The Supreme People's Court has issued new measures for the handling of court-related petitions, stressing the need to resolve grievances at the earliest opportunity as social discontent grows over issues from corruption to pollution.
Strictly speaking, the petitions referred to are complaints about court actions - such as an unsatisfactory implementation of a judgment or a court's refusal to accept a case. But as social discontent grows, the courts have also become a target for public anger at what they see as unfair government decisions.
'Handling court-related petitions is an important element of a court's work, and is also an important aspect of the court's role in social management ... and an important route for courts to safeguard social stability,' an unnamed supreme court official was quoted as saying in yesterday's People's Courts Daily.
The court issued the first guideline in December, setting down a procedure to cover the situation in which the provincial high courts and the Supreme People's Court can rule that a petitioner's complaint has been dealt with properly.
According to the report, the court issued four further guidelines in April, announcing four other procedures to build a 'sustainable system'.
The first is a risk assessment procedure, requesting all courts to assess at each stage whether a case might give rise to a petition, and act to resolve that risk.
The second requires courts to inform the Supreme People's Court of their petition situation.