courts nationwide had released a total of 1,536,570 pieces 
of information in the column “Disclosure to the Public”.
Promoting the openness of court trials. On December 11, 2013, the China 
Court Trial Live Broadcasting Website was opened. In September 2016, 
on the basis of comprehensively upgrading the China Court Trial Live 
Broadcasting Website, the Supreme People’s Court officially opened the 
China Court Trial Online, thereby realizing the collection and authoritative 
release of videos of court trials conducted at the people’s courts at all levels. 
Since July 1, 2016, the Supreme People’s Court has provided online live 
broadcasting of the court trials of all the cases that can be made public 
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according to law. Through this website, the public can watch the court trials 
of cases that are conducted at the courts nationwide in real time, demand 
videos of court trials, access statistical information of court trials broadcast 
live, and store and share such videos and information through their Weibo 
and WeChat accounts, thereby realizing full coverage, real-time release 
and in-depth openness of court trial information. As of the end of 2018, 
the China Court Trial Online had broadcasted live over 2.3 million court 
trials with over 13.8 billion clicks. The people’s courts at all levels have 
attached great importance to the openness of court trials of major cases, 
and broadcast live the courts trials of a lot of major cases drawing wide 
attention, such as the retrial of Archangelos Gabriel salvage case and the 
series case of administrative disputes over “Qiaodan” trademark. On January 
7-8, 2016, Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing broadcast live the 
entire court trial of the case of “Qvodplay” suspected of seeking profits by 
spreading pornographic items, which lasted for more than 20 hours, attracted 
over 1 million viewers, and simultaneously posted 27 long Weibo messages 
reporting the entire court trial, which accumulatively received over 36 
million views.
Promoting the openness of written judgments. In November 2013, 
the Supreme People’s Court opened the China Judgments Online as the 
centralized platform for the openness of written judgments nationwide, and 
took the lead in publishing the judgments made by it on the website. Since 
January 1, 2014, all the effective judgments made by the people’s courts at 
all levels have been published on the China Judgments Online. In November 
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2015, the China Judgments Online underwent a revision by adding the 
functions such as one-click intelligent search, search of related documents 
and personalized services, and realized the openness of written judgments in 
five languages of minority nationalities, including Mongol, Tibetan, Uygur, 
Korean and Kazak, available for viewing and downloading. On August 30, 
2016, the mobile client App of the China Judgments Online was officially 
launched. Since August 2016, the China Judgments Online has received over 
20 million page views every day. On August 29, 2016, the Supreme People’s 
Court promulgated the amended provisions on the publication of judgments 
by people’s courts on line, listing all the types of judgments that should be 
made public, and requiring that all the judgments shall be published on line 
except those involving state secrets, crimes committed by persons under 
legal age, cases settled through mediation or in which mediation agreements 
are homologated, divorce actions or upbringing and guardianship of minor 
children; judgments involving personal privacy shall be published on line 
after redacting the contents involving personal privacy; the judgments of 
first instance that have been appealed or protested shall also be published on 
line and linked to the corresponding judgments of second instance; and with 
respect to the judgments not made public, to the extent not disclosing any 
state secrets, the case numbers, courts trying the cases, dates of judgment 
and reasons for non-disclosure shall be stated. The mode of publication 
of judgments has been changed from the traditional mode of centralized 
publication by special organs into the mode of one-click publication 
by the judges handling the cases on the case handling platform, and the 
mechanisms for handling the complaints lodged and comments made by the 
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public and for public supervision of judgments have been established, so 
as to put the openness of written judgments under the supervision all social 
circles. As of the end of 2018, the China Judgments Online has published 
over 62 million judgments, received over 21 billion page views from more 
than 210 countries and regions worldwide, and become the largest judgment 
database in the world.
Promoting the openness of enforcement information. Since November 
2014, the Supreme People’s Court has begun to release the information 
of persons subject to enforcement, the list of dishonest persons subject 
to enforcement by the courts nationwide, information of enforcement 
process and the decisions on enforcement on the China Enforcement 
Information Online in a centralized manner, thus realizing unified, timely, 
and automatic disclosure of information about enforcement cases, persons 
subject to enforcement, discontinued current enforcement cases, and 
online judicial auction, and other information of the courts nationwide. On 
September 14, 2016, the WeChat account of “China Enforcement” opened 
by the Supreme People’s Court was officially launched on line, which 
provides the functions of access to enforcement information, publication of 
enforcement regulations, interpretation of laws and regulations, publication 
of enforcement documents, etc., so that the public can access enforcement 
information and receive judicial services anytime anywhere. As of the end 
of 2018, the enforcement information release platform had announced 12.88 
million dishonest persons subject to enforcement.
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Promoting the openness of corporate bankruptcy information. In 
August 2016, the Supreme People’s Court issued provisions on disclosure 
of information about corporate bankruptcy cases, and officially opened 
the National Enterprise Bankruptcy and Restructuring Case Information 
Disclosure Platform, which becomes an online information platform for 
releasing various information about bankruptcy cases, and on which the 
legal process, notices of recruitment of administrators, notices of recruitment 
of investors, notices of asset auction and other relevant information are 
simultaneously published. In 2018, the information about 29,856 bankruptcy 
cases was disclosed through the National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information 
Disclosure Platform.
