Expedite judicial reforms

China should promote more positive and comprehensive judicial reforms. By pushing forward a variety of reforms over the past three decades, China has significantly improved the self-discipline and governance capacity of the State organs. For example, through legislature reforms, the National People's Congress and local people's congresses have become more capable of exercising legislative power and using the authority to supervise. Also, the State Council and local governments, through several rounds of administrative reforms, have selected capable civil servants, and realized the rationality of government agencies and adjustment of government function and its separation from enterprises and society.

In contrast, judicial reforms have not seen significant progress; judicial impartiality and independence is still lacking. China's judicial system faces some problems.

The first is the localization of judicial power, in which local courts are affiliated to local Party committees and governments. The second is the administrative nature of Chinese courts, which means that courts function more like the bureaucracy. These problems could lead to serious judicial corruption, forcing people to lose trust in the judicial system.

Last year, China announced its judicial reform initiatives by issuing a raft of documents, including: Several Opinions Regarding the Actual Practice of Justice for the People, Vigorously Strengthening a Fair Judiciary and Continuously Increasing Judicial Credibility. The Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, adopted at the Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee in November 2013, says efforts should be made to deepen the reform of the judicial system to protect people's rights.

For example, the central authorities are also mulling a court jurisdiction system that would be different from the current administrative division in order to prevent courts from being too easily influenced by Party and government officials close to them. If these measures are successfully implemented, the self-discipline and impartiality of the courts will improve to a great extent.

Moreover, people's participation in politics should be guaranteed and increased to reduce corruption and "mass incidents" caused by some local governments' attempt to prevent people from participating in the policy decision-making process. People's participation in politics, however, has increased to some extent because of years of reforms. Elections to and running of villagers' committee, the expansion of direct election of deputies to local people's congresses and direct election of grassroots Party leaderships are typical examples of increasing people's participation in politics.

However, the ongoing efforts are not enough to root out corruption. Various mechanisms should be established to make more local residents practically and effectively participate in the local policy decision-making process. And the scope of direct elections to township/town Party organizations should be expanded.

The CPC also plans to continue promoting inner-Party democracy by issuing regulations over the next five years. Since grassroots and county-level units' policy decisions are closely related to local residents' lives, it would be better if direct elections are held to reflect people's livelihood problems in the policies.

Holding public hearings - not formalized but with practical significance - and soliciting local people's opinions through newspapers and other mediums are effective measures to deal with the problem. When governments at various levels make policies based on residents' requirements, there will be an automatic reduction in corruption and mass incidents, and improvement in social and political stability.

Cho Young Nam is a professor at Seoul National University.

(China Daily 04/14/2014 page9)