Internet the key to improving justice system

Taking advantage of the Internet to tackle cases and dealing with judicial affairs has been strongly approved by China's legal industry, Web and law specialists said on Sunday.

As the Internet provides convenience for residents, it brings many changes for the legal industry, including courts, prosecuting authorities and law firms, said Su Zelin, deputy director of the Commission for Legislative Affairs of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

Su made the comments during the Sunday's conference specializing in the network and law in Beijing, jointly held by the Internet Society of China, All China Lawyers Association and Law Press China.

"The fast developments in the network make several related industries booming, such as e-commerce, Internet finance and cybersecurity, but how to use laws or new-style legal ideas to handle new problems in the fields has been a big challenge for judicial insiders," said Su.

Wang Lansheng, deputy director of information office under the Supreme People's Court, agreed, saying that making use of the network and big data to manage court affairs is also becoming more important for Chinese courts.

To better analyze disputes and provide legal convenience for litigants, the top court established a database to collect litigations, Wang said, adding that 91 million cases and 44 million verdicts have been stored in it by now.

"We've set up four open platforms, including one for helping residents make lawsuits and one for looking up judgements," he said. "The use of the network is also to make our work more transparent and receive supervision from the public."

Hu Zhiguang, deputy president of Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court in Guangdong province, echoed him. He said that it has asked every judge to take advantage of the Web in their work, "aiming to improve the judicial efficiency."

For example, the court shared information of those refusing to carry out verdicts, including debtors, with banks, industrial and commercial departments in the city through a connected online platform, "hoping to search properties of these debtors quickly and accurately," Hu said.

Since it was established in March 2011, it has collected 4.32 million pieces of debtors' information with the authorities and urged them to pay back more than 32 billion yuan ($4.8 billion), "which can be said our 50-year workload in total," he said.

As the judicial work is being improved by the network, Miao Cunmeng, who specializes in analyzing data at an information office under the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said online crimes were still serious.

Miao released that people who were accused of online crimes in 2015 increased by 41.9 percent than those in 2014.

Besides, hot issues about the Internet and laws, including how to supervise e-commerce platforms and protect intellectual property rights online, have been also heatedly discussed during the conference.

It was the second time that the country's internet and legal industries held such activity, attracting hundreds of guests, such as Web enterprise engineers, lawyers, judges, prosecutors and journalists, to attend.