Expanding the breadth and depth of judicial openness. The Supreme 
People’s Court has published the Gazettes of the Supreme People’s Court, 
Work Reports of the Supreme People’s Court and the Annual Work Reports 
of the People’s Court (in Chinese and English) on a regular basis, as well 
as the white papers on the situation of judicial protection of intellectual 
property rights in China, on the trial of maritime cases, on the trial of 
environmental and resource cases, on the trial of administrative cases, on 
the judicial reform and on the judicial openness, and released the judicial 
documents and information about major cases and the work of courts to 
people at home and abroad. The Supreme People’s Court has established the 
Judicial Case Academy and opened the Online version (https://anli.court.
gov.cn/static/web/index.html#/index), which, supported by the big database 
and the Information Technology, collects and publishes a large number of 
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Chinese and foreign cases, and intelligently produces typical cases widely 
recognized, thus promoting clear and defined guides to the society. The 
China Judicial Case Academy Online with columns such as “Hot Issues”, 
“Case Method” and “Case Forum”, has been leading the legal practitioners 
to participate in the collection, generation, research and communication 
on judicial cases, striving to become a new platform for case studies. The 
people’s courts at all levels have been making efforts to improve judicial 
openness by means of court official  websites and accounts, Court Weibo 
and WeChat, mobile news client APPs, court president’s letterboxes, 
liaison platforms of members of people’s congresses and people’s political 
consultative conferences, open days and otherwise.
On December 31, 2014, the governmental service website of the Supreme 
People’s Court underwent a comprehensive revision and opened the litigation 
service website to facilitate consultations, inquiries, appointment for case 
filing, online examination of case files and contact with judges by the 
litigants, among other things. On December 15, 2015, the Supreme People’s 
Court opened its English website. Since 2013, the Supreme People’s Court 
has opened its official accounts on the major domestic Weibo platforms 
including Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and Renmin Weibo platforms, and 
press rooms for the courts nationwide on such Weibo accounts. As of the 
end of 2018, the three official Weibo accounts owned over 57.953 million 
subscribers, posted 44,000 pieces of Weibo messages, and received 5.084 
million reposts and comments. The official WeChat account of the Supreme 
People’s Court was opened in November 2013, and had posted 3,909 pieces 
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of image-text messages and had 1,044,000 subscribers as of the end of 
2018. Since January 2015, the courts nationwide have adopted the Monthly 
Updates Press system. From 2014 to 2018, the Supreme People’s Court had 
held 114 news presses, released 76 judicial documents and circulated 53 
reports on working progress. From 2015 to 2018, 477 typical cases in total 
have been made public through briefings on typical cases. The Supreme 
People’s Court held the China-ASEAN Justice Forum, the BRICS Justice 
Forum and the Environmental Justice Sub-forum of Boao Forum for Asia, 
the Conference of Presidents of Supreme Courts of China and Central and 
Eastern European Countries, the Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Forum 
on Judicial Cooperation, the Forum on the Rule of Law in Cyberspace – 
Smart Court, the Conference of Presidents of Supreme Courts of China 
and Portuguese-speaking Countries, and the 13th Conference of Presidents 
of Supreme Courts of the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation 
Organization, and other major events of foreign affairs related to justice. It 
has established friendly relations with the highest judicial authorities of over 
140 countries and regions, 18 international and regional organizations and 
has signed cooperation agreements with the highest judicial authorities of 
43 countries and 2 international organizations; in doing so, it has told a good 
story about the rule of law in China and transmitted the sound of the rule of 
law in China, effectively enhancing the international image and influence of 
China’s judiciary.
Reforming the system of people’s assessors. In May 2015, with the 
authorization of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, 
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the Supreme People’s Court and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued the 
pilot program to reform the system of people’s assessors and the measures 
for the implementation of the pilot program. The two-year pilot program has 
been conducted at 50 courts selected in 10 provinces, autonomous regions 
and municipalities directly under the Central Government. The items of the 
pilot program includes, among other things, reforming the requirements for 
the appointment of people’s assessors, improving the mode of appointment 
of people’s assessors, expanding the scope of participation in trials, defining 
the powers to participate in trials, enhancing job security, establishing 
the withdrawal mechanism, giving full play to the advantage of people’s 
assessors in being familiar with the social situations and public opinions, 
and gradually realizing the goal that people’s assessors no longer vote on 
issues relating to the application of law and only participate in the finding 
of facts. In order to further address the problems arising in the pilot reform, 
in April 2017, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress 
decided to extend the pilot period by one year. In April 2018, the Standing 
Committee of the National People’s Congress considered and passed the 
report of the Supreme People’s Court on the pilot reform of the system of 
people’s assessors, which was successfully completed. The pilot reform 
has achieved remarkable accomplishments, including “four conversions”: 
the appointment of people’s assessors has transformed from mainly relied 
on recommendations by social organizations to random selection; the 
scope of the discretionary power of people’s assessor’s in trials has been 
narrowed down from full participation to only factual issues; the maximum 
number of people’s assessors in a collegiate panel has been enlarged from 
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3 to more than 7; and the evaluative assessment on the cases heard with 
the people’s assessors has shifted from “quantity” to “quality”. After the 
reform, the people’s assessors come from more diverse background with 
a sound structure, and fulfill their responsibility more actively. In April 
2018, the Law on People’s Assessors of the People’s Republic of China was 
promulgated, legally incorporated the improvements in the pilot reform 
of the system of people’s assessors. The Ministry of Justice, the Supreme 
People’s Court, and the Ministry of Public Security issued measures for 
appointment of people’s assessors, and established the appointment of 
people’s assessors mainly based on random selection and with supplement 
methods of individual applications and organization recommendations.
