Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), reported on the progress of a pilot reform of the trial-level system to the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, at the first plenary meeting of its 36th session, on Aug 30, in Beijing.

Supreme People’s Court President Zhou Qiang delivers a report on the progress of a pilot reform of the trial-level system at the first plenary meeting of the 36th session of the 13th National People's Congress Standing Committee, Aug 30, 2022. [Photo/court.gov.cn]

Zhou said that the reform has been progressing well since it was officially launched on Oct 1, 2021. According to Zhou, the SPC was authorized to launch a pilot reform of the trial-level system in August 2021, and guidelines were released to provide more detailed instructions in the following month.

The reform has helped resolve most disputes at the grassroots level, ensured the fair trials of difficult, complicated untypical cases and cases vulnerable to improper external interference at higher-level courts, and helped in the substantive resolution of the vast majority of disputes after the final adjudication of the second instance, according to Zhou.

It has improved the matching of trial resources and case structures with the functional positioning of the country’s four-level courts, namely the primary people's courts, intermediate people's courts, high people's courts and the SPC, and has better met the judicial needs of the people, Zhou noted.

He mentioned some of the changes brought about by the reform in his report, including the effective resolution of grassroots contradictions and disputes, more prominent role of high and intermediate people's courts in trying major and typical cases of first instance, and the improvement of the operating mechanism of retrial procedures.

In his report, Zhou also pointed out some challenges in advancing the reform and vowed to strengthen the SPC’s guidance for all pilot courts and promote their reforms in a balanced manner.

Efforts will also be made to improve the guarantee mechanism and conduct in-depth research, in a bid to propose eligible suggestions on law amendments, Zhou said.