Nearly half of the chief judges at provincial level do not have solid judicial backgrounds or had never worked in the courts prior to their appointment - a finding that Xinhua hailed as it said the judges injected fresh ideas into the system.
A Xinhua survey said yesterday that 14 of the 30 provincial chief judges worked as administrative officials before taking their current job.
Another 14 were promoted from within the system, and two were law professors. The seat for Qinghai's chief judge has not been filled since Liu Xiaoyang died in April.
Xinhua praised provincial chief judges for instilling fresh ideas into the judicial system, using the experience of their previous administrative jobs to connect with people more closely in their new role.
But their appointment was harshly criticised by mainland law professionals who said having bureaucrats act as judges, especially in a judicial system as complicated as that on the mainland, was a huge obstacle to judicial reform.
He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University, said appointing 'outsiders' to run courts reflected the bleak state of the mainland's judicial reform, which he called fragile.