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VIII. Promoting Scientific and Classified Management over 
Judicial Personnel
According to the overall arrangement by the State and in cooperation with 
related departments of the Central Government, the Supreme People’s Court 
has fully reformed the judicial personnel management system. 
Establishing a system for classified management of judicial personnel. 
In response to the problem that the past judicial personnel management 
system did not fully reflect the characteristics of the judicial profession, 
the Supreme People’s Court has actively promoted the reform of the 
system for classified management of judicial personnel, by classifying the 
judicial personnel into judges, auxiliary judicial personnel and judicial 
administrative personnel, and adopting different management systems for 
different categories of personnel, to ensure that each of judges, auxiliary 
judicial personnel and judicial administrative personnel is assigned to a 
definite post of duty and attends to his own duties. As of the end of 2018, the 
proportion of judges, auxiliary judicial personnel and judicial administrative 
personnel had reached 34.6%, 49.5% and 15.9% respectively.
Fully implementing the judge quota system. In line with the principle 
of determining quota based on cases, selecting personnel based on job 
requirements, controlling total number, and making overall planning at 
the provincial level, through well-designed examination and assessment 
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procedures, the courts nationwide have selected a total of 125,000 judges 
from the former 210,000 judges. The newly-selected judges are mainly 
placed on adjudicative posts rather than general administrative posts, 
and over 85% of judicial personnel resource are allocated to trial work, 
optimized the resource allocation and the team structure. All higher people’s 
court have strictly honored the maximum quota and ratio determined by the 
Central Government, and according to the number of cases handled, and 
the situations of economic and social development, population and other 
basic figures of the places where the courts are located, the level of trial and 
functions of the courts, workloads of judges, staffing of auxiliary judicial 
personnel and other factors, have implemented a system of unified allocation 
of judge quota among the courts at three levels within one provincial 
jurisdiction and providing priority to the primary people’s courts and the 
area where the conflicts between caseload and personnel is serious. Mainly 
on the amount of cases, Guangdong courts decided that the proportion of 
judges should be lower than 30% in Shantou where there are fewer cases 
but exceed personnel, and be higher than 50% in Shenzhen, Dongguan, 
Zhongshan and other cities where there are overloaded cases but relatively 
fewer staffs. A mechanism of  exchange and removal of judges has been 
established, and a mechanism of dynamic management of quota has been 
gradually formed, whereby one may be appointed or removal as judge and 
an appointed judge may be promoted or demoted. As of June 2018, 5,938 
judges nationwide have been removed due to  post transfer, reassignment, 
resignation, retirement, and disqulification, or the like.
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Reforming the judge selection and appointment system. The courts at 
the provincial level have established judge selection committees comprising 
judge representatives and relevant civilians, and formulated open, fair 
and just judge selection and appointment procedures, to ensure that only 
outstanding legal practitioners who are upright in character and have rich 
experience and a high professional level will become judge candidates. In 
order to improve the system of selection of judges level by level, in May 
2016, the Organization Department of the CCCPC, the Supreme People’s 
Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate jointly promulgated the 
opinions on establishing the system of selection of judges and public 
prosecutors level by level, which express provide that the judges of the 
people’s courts at the prefecture level or above shall be selected level by 
level generally. In October 2015, the Supreme People’s Court, after strict 
selection procedures, selected 7 outstanding judges from 62 applicants 
from local courts nationwide. In March 2014, the Supreme People’s Court 
conducted a program of publicly selecting high-level judicial talents from 
experts, scholars, lawyers and other personnel practicing law, and finally 
selected five persons, including experts, scholars, senior lawyers and 
outstanding public prosecutors, from 195 applicants. In 2015, the courts in 
Shanghai publicly selected one judge from outside the judicature, and the 
courts in Qinghai publicly selected three judges from outside the judicature. 
The courts in Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian and other regions have begun to 
select judges from outstanding judge assistants and send them to serve in the 
primary people’s courts.
