The president of the Supreme People's Court has warned cadres grassroots or township-level courts are not part of the local Communist Party or government bureaucracy.
Xiao Yang told the first conference on rural-level judicial reform since the founding of the People's Republic that new rules would shortly be issued to ensure 'there will be justice in rural areas for stability'.
According to Xinhua, there are 17,411 grassroots-level courts employing more than 75,000 cadres.
About 95 per cent are in the countryside.
They handled half of all cases of courts of first instance in the past five years and ruled on more than 57 per cent of civil cases.
During the conference, which began in Beijing on Saturday, Mr Xiao said many of the courts were 'unqualified' and 'interfering in the independence and power of the judiciary'.
Some were substandard and must be dissolved or reorganised as soon as possible.
