Report on judicial transparency released

Trial procedures in China are becoming more and more transparent, according to a report on "judicial transparency of courts" released on Dec 10.

This is the first time the Supreme People's Court has entrusted the assessment on judicial transparency to a third party.

A third party agency analyzed the judicial and public information through the website and the internal data of the courts and reviewed the files of 128 courts -- 32 high people's courts, 32 intermediate ones and 64 at the grass-roots level.

Li Liang, director of the SPC's judicial management department, explained that the report reviews three aspects of judicial transparency -- trial procedure information, judgment document publicity and live streaming of trials. The assessment of the last part was released in August.

The report concluded that the judicial information publicity platform -- China Judgment Online (http://wenshu.court.gov.cn/) -- launched by the SPC had set a unified information publishing standard and made it easier for the public to search judicial information and obtain litigation and other procedures.

Publicizing information of trial procedures can increase public comfort with litigation, decreasing misunderstandings and suspicions and pushing courts to handle cases fairly and normatively in accordance with the law.

According to the report, in February this year courts in Hebei, Qinghai and Jiangsu provinces and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region started to release information of judicial procedures through various platforms including China Judgment Online, 12368 Messaging, WeChat account and WeChat mini programs.

Courts in a total of 31 provicial regions began publishing trial information of newly accepted cases on China Judgment Online on Sept 1 this year.

In addition, most judicial documents have been publicized in a timely manner. The number of documents under examination was 523,939, 19.96 percent of which were uploaded within 30 days of approval;331 documents were uploaded on the day they were issued.

The report also mentioned problems of judicial publicity. For instance, some information is inaccurate and needless.

Li stressed the assessment was intended to find problems of judicial transparency and make improvements to push forward judicial reform.