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Reforming the rank of posts and compensation & benefit system 
of judges. A system of independent rank of posts of judges has been 
established so that: registered judges could be managed according to such 
independent ranking order, judges’ professional ranks are separated from 
their administrative ranks, and judges are promoted based on their seniority, 
on a selective basis or specially; a personnel management system for 
judges that is different from that for other public servants and reflects the 
professional characteristics of judges has been implemented, which will 
broaden the career development channels of grassroots judges and enhance 
the professional honor and work enthusiasm of judges. As of the end of 
2018, all courts nationwide had established a mechanism for determining 
the independent rank of posts of judges, about 98% courts had begun to 
promote judges along with their seniority, and about 52% courts had begun 
to promote judges on a selective basis. A compensation & benefit system 
has been established, supporting the series of reforms of independent rank 
of posts of judges, and all courts nationwide have introduced the new salary 
system involving performance-based bonus, which greatly increased the 
salary level of judges. By actively coordinating with  related departments 
of the Central Government, the Supreme People’s Court has formulated 
policies on post exchange, retirement age, medical benefit,, travel allowance, 
traffic subsidy, and others benefits for judges, noticed those implementation 
of policies, and promoted the courts at all levels to effectively place these 
policies.
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Reforming the system of recruiting and training auxiliary judicial 
personnel. The Supreme People’s Court, in cooperation with related 
departments of the Central Government, has issued opinion on recruiting 
judge assistants by people’s courts. All regions have conducted unified 
independent recruitment at provincial level in an orderly way, and steadily 
advanced the position transfer of unadmitted judges and qualified clerks 
to judge assistant, to equip the courts with more judge assistants. In April 
2017, the Supreme People’s Court, together with the Ministry of Finance 
and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, launched a plan 
for reforming the system on managing clerks, with a focus on the problems 
solving that the management of contracted clerks was not standardized 
enough, the professional protection provided to contracted clerks is not 
strong enough, and the team of contracted clerks is not stable enough. 
The courts in all regions have expanded the sources of auxiliary judicial 
personnel and explored the improvement of the system on managing and 
training auxiliary judicial personnel, with a focus on optimizing the structure 
of auxiliary judicial personnel. Since the reform, the number of auxiliary 
judicial personnel in Beijing courts has increased 68.8% from 2,689 to 
4,538; the ratio of number of judges to that of auxiliary judicial personnel 
in Shanghai courts has changed from 1:0.75 to 1:1.78. The Jiangsu Higher 
People’s Court has vigorously pushed forward the reform of the clerk 
system, formulated the standards of the rank of posts of clerks and measures 
for the training and evaluating clerks, properly defined the posts, the quantity 
and responsibilities of clerks, and provided that the proportion of first-line 
judges to clerks shall be 1:1.1, thereby changing the situation that  several 
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judges assisted by one clerk in the past.
Establishing the legal research scholar and legal intern systems. The 
Supreme People’s Court has established legal research scholar and intern 
systems, and received 30 legal research scholars and 313 legal interns, 
which enhances its judicial cooperation and exchanges with law schools 
and research institutes, and improves the legal practitioner training 
mechanism. Most local courts have enhanced their cooperation with law 
schools and established a system of receiving  interns from law schools as 
judge assistants, who  participate in the auxiliary judicial work under the 
guidance of judges, alleviated the difficulty of understaffed judge assistants 
in the people’s courts, and explored a new mode of classified management 
of judicial personnel. Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan 
has signed a cooperation agreement on  a mechanism of “ Judge Assistant 
Internship” with 11 colleges and universities including Sichuan University, 
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and University of 
Electronic Science and Technology of China, by launching a program of 
intern judge assistants on campuses, whereby the colleges and universities 
in cooperation could select and send outstanding law graduates (or 
undergraduates) to participate in the auxiliary judicial work. So far, a total of 
304 interns of five phases have engaged in this program.
Strengthening the professional ethics of the judiciary. In order to 
comprehensively strengthen the professional quality of judges and abide by 
the professional ethics of the judiciary, the people’s courts have improved 
the unified vocational training system and entry/promotion oath ceremony 
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and the professional ethics standards, code of professional conduct and 
professional ethics evaluation mechanism for judges. In conjunction with 
the related departments of the Central Government, the Supreme People’s 
Court has issued the relevant documents, prohibiting judicial personnel 
from entering into six ways of intercommunications with litigants, lawyers, 
specially interested parties or agencies, requiring judicial personnel handling 
cases to host litigants, lawyers, especially interested parties or agencies at 
working places and during working hours, and prohibiting judicial personnel 
from acting as attorneys or mandatory legal representation in any cases 
handled by the judicial organs he resigned, and  prohibiting those from 
practicing law for life who have been dismissed from public office due to 
violation of the law and discipline.
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IX. Improving the System and Mechanism of Judicial Service 
and Securing National Development
The people’s courts shoulder an important mission for protecting the 
political security of the country, ensuring the stability of the overall society, 
defending social fairness and justice, and guaranteeing that people live 
and work in peace and satisfaction. Based on their judicial functions, the 
people’s courts at all levels have deepened the reform of the judicial system 
by strengthening adjudication and enforcement, to promote the formation 
of a new pattern of reform and opening-up at higher lever and create a more 
stable, fair, transparent and predictable business environment under the rule 
of law.
