During the epidemic prevention and control period, the building of China’s smart court system made remarkable progress. Courts across the country have guided parties in online litigation procedures, handled various cases in a timely and efficient manner, minimized mass gatherings, and met people's judicial needs.

From Feb 3 to March 31, courts nationwide accepted 706,000 online case-filing applications, held 150,000 online court sessions with a year-on-year increase of 453.3 percent, and mediated 302,000 cases online, a year-on-year increase of 89.1 percent.

Amid the epidemic, the courts across the country have made full use of the smart court system to strengthen internet judicial and online litigation services and ensure both epidemic prevention and control and court ruling enforcement in accordance with the deployment of the Supreme People's Court.

According to the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, the courts have guided the parties on how to ask about and file cases online by using such convenient mechanisms as online case filing and cross-regional case filing services. For parties and agents who are unable to appear in court because of isolation, courts have optimized online trial services, making full use of the litigation service network and the micro mobile court program to meet the needs for online trials in the special period.

Liu Zheng, deputy-director of the SPC's Judicial Reform Office, said that the SPC has made overall deployment for courts across the country to carry out online litigation through the smart court system since the COVID-19 outbreak. It has given clear guidance on online trials, electronic service, identity authentication, and material submission in order to promote and regulate online litigation.

With the support of the remote video interrogation and online trial systems courts nationwide have realized distant interrogation and online multi-party trials to punish those who committed such crimes as deliberately concealing the symptoms of infection, refusing to cooperate with the prevention and control measures, endangering public security and committing fraud related to epidemic prevention materials.

During the epidemic period, the courts in Beijing have rolled out an online trial platform called Beijing Cloud Court, on which up to 200 court sessions can be held at the same time. In addition, all the court sessions of the Shanghai Financial Court were held online.

The ruling enforcement network monitoring systems covering courts throughout the country have also have laid a foundation for successful enforcement work during the epidemic. Through the online enforcement system, the Beijing No 4 Intermediate People's Court unsealed the accounts of manufacturers of anti-epidemic medical equipment within 48 hours, helping them resume work and production.

In addition, online mediation has also become an effective means for courts to strengthen litigation origin governance during the epidemic. Courts nationwide have resolved conflicts online in a non-litigation way, reducing the number of court trials during the special period.

Up to now, the courts in Tianjin have attracted more than 140 non-government mediation organizations to online mediation platform, resulting in a success rate of 91.67 percent for online mediation.

Courts in Guangdong have intensified their effort to jointly mediate epidemic-related disputes through their online integrated data processing platform for road traffic accident disputes and commercial multi-mediation platform App. The Intermediate People's Court of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, has optimized the online mediation service platform and effectively connected it with the city’s public service platform to provide people with collective and inclusive judicial services.