Achievements made in building transparent judicial system

A white paper released Tuesday detailed how Chinese courts' have been bettering judicial transparency since late 2013. A big step forward has been made in building a transparent judicial system.

The fourth plenary session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee set a new blueprint for the rule of law in the country, leading to increased efforts to open judicial transparency.

More than 6 million judgements, verdicts and reconciliation statements have been put online since Jan. 1, 2014, He Xiaorong, office director of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) judicial reform leadership group told a press conference on the white paper.

He said a website with such a large quantity of published judgements is worldwide rarity.

Litigant demands, collected evidence and how judges arrived at their conclusions are now available for public scrutiny. The judges will be more cautious when exercising discretion and less space will be left for interventions.

Along with the disclosure of results, the judicial process itself is now more open to the public.

Live updates on social media by Jinan Intermediate People's Court during the trial of Bo Xilai, former secretary of the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee and a former member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau in August 2013, were hailed by experts and the public as a substantial move to enhance judicial transparency.

The official website for Chinese courts started live broadcasting court trials in December 2013. By the end of 2014, 519 court trials had been live broadcast with another 80,000 trials broadcast live by people's courts at various levels.

Not only are the legal rights of people involved in lawsuits better protected with supervision from society, but it also increases the credibility of the judicial system.

Meanwhile, by directly following court trials, the public has gained faith in the judicial system, understood it better and will be more likely to use it to solve problems.