Enabling the mechanism of judicial service and protection for the 
national development strategy. The Supreme People’s Court has issued 
documents on providing judicial protection for improving the business 
environment under the rule of law. Higher People’s Courts of Beijing and 
Shanghai have also improved relevant judicial policies, committed to create 
an international environment for doing business under the rule of law. In the 
Doing Business 2019 released by the World Bank, China scored 78.97 in 
the indicator of “performing contract”, which indicator is ranked the 6th in 
the world, and closely related to the judicial efficiency, judicial cost, judicial 
organ, judicial procedure and informatization level. The Supreme People’s 
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Court has issued opinions on providing judicial service and protection for 
the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the development of 
the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the rural revitalization strategy, and 
has innovated the judicial collaborative working mechanism, to provide 
judicial service and protection for the major strategic development of the 
country. It has improved the risk monitoring and warning mechanism in 
financial adjudication, established a big database for financial cases, and 
improved the information sharing and distribution mechanism for preventing 
financial risk.
Improving the international commercial dispute resolution mechanism 
in relation to “The Belt and Road”. In June 2018, the Supreme 
People’s Court promulgated judicial interpretations on the establishment 
of international commercial tribunals, and formulated supporting rules 
such as working rules for international commercial expert committees 
and guidelines on procedures of international commercial tribunals. The 
international commercial tribunals may entrust members of international 
commercial expert committees and international commercial mediation 
agencies to mediate international commercial disputes, and support 
domestic qualified arbitration institutions with international reputation 
in carrying out international commercial arbitration involving “The Belt 
and Road”, so as to create a system for diversified resolution mechanism 
of international commercial disputes with interconnected and supportive 
mediation, arbitration and litigation. On June 29, 2018, the No. 1 and No. 
2 International Commercial Tribunals of the Supreme People’s Court were 
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established and officially opened in Shenzhen and Xi’an respectively.
Perfecting the system of judicial protection of property rights. In 
November 2016, the Supreme People’s Court issued opinions on fulfilling 
the role and function of the judiciary to effectively strengthen the judicial 
protection of property rights and made comprehensive arrangements for 
improving the judicial protection of property rights. By upholding the 
concepts of equal, comprehensive and legitimate protection, the people’s 
courts ensure that all types of property right owners should be given equal 
treatment on legal status and law application, strictly distinguish economic 
disputes from criminal offences, and resolutely prevent transferring civil 
obligations to criminal offences. The Supreme People’s Court has published 
two batches of typical cases regarding protection of property rights and 
entrepreneurs’ rights and interests, and has legally identified and corrected 
some property-right-related cases in which people are unjust, falsely or 
wrongly charged or sentenced, such as the case of Zhang Wenzhong, which 
has good social impacts.
Strengthening the reform and innovation in IP adjudications. In 
November 2017, at the first meeting of the 19th CLGCDR, the CLGCDR 
members reviewed and approved the Opinions on Certain Issues 
Concerning Strengthening the Reform and Innovation in Adjudication of 
IP Cases, and proposed to improve the IP judicial system by improving the 
examination mechanism and evidence rules on of validity of rights in line 
with the characteristics of IP adjudication and establishing a compensation 
rules based on marketing value for IP infringement. On April 20, 2017, the 
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Supreme People’s Court issued outlines of judicial protection of intellectual 
property rights in China (2016-2020), which clarify the basic principles, 
main objectives and key measures for judicial protection of intellectual 
property rights. In July 2016, the Supreme People’s Court issued the 
opinions on promoting three-in-one trial of civil, administrative and criminal 
IP cases at the courts nationwide, requiring that the IP adjudication divisions 
of all the people’s courts at all levels shall be renamed IP tribunals, which 
shall be responsible for the trial of all the civil, administrative and criminal 
IP cases.
Improving the system and mechanism of judicial protection for 
ecological resources. The Supreme People’s Court has issued documents 
to provide judicial protection for comprehensively promoting the 
ecological civilization construction and greenness development. All regions 
have strengthened the establishment of specialized judicial organs for 
environmental and resource cases. In June 2014, the Supreme People’s 
Court established the Environmental and Resource Tribunal. As of the end 
of December 2018, 22 higher people’s courts, 110 intermediate people’s 
courts and 257 primary people’s courts had established specialized judicial 
organs for environmental and resource cases; the courts nationwide had 
established 1,270 tribunals, collegiate panels and circuit tribunals for 
environmental and resource cases in total, including 390 tribunals, 808 
collegiate panels, and 72 circuit tribunals. As required by the plan for pilot 
reform of ecological damage compensation system, all regions have actively 
explored adjudication rules for a provincial government to bring claims 
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for ecological damages. As of 2018, the courts nationwide had accepted 
and handled 20 cases claiming for and judicial homologation of ecological 
damage compensation.
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X. Improving the Judicial Management System and the 
Jurisdiction System
Since 2014, in cooperation with related departments of the Central 
Government, the Supreme People’s Court has promoted the reform of 
judicial management system, adjusted the jurisdiction system, improved 
the system for safeguarding the authority of judicature, and facilitated 
the creation of a favorable institutional and social environment trusting, 
respecting and supporting judicature.
