Broadcasting 610,000 legal hearings improves judicial transparency

More than 610,000 legal case hearings have been broadcasted through an official website over the past two years, which is regarded as a key move by China's top court to improve transparency in judicial work and better receive public supervision.

The Supreme People's Court released a statement on Tuesday that the website, tingshen.court.gov.cn, in operation since September 2016, has been visited more than 4.6 billion times, helping people better understand trials and effectively supervising legal procedures.

Also to boost transparency, Chinese courts at all levels have been ordered to post verdicts online since 2013. So far, more than 42 million court rulings have been disclosed, the court said, adding that this is the biggest legal verdict database in the world.

Now, users of the database have come from more than 210 countries and regions, it said.

Litigants can file and trace cases, as well as learn who did not comply with verdicts through another two websites designed by the top court, it added. The other two websites are splcgk.court.gov.cn and shixin.court.gov.cn

"The establishment of all the websites' are part of our efforts to uphold justice by transparency," said Zhou Qiang, president of the top court. "The open platforms also can prevent judicial workers who abuse their positions or power from handling cases."

He asked every court across the country to broadcast more case hearings and disclose more rulings, "or our efforts in the judicial transparency should be further improved," Zhou said.

"The transparency and social supervision also will put pressure on our judges, urging them to improve the quality of their case hearings and verdict writing," he added.