China’s Supreme People’s Court recently issued Opinions on Providing Judicial Services and Safeguards for the Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt specifying the role of Chinese courts in the national strategy to develop the Yangtze River Economic Zone.
The Opinions make clear that the courts should improve their understanding of the significance of the national strategy and their roles in the mission.
They stress the principle of “judicial activism”, innovative thinking, improvement of systems and mechanisms, optimization of allocation of judicial resources, and better preparation for circumstances and problems.
They urge the courts to give full play to their trial functions in judging criminal cases, and civil cases in both tort and contract laws involving environmental and resource protection, maritime-related commercial issues including waterway transport, construction of ports and wharves, shipbuilding, warehousing and logistics, freight forwarding services, and maritime labor disputes.
They also call for careful work in judging foreign-related commercial and maritime cases so as to improve judicial credibility and gain a global voice for Chinese courts.
The Opinions set rules for trial of ship financing and other financial cases related to port-shipping, and require the courts to reinforce the protection of intellectual property rights and supervise adjudication of administrative cases.
They also note that efforts should be made to apply judicial system procedures for more reasonable resource allocation, and that a tailored judging approach should be explored to meet the requirement of the national strategy.
Judicial transparency should be promoted and deepened throughout the court system. IT-oriented platforms including cloud-computing and big data applications should be applied to enhance information sharing among courts in the region.
The Opinions confirm that a mechanism linking maritime courts, government departments and offices, financial regulators and property registration authorities will be launched to create a coordinated judgment enforcement command system.