Promoting centralized management of personnel, financial and material 
resources of local courts below provincial level. The reform of the judicial 
management system by promoting centralized management of personnel, 
financial and material resources of local courts below the provincial level 
reflects that the judicial power is a power of the Central Government in 
nature. All the regions have advanced the work of centralized management 
in an open, transparent and democratic manner relying on the provincial 
platforms. The size and composition of local courts below provincial level 
in a provincial-level region are subject to management by the provincial 
commission department with the assistance of the higher people’s court 
in that region. The commission departments at municipal or county level 
are no longer responsible for the management of size and composition of 
courts within their respective jurisdictions. Each provincial-level region has 
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established the mechanism that the judges of local courts below provincial 
level are subject to nomination, management, appointment and removal 
according to the legal procedures by the provincial-level government 
in a centralized manner. Judge assistants are recruited and employed by 
provincial-level public server management departments in conjunction with 
higher people’s courts in a centralized manner. Junior judges are subject to 
professional qualification examination by provincial-level judge selection 
committees, and nomination, appointment and removal according to the 
legal procedures by provincial-level governments in a centralized manner. 
The provincial-level regions have also explored the reform of centralized 
funding management system for local courts below provincial level in light 
of their respective local conditions. In 18 provinces, autonomous regions 
and municipalities directly governed by the Central Government such as 
Beijing, Tianjin and Shanxi and 2 cities specifically designated by the state 
plan namely Dalian and Shenzhen, the funds required by local courts below 
provincial level are managed in a unified way by the provincial level, and 
all the courts at the provincial, municipal and county levels are classified as 
first-level budgetary units and prepare and submit their respective budgets 
to the provincial-level financial departments; their budgetary funds are 
appropriated from the central payment system of the Treasury.
Improving the trial-level system. In order to adapt to the situations of 
economic and social development, and reasonably defining the respective 
functions of the courts at four levels, the Supreme People’s Court 
adjusted the thresholds for the jurisdiction of the higher people’s courts 
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and intermediate people’s courts over civil and commercial cases of first 
instance, and increased the threshold of the subject value of civil and 
commercial cases of first instance under the jurisdiction of primary people’s 
courts; provided that major, difficult and complicated cases, new types of 
cases and typical cases in terms of application of law may be adjudicated 
by a people’s court at a higher level as determined by it in its sole discretion 
or at the request of a people’s court at a lower level. In February 2015, the 
Supreme People’s Court promulgated the judicial interpretations on issues 
concerning strict application of order for retrial and remand for retrial in the 
supervisory procedure for the trial of civil cases, which unify the standard 
for order for retrial and review of cases, strictly prohibit remand for retrial 
at will, and request that if a people’s court at a higher level orders to retry a 
case or remands a case for retrial, it shall elaborate in the ruling the detailed 
reasons for such order for retrial or remand for retrial.
Conducting pilot reform of trans-regional centralized jurisdiction over 
administrative cases. Considering that an administrative case is subject 
to jurisdiction of the court in the place where the administrative organ 
as the defendant is located and may be subject to interference by local 
administrative organs, according to the overall arrangement by the Central 
Government, the courts in all regions have been exploring the establishment 
of a system of jurisdiction over administrative cases relatively separate from 
administrative divisions, through escalation of the jurisdiction to the higher 
level, cross-jurisdiction among different regions, relatively centralized 
jurisdiction and otherwise, carrying out reforms of the jurisdiction system 
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with different characteristics, to practically solve serious problems in 
administrative lawsuits, such as difficulty in case filing, difficulty in 
trial and difficulty in enforcement. In June 2015, the Supreme People’s 
Court promulgated the opinions on trans-regional centralized jurisdiction 
over administrative cases, instructing certain higher people’s courts to, 
according to their respective local conditions, designate some courts to 
exercise jurisdiction over trans-regional administrative cases, so as to 
integrate resources of administrative adjudication and improve the judicial 
environment for administrative adjudication. The higher people’s courts 
in Fujian, Shandong, Henan, Guangdong, Hubei, Hunan and other regions 
assigned the jurisdiction over certain administrative cases of first instance 
to some designated primary or intermediate people’s courts other than the 
courts originally having the jurisdiction over such cases, so as to eliminate 
the public’s concern about local protectionism, through fairly adjudicating 
all kinds of administrative cases as per law.
Improving the system of specialized adjudication of and centralized 
jurisdiction over environmental and resource cases. The courts at 
all levels have been exploring the mode of specialized adjudication of 
civil, administrative and criminal environmental and resource cases. The 
Environmental and Resource Tribunals of the Supreme People’s Court hear 
and adjudicate civil and administrative environmental and resource cases 
in a centralized manner. 16 higher people’s courts such as those in Jiangsu 
and Fujian hear and adjudicate civil and administrative environmental 
and resource cases or civil, administrative and criminal environmental 
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and resource cases in a centralized manner. The courts in all regions 
have been exploring the mode of centralized jurisdiction over trans-
regional environmental and resource cases, based on the characteristics 
of environmental and resources protection in each region. The higher 
people’s courts in Jiangsu, Henan, Hainan, Hubei and other regions have 
been exploring the centralized jurisdiction over environmental and resource 
cases within each of the ecosystems or ecological functional zones such 
as river basins and sea areas, and have been exploring the jurisdiction and 
adjudication mode more matching the characteristics of the ecological 
environment laws, to effectively prevent local protectionism and enhance 
ecological environmental protection.
