China will establish a modern trial system for handling civil cases
relating to economic affairs, intellectual property and maritime
disputes, to conform to international civil and commercial court
practices, chief justice Tang Dehua said in Beijing Friday.
"The new system is to better facilitate China's accession to the
World Trade Organization," said Tang, Vice-President of the Supreme
People's Court (SPC), at a national meeting.
Nearly 200 court presidents, senior judges and scholars from the
SPC met in Beijing to discuss the reform of the civil trial
system.
"With China's entry to WTO, the coming of the Internet age and
China's increased interaction with the world, the country is to
face a tremendous amount of new legal issues," Tang said.
"The development of the market economy based on equal, open and
more fierce competition will give rise to more complicated civil
disputes and conflicts, which will inevitably call for modernizing
the country' civil trial system," he said.
Tang said the new system will place more emphasis on the rule of
law, replacing influences from non-judicial powers, and pay more
attention to the protection of rights and interests of litigants,
court procedures and efficiency of court proceedings.
In
the new system, according to Tang, open trials shall be fully
implemented, rules on evidence presentation and debate shall be
made, judges and collegiate benches with jurors shall be held fully
responsible for their judgment, court presidents and powerful
judicial committees shall be relieved from daily routines and
common cases to focus on major issues, civil trial judges shall be
selected from lower level; and the supervision system for court
proceedings shall be improved.
In
dealing with foreign litigants, all parties concerned should be
treated as equals, and both the national interests and authority of
the law shall be heeded, he said.
According to the SPC, until now the civil courts in China have been
handling economic, intellectual property and maritime cases as well
as cases involving marriage, family and other aspects of daily
life.
In
past 10 years, Chinese civil courts have conducted hearings for 37
million cases, of which 25,100 relate to foreign parties and to
parties from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, SPC statistics show.
The total number of cases relating to foreign and Hong Kong, Macao
and Taiwan residents in 1999 is 3.15 times more than that in
1990.
(Xinhua 10/27/2000)