Judicial reform in China

This chapter highlights the major impediments that have for decades prevented China's courts from developing into modern professional judiciary, and reviews previous judicial reforms aimed at removing some of these impediments. It describes the main initiatives of new judicial reform and provides brief analysis of the possibility of its success. Since 1999, when the Supreme People's Court (SPC) published the First Outline for a Five-Year Reform of the People's Court, judicial reform has been a spotlight in China's legal community, but achievements in judicial practice have fallen far short of academic and social expectations. Due to lack of basic separation of powers, China's courts were, and to large extent still are, plagued by the so-called judicial syndrome. There are four key aspects to this syndrome, summarized as follows: low professional quality; lack of institutional independence and heavy reliance on local party-governments; lack of individual independence of judges within the courts; and rampant judicial corruption that adds constraints to judicial reform.