Strengthening the system requiring principals of administrative organs 
to appear in the court to respond to charges as per law. In July 2016, 
the Supreme People’s Court issued a notice requiring the people’s courts 
in all regions to further regulate and promote response to administrative 
lawsuits pursuant to the relevant provisions of the Administrative Procedure 
Law of the People’s Republic of China, and providing that if the principal 
or related staff members of an administrative organ do not appear in the 
court personally and just appoint an attorney to appear in the court, or if the 
principal of an administrative organ fails to appear in the court at the written 
request of the people’s court, the people’s court shall record the fact in the 
case file and state it in the judgment, and may issue public notices thereon 
according to law, and suggest that the appointing authority, supervisory 
authority or the administrative organ at the higher level should impose 
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serious punishments on the responsible persons. In Jiangsu, the rate of 
appearance of principals of administrative organs in the court to respond to 
charges has remained above 90% for two consecutive years, in particular, 
the rate of their appearance in the court has been above 90% in Nantong 
and other eight prefecture-level cities, and reached 100% in Kunshan and 
other 58 counties (cities and districts); while in Hai’an County, the three 
consecutive heads of the County have appeared in the court to respond to 
charges and the rate of appearance of principals of administrative organs 
in the court to respond to charges has remained 100% for six consecutive 
years.
Improving the system for safeguarding the credibility of lawsuits and 
the authority of judicature. The Supreme People’s Court, in conjunction 
with the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, amended 
certain charges under the Criminal Law, to further safeguard the authority 
of judicature. The Ninth Amendment to the Criminal Law of the People’s 
Republic of China adopted on August 29, 2015 further defined the offences 
of refusal to execute judgments or rulings, added an offence under the 
Criminal Law and inserted the provisions regarding offences committed by 
entities; amended the offences of interference with court order by defining 
the acts of beating up the parties to lawsuits, or insulting, defaming or 
threatening the judicial personnel or parties to lawsuits, or refusing to obey 
the court’s order to stop such acts or otherwise seriously interfering with 
court order as offences; and added the offences of false charges by defining 
the acts of bringing any civil lawsuit on the ground of fabricated facts, 
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disturbing the judicial order or otherwise seriously damaging the legitimate 
rights and interests of others as offences. In June 2016, the Supreme People’s 
Court promulgated the guidelines on preventing and punishing the persons 
lodging false charges, instructing the courts in all regions to identify the 
elements of false charges, and enhance the examination of and punishment 
against false charges, to safeguard the credibility and order of lawsuits.
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XI. Advancing the Construction of Intelligent Courts
Since 2013, the people’s courts have conscientiously implemented the 
innovation-driven strategy, the national cyber development strategy, the big 
data strategy, and the new-generation artificial intelligence development 
plan, and comprehensively strengthened the construction of intelligent 
courts. The open, and intelligent online Apps have been comprehensively 
developed, and the main framework of court informatization version 3.0 has 
been established, which greatly promotes the modernization of the judicial 
system and judicial capability.
Enhancing the formulation of top-level informatization planning 
and standards. The Supreme People’s Court has issued the Five Year 
Development Plan on Informatization of People’s Courts 2016-2020, 
clarifying the key tasks and specific requirements for the construction of 
intelligent courts. In accordance with the guidelines of “systematic projects, 
standards first”, the Supreme People’s Court has improved the system of 
standards for informatization of the people’s courts, developed and released 
85 technical standards focus on the case data standards, to support the 
information resource sharing and exchange, R&D, information security and 
high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance system construction. 
It has issued certain provisions on the Numbers of Cases Handled by 
People’s courts and supplementary standards, the Case Information Standard 
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for People’s courts (2015) and other normative documents to implement 
code-based management of 3,500 courts nationwide, built a three-level case 
types system, thereby laying a solid foundation for building a new standard 
system for case information.
Strengthening the construction of informatization infrastructure and 
security system. The courts at all levels have been constantly upgrading 
and improving the court network systems to support online handling of all 
judicial matters, including specific court network, mobile network, specific 
external network, confidential intranets and Internet. Over 3,500 courts and 
over 10,000 detached tribunals across the country have connected with the 
specific court network. Over 28,000 scientific and technological courtrooms 
have been established nationwide to realize multimedia evidence discovery, 
remote trial, audio and video recording of court trials, and automated voice 
recognition in process, and other functions. The Supreme People’s Court 
took the lead in proposing and establishing a high quality and efficiency 
operation and maintenance guarantee system, and building and using 
visualized operation and maintenance management tools, which horizontally 
cover the five major network systems, vertically run through five layers, 
namely infrastructure, judicial application, data management, information 
security, and operation & maintenance.
