China to cut back access to court rulings, sparking concerns about judicial transparency

The country says it will be more selective about sharing judgments to public database while setting up new archives for use by legal practitioners

Top Chinese court says massive volume of data available online poses security threat and makes it difficult for professionals to find case information

Reading Time:3 minutes

China’s courts have drastically reduced the number of decisions they have uploaded to a public database in recent years. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:23pm, 22 Dec 2023

China said it would be increasingly selective in sharing court judgments on a public database set up a decade ago, raising concerns about a scaling back in efforts to increase transparency in the country’s judicial system.

The country is also setting up two new archives for court rulings that will offer only limited access or information to the public.

The first is a national court judgments database that only court staff and police can access, which will go online next month.

The second is an archive of legal precedents selected by the Supreme People’s Court. It was set up three months ago, and 2,000 legal precedents have been posted there so far.

The internal court judgment database has raised concerns about whether the country’s courts will stop uploading their decisions to the public database China Judgments Online (CJO), which was set up by former Supreme People’s Court chief justice Zhou Qiang in 2013 in an attempt to promote judicial transparency.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x