Hearings looking to expand in scope

More kinds of civil and commercial cases are expected to be heard at special courts outside affected jurisdictions to reduce possible interference.

As pilot programs for judicial reform forwarded by the central leadership in 2013, the Beijing No 4 Intermediate People’s Court and Shanghai No 3 Intermediate People’s Court deal mainly with administrative disputes in which governments are named as defendants.

Wu Zaicun, president of the Beijing court, said that they had handled the capital’s first environmental public interest litigation.

“It is reasonable to handle environmental disputes in our court, because pollution affects different administrative regions most of