China's top court held a meeting on the morning of July 25 to review judicial work in the first half of 2016.

Led by Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), the meeting also discussed work priorities for the near future.

Zhou said deepening reform of the judicial system improves the quality and efficiency of trials, adding that in the first half of the year the country's judicial work ran smoothly.

Courts of various levels in China received just over 10 million cases in the first six months, according to the data management platform of the SPC, a year-on-year increase of 18.94 percent.

More than eight million of the registered cases were adjudicated, a rate of 61.14 percent, around 4.21 percent higher than the same period last year.

The case closure rate in Shanghai reached 81.39 percent, ranking first nationwide.

The SPC received 6,131 cases -- criminal cases excluded -- in this period, a rise of 44 percent compared with the same period last year. The closure rate rose to 62 percent, an improvement of 22 percent on a year-on-year basis.

Zhou called for better implementation of judicial accountability reform.

Chinese judges have been asked to shoulder full responsibility for cases they hear, and focus on trials instead of other administrative proceedings they have handled in the past. The requirement, as a fundamental part of the judicial reforms forwarded by the central leadership in 2013, must be implemented without hesitation.

He also noted that courts of various levels should implement information technology and lay a solid foundation for building "Smart Courts".

An array of e-services -- including online case registration, online petitions and live broadcasts of court trials -- should be advanced.