Maybe you could look at us as a new generation, certainly we are younger,' says 30-year-old Molly Yan Wei. While 30 may not seem young, it is when you consider that she was appointed a judge of the Hunan High People's Court three years ago, at age 27.
'I think we are very lucky in China that we don't need to wait many, many years and then become a judge,' said Judge Yan, who now sits in the appellate court dealing with intellectual property cases. 'We can just start learning from the very beginning and have a very long career.'
For those immersed in the legal traditions of the west, where becoming a judge entails spending time as a practising lawyer before taking a pay cut to sit on the bench, the idea of an appeals court judge in their 30s is odd, to say the least.
But for Judge Yan and her mainland colleagues (the oldest of whom is 46) who are in Hong Kong to study at City University, the idea of a judge in their 60s does not make sense either.
'In China, we have 1.3 billion people, so there are many, many cases,' said Stony Ma Xuetao, a 33-year-old judge in the administrative law division of the Hainan High People's Court. 'Perhaps for a judge over 60 or 70 years old, I think he probably cannot deal with this volume.'
His speciality is judicial review, a burgeoning area of practice in the mainland, where it is increasingly being used to counter actions by local or provincial governments.
