To deal with case burden, China introduces digital courts
HANGZHOU, CHINA: China is encouraging digitisation to streamline case-handling within its sprawling court system using cyberspace and technologies like blockchain and cloud computing, China’s Supreme People’s Court said in a policy paper.
The efforts include a “mobile court” offered on popular social media platform Wechat that has already handled more than three million legal cases or other judicial procedures since its launch in March, according to the Supreme People’s Court.
The paper was released this week as judicial authorities gave journalists a glimpse inside a “cyber court” - the country’s first - established in 2017 in the eastern city of Hangzhou to deal with legal disputes that have a digital aspect.
In a demonstration, authorities showed how the Hangzhou Internet Court operates, featuring an online interface with litigants appearing by video chat as an AI judge - complete with on-screen avatar - prompts them to present their cases.
Cases handled at the Hangzhou court include online trade disputes, copyright cases, and e-commerce product liability claims. Litigants can register their civil complaints online and later log on for their court hearing.
Putting simple functions like that in the hands of the virtual judge helps ease the burden on human justices, who monitor the proceedings and make the major rulings in each case, officials said.
The digitisation push is partly to help courts keep up with a growing caseload created by mobile payments and e-commerce in China, which has the world’s largest number of mobile internet users at around 850 million.
“(Concluding cases) at a faster speed is a kind of justice, because justice delayed is justice denied,” Hangzhou Internet Court vice president Ni Defeng told AFP.
Since the Hangzhou court’s establishment, similar chambers have been set up in Beijing and Guangzhou. Together, they have accepted a total of 118,764 cases, and concluded 88,401. AFP