The construction of smart courts has reduced the need for traveling, improved the work efficiency of trials and execution and promoted paperless offices, according to the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), China’s top court.

Compared with the traditional work style, the work style enabled by smart courts  has saved the public as well as court workers from business travels of about 129.5 billion kilometers, equivalent to reducing consumption of 6.36 million tons of standard coal or cutting 12.98 million tons of carbon emissions; reduced paper consumption of more than 83,000 tons, equivalent to saving 1.41 million trees from being logged.

To achieve the same effect, it would require the labor of about 10.01 million people for a whole year and over 127 billion yuan ($19.87 billion) of expenses on traveling, printing and commissions for judicial auctions under the traditional work style.

In 2021, efforts were made to boost the development of internet judiciary. The SPC led local courts to launch a digital court app developed by the China Mobile that supports online case filing, online evidence exchange and online court hearing with a package of smart services. On March 1, 2022, the app was updated into the“people’s courts online services”platform, becoming the unified access to the online services  provided by courts. In 2021, courts nationwide filed 11.439 million cases, held 1.275 million court sessions, and mediated 10. 84 million cases online.

In terms of relieving workloads for litigants, research and analysis was done on statistics in areas including online case registration, online fee submission, online evidence exchange, online court hearings, online mediation, online case filing across regions, service hotlines and online bankruptcy conferences. Results show that in 2021 smart court services have relieved over 130 million litigants from traveling about 10.1 billion kilometers, equivalent to saving over 330,000 tons of standard coal or cutting over 670,000 tons of carbon emissions.

In terms of improving trial work quality and efficiency, research and analysis was done on statistics in areas including cross-court access to electronic files, remote command on executions, online queries, account freezing, control, execution entrustment, remote interrogation, training and video conferencing. Results show that in 2021 smart court services have saved court workers about 9.9 billion times of business trips with a total distance of over 119.3 billion kilometers, equivalent to saving over 6.02 million tons of standard coal and cutting over 12.29 million tons of carbon emissions.

In terms of paperless offices, research and analysis on statistics in electronic official documents issuance and delivery, as well as usage of electronic signatures and other areas show that in 2021 over 860 million pieces of paper were saved, which weighed about 3,779 tons.