Fully promoting electronic litigation. For further development in the 
Internet era, to promote the innovation of litigation mode and mechanism, 
the courts at all levels have been vigorously promoting electronic litigation 
for whole-process online. The Supreme People’s Court has been instructing 
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and promoting the courts nationwide to deploy five online standard modules 
for case filing, payment, evidence exchange, hearing, and electronic 
documents service. The courts in Jilin, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu have fully 
established and widely used these modules. Zhejiang took the lead in 
piloting in Ningbo and promoting across the province “Mobile WeCourt”, 
an one-step mobile litigation platform on WeChat small procedures, which 
enables the litigants handles more than 20 judicial matters online, such 
as case filing, inquiry, mediation, court trial, enforcement and payment. 
Mobile WeCourt has reduced the average time consumption for the courts 
in Ningbo, Zhejiang to adjudicate first-instance civil and commercial cases 
by 17 days, the average time consumption to enforce by 28 days, and the 
figures of litigants’ complaints on “judges are often too busy to contact” by 
nearly 30%.
Developing and applying a criminal trial intelligent assistant system. 
According to the Central Government’s plan for pushing forward the reform 
of the litigation system with a focus on trials, Shanghai has developed a 
criminal trial intelligent assistant system with high-techs such as big data, 
cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to formulate uniformly evidence 
standards applicable and evidence rules and embed them in the criminal 
case handling system of public security organs, procuratorial organs, courts, 
and judicial administrative organs, so as to help staff on duty to collect and 
examine evidence in a legal, comprehensive, and standardized manner, 
and ensure that the facts of cases found during investigations, prosecutions 
and trials are legitimate and that the whole process of handling criminal 
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cases should be visualized, recorded and supervised, so as to reduce the 
arbitrariness of the judiciary and effectively prevent the occurrence of 
unjust, falsely or wrongly charged or sentenced cases.
Strengthening the intelligent assistance in case trial and judicial 
management. In August 2016, the Supreme People’s Court issued 
guidelines on Comprehensively Promoting the Simultaneous Generation 
and In-depth Application of Electronic Case Files by People’s courts, for 
the purpose of promoting the electronic archiving of case files and the 
uploading to the case handling system, creating conditions for online case-
handling and the intelligent assistance in case trial for judges. Relying on 
the big data management and service platform, the Supreme People’s Court 
has generated the information about cases files of courts nationwide, which 
lays the technical foundation for a court to access the electronic case files 
of another court. The Supreme People’s Court has established the “Faxin” 
platform to build a world-class legal information service, gather various 
academic resources, cases, professional practices and improvements, and 
provide comprehensive, convenient and intelligent service for searching and 
delivering legal academic resource to different groups such as judges, legal 
professionals, scholars  and the public. All regions have developed a voice 
recognition system for trials, which can automatically transform voice into 
texts. Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu has implemented the 
system to support over 27,000 court-hearings, with aaccuracy rate of voice 
recognition above 90%, and with which  trial time shortened by 20%-30% 
on average.
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Having informatization and big data serve judicial management and 
decision making. The Supreme People’s Court has built a big database 
to collect, manage, and analyze the judicial information from the courts 
nationwide and provide information services in need. This big database 
collects the information about the case acceptance and closure by the courts 
nationwide in real time, automatically updates such information every 5 
minutes, and collects information about 70,000 to 80,000 cases every day. 
It is now the world’s largest database of judicial information and supports 
the analysis on the information about case acceptance and closure by the 
courts nationwide and the distribution of cause of action of these cases. In 
2016, the courts nationwide fully realized the integration of judicial statistics 
with the big data management and service platform, which indicates that 
the people’s courts have completely ended the history of manual justice 
statistics. As needed by the quantitative personnel performance evaluation, 
the big data management and service platform connects and integrates the 
collected personnel data and case data, put forward the central method of 
judicial personnel management shifting from qualitative to quantitative.
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Conclusion
The new round of the reform of judicial system has been both problem-
oriented and goal-oriented, starting from the deep-seated problems affecting 
judicial impartiality and inhibiting judicial capability, and the problems 
involving the direct and realistic interests that the public care most; such 
reform has been observing all the time the laws of justice while proceeding 
from China’s actual conditions, exploring the road of reform of the judicial 
system with Chinese characteristics, focusing on building and improving the 
socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics, and has been pushed 
forward step by step by operation of law, and combined top-down design 
with exploration through pilot programs, so as to ensure that the reform will 
be conducted in a vigorous and steady manner.
The people’s understanding and support are the driving force behind the 
judicial reform, and the people’s sense of gain is the standard for evaluating 
the judicial reform. In light of the new challenges in the new era, the 
people’s new expectations and new progress in science and technology, the 
judicial reform of China’s courts will always be pushed forward and never 
be finished. In the next step, the people’s courts will, follow the guidance 
of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New 
Era, hold high the great banner of reform and opening up in the new era, 
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and unremittingly pursue the goal to make the public experience fairness 
and justice in each judicial case, make the fair, efficient and authoritative 
socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics more mature and 
well-established, comprehensively improve the competency, efficiency and 
credibility of the judiciary, create a better environment for socialist rule of 
law, advance the judicial civilization to a higher level, and strive to make the 
people obtain fair and just outcomes in every judicial case.
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