Judicial reform progresses well

Several judicial reform pilots are developing smoothly, according to China’s judicial reform office. 

The judicial reform office, with the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate, invited experts and lawyers to a discussion on judicial reform on Dec 3. At the meeting, the judicial reform office’s deputy chief Jiang Wei delivered a report on judicial reform progress. 

Jiang said that with the approval of the NPC Standing Committee, cross-administrative courts and procuratorates have been set up in Beijing and Shanghai, IP courts in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, and circuit courts in Shenzhen (Guangdong province) and Shenyang (Liaoning province). All these pilots are running quite well and have handled routine, typical cases. 

In some areas that have tried out a speedy trial procedure of criminal cases, the efficiency of court proceedings has improved significantly - the period required for the people’s procuratorates to make a prosecution decision has shortened to 5.7 days on average and 94.28 percent of cases have been heard and concluded by courts within 10 days. The speedy trial procedure has been piloted since June 6, 2014, and the satisfactory results have recently won praise from the NPC Standing Committee. 

In the past year, proposals on deepening the people’s jury and people’s supervisor systems were reviewed and passed by the Leading Group for Deepening Reform Comprehensively, which has enlarged the selection regions for jury and supervisors and their authority in case trials and inspections. Now the two systems have been tried out well in some areas around the country. 

Pilots of public interest litigation have been set up by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in 13 provinces and cities including Beijing and Inner Mongolia autonomous region, covering fields of ecology, the environment, resources, State-owned assets protection, the transfer of using right of State-owned land, and food and drug safety. 

Since 2014, the Leading Group for Deepening Reform Comprehensively has passed 23 judicial reform documents in total, guaranteeing the reforms proceed well.