The Supreme People's Court (SPC) launched a pilot reform to improve China's trial-level system, in September 2021. It was a move to better address issues of people's concern. 

Liu Zheng, deputy-director of the SPC's Judicial Reform Office, said the reform aims to address the unclear functional positioning of the country's four-level courts and the insufficient bottom-up hierarchical classification of cases. 

According to Liu, each of the four-level courts, namely, primary people's courts, intermediate people's courts, high people's courts and the SPC, has its own jurisdiction and statutory functions. 

The reform is simply to "let the right court try the right case", said He Fan, deputy director of the Bureau of International Cooperation of the SPC, who has long been engaged in judicial reform. 

Since the pilot reform was launched, the number of new civil and administrative retrial and review cases received by the SPC has decreased reasonably, and the case numbers and structure have been significantly optimized, which has effectively revitalized review procedures for retrial applications.

Data showed that the grassroots people's courts included in the pilot have accepted 9,570 civil cases transferred from courts of a higher level in the past year, accounting for just 0.15 percent of all new civil cases of first instance received in the same period. 

The appeal rate of civil cases of first instance and the rate of retrial or remanding of second instance cases were 8.73 percent and 1.25 percent respectively, down 0.2 percent and 0.04 percent from the same period before the reform. 

The reform adjusted and optimized the standards of the jurisdiction of the intermediate people's court in civil cases of first instance, and delegated some civil cases to the grassroots courts, which neither increased the burden of trials nor compromised the quality of trials.

The grassroots courts of Tianjin heard 908 civil cases of first instance, with the rate of appeal at 9.56 percent and the rate of revision and remand for retrial of second instance cases at 1.63 percent, said Cheng Qingyi, vice-president of the Tianjin High People's Court. 

To ensure that cases transferred by courts of higher levels are heard with efficiency and quality, the pilot reform increased personnel quotas and material support to courts handling the cases based on the changes in number and the structure of cases, categorized cases according to their complexity, strengthened the supervision of case quality, improved judges’ professional quality, and made good use of information technology, Liu Zheng noted.

At the same time, unconventional types of first instance cases involving major interests, of universal guiding significance, facing major differences in the application of laws, or involving possible improper intervention, were transferred to higher-level courts. Last year, 435 such cases were accepted by pilot courts.

Liu Nan, vice-president of the Sichuan High People's Court, said a total of 49 cases have been brought under the jurisdiction of higher-level courts across the province, and a case involving labor dispute, heard by Mianyang intermediate people's court, has clarified the legal application of qualification recognition of the employment subject in new business models.

The judgment of this case has served as a reference for other courts in the province, Liu added. 

Data showed that 2,712 civil and administrative cases of second instance have been concluded, and 625 have been retried in the SPC, meanwhile, 25 judicial interpretations and 20 guiding cases have also been issued, ensuring the unity of judicial policy formulation and application standards.