Top court seeks judicial transparency

Work report in English will be published each year to help promote understanding

The top court is to publish an annual work report in English to give the world a better understanding of China's judicial system and to reduce misunderstandings, a senior court official says.

Following the warm public response to the release of the first English-language work report in late November, the court has decided to make it an annual practice, Hu Yunteng, director of the research department of the Supreme People's Court, told China Daily.

The report has three sections: law enforcement and case adjudication, innovation in management, and reform and development. The first part mainly covers criminal, civil and commercial trials and also deals with national compensation and petition work.

"We've done a lot in recent years to make the court system more fair and independent, although there are still problems," Hu said.

"But because of language barriers, foreigners know little about the progress. They see more negative reports from the foreign media about China's judicial system."

For example, he said, some foreign media repeatedly report on unfair court verdicts. "But the fact is that more than 91 percent of litigants in all lawsuits in 2012 were satisfied with the verdict after the first trial. The rate increased to 99 percent after the appeal trial."

Hu said the top court hopes that foreigners can be better informed with an English-language work report.

"China's judicial system is different from that in Western countries," he said. "They (the Western world) sometimes require us to do the same as they do, which is a sort of lack of understanding of China."

"What we want is to tell foreigners that there are diverse judicial modes in the world, and hope they can understand Chinese judicial policies better," he said.

With plenty of data and graphics, Hu said the English-language report could be used as authoritative material for overseas law specialists to study China's legal system.

Liu Ze, an officer at the top court who coordinates the publication, said it took almost a year to prepare for the report in English. A similar report was published in Chinese in March.

"Although the English report was translated from the Chinese one, we provided more legal background for each section so that foreigners can better understand the content," Liu said.