Verdicts from China’s Courts Used to Be Accessible Online. Now They’re Disappearing.
on February 1, 2022
Judicial transparency in China has taken a significant step backward in recent months. Beginning at least a year ago, China’s Supreme People’s Court has considerably scaled back the number of cases available on its China Judgments Online web portal, an Internet platform that is the leading database for judicial decisions from courts across the country. According to one recent media report, court officials removed at least 11 million cases from the site over a three-month period in early 2021, and officials from both the SPC and local courts have taken down more cases since then. Although it is unclear how many case records have been pulled from public view, the significant curtailment of CJO puts the SPC’s reform goals in doubt, and also calls into question the future path of judicial reform in China.
