Recently, China’s Supreme People’s Court and the Ministry of Justice jointly released an opinion requiring improvement in the mechanisms governing judicial appraisals and an increase in appraisal quality.

For a long time in China lack of coordination and a communication system between regulators and users has led to chaos in judicial appraisals. Courts may encounter many problems in entrusting judicial expertise to evaluation agencies, including agency reluctance to accept the entrustment whenever in their view it may not be to their advantage.

The opinion calls for judicial administrative authorities to strengthen regulations over legal medical experts, physical evidence, audio-visual material, judicial appraisal about environmental damage, and admission standards of evaluation institutions to promote the steady growth of judicial expertise.

Entrustment and acceptance are the key areas of judicial expertise. According to the opinion, judicial administrative authorities need to regulate appraisal acceptance conditions and procedures, reasonably elaborate evaluation institutions and appraiser lists and develop multiple channels for delivery of evaluation materials to service providers.

Evaluation institutions cannot refuse to accept appraisal entrustment without good cause and must accept the evaluation material as confirmed by the courts. To receive additional evaluation materials those institutions or people involved should apply to the courts, the opinion said.

Concerning appraisers’ appearing in court as witnesses, the opinion stipulates that courts should provide safe passage and protection for them. Criminal courts can be equipped with synchronous video testimony rooms where their appearance and real voices won’t be exposed.

The opinion specifies that judicial administrative authorities need to strengthen judicial evaluation supervision and improve penalties to promote normative or standard practices of appraisers and evaluators. If the experts have different opinions, they can apply for administrative review.

If courts find that evaluation institutions or appraisers have engaged in unlawful acts including illegal acceptance of benefit or are reluctant to appear in court as witnesses, they will be forced to suspend their judicial appraisal business. In this case, courts need to inform the appropriate judicial administrative authorities or send a judicial proposal to them.