The Supreme People's Court (SPC) held a meeting on July 13 to review and analyze judicial performance data for the first half of 2026, examining trends reflected in judicial statistics and discussing measures to further improve the quality and efficiency of adjudication.
The meeting was chaired by SPC President Zhang Jun.
The Supreme People's Court holds a meeting reviewing and analyzing judicial performance data for the first half of 2026 on July 13. [Photo/court.gov.cn]
According to the data, courts nationwide made further progress in improving adjudication quality and efficiency, while promoting substantive dispute resolution.
From the perspective of adjudication, the role of comprehensive governance centers, the top-to-top online litigation and medication connection mechanism, the “3+N” diversified dispute resolution mechanism, judicial recommendations and other source-based dispute resolution measures became increasingly evident, contributing to a decline in the number of newly accepted first-instance cases nationwide.
Newly accepted criminal cases declined in the first half of the year. Cases involving dangerous driving, theft, intentional injury and traffic accidents remained the most common types of criminal cases, although their caseloads all fell by varying degrees. Meanwhile, cases involving bid-rigging, bribery of non-state functionaries, contract fraud and illegal absorption of public deposits increased during the period.
Newly accepted civil cases also declined, with cases involving sales contracts, divorce and traffic accidents continuing to decrease. Disputes over loan agreements, property service contracts and bank cards increased.
Courts also stepped up their efforts to clear long-pending cases, resulting in a significant reduction in cases that had remained unresolved for extended periods.
Judicial performance indicators remained within their target ranges, reflecting continued improvements in both the quality and efficiency of adjudication. The number of disputes successfully resolved through pre-litigation mediation continued to increase.
Nearly 700,000 lawyers have registered to use the courts online service platform, while the adoption rate of sample pleading templates for both online and offline case filings increased by more than 18 percentage points year on year, exceeding 90 percent in some provincial-level regions.
The SPC also continued refining its judicial performance indicator system through pilot programs aimed at making assessment indicators more targeted, science-based and better suited to differentiated evaluations.
During the meeting, SPC officials and heads of departments analyzed judicial data in light of economic and social developments and put forward targeted measures to address issues reflected in the data.
Discussions covered issues including the excessive concentration of caseloads in some grassroots courts, judicial quality indicators that remained within reasonable ranges but showed year-on-year deterioration, and irregular participation by some courts in comprehensive governance centers, particularly insufficient attention to the regular training and guidance for mediators.
Participants also noted that although disputes of certain categories remained numerous, a considerable proportion had already been resolved through pre-litigation mediation, underscoring the need to further strengthen dispute prevention at the source.
They called for closer coordination to address practical difficulties in adjudication and inconsistencies in the application of law, continued guidance on the handling of specific categories of cases and wider adoption of the “representative litigation plus mediation of similar cases approach” to facilitate the efficient resolution of mass disputes.
Participants also proposed further optimizing adjudication procedures through the courts' online service platform, and strengthening coordination between judicial and administrative governance.
They called for closely analyzing the increase in enforcement applications and the decline in the success rate of online judicial auctions as indicators of broader economic conditions, selecting representative cases following the implementation of the Ecological and Environmental Code, and making better use of judicial cases and data resources to support social governance.
Zhang acknowledged the progress made while stressing that continued efforts are needed to further improve judicial work. He said judicial data analysis should not only help identify problems, but also support the timely and effective resolution of those problems.
The SPC and high people’s courts should strengthen their supervisory and guidance functions, identify and address problems at an early stage through routine oversight, and make better use of data analysis to provide targeted risk alerts and policy recommendations, Zhang noted.
He also called for examining issues revealed in judicial practice to identify weaknesses in court governance, adjudication management and personnel management, so as to continuously improve the quality and efficiency of judicial work and better serve high-quality economic and social development.
Those attending the meeting included Deng Xiuming, executive vice-president of the SPC; and Zhang Rongshun, supervisor of the discipline inspection group working at the SPC dispatched by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission.
SPC vice-presidents Yang Linping, Mao Zhonghua, Wang Zhongming, Gao Xiaoli; Sun Zhenping, head of the Political Department of the SPC; standing members of the Adjudication Committee of the SPC Liu Guixiang and Wang Shumei and officials from relevant departments and circuit courts also attended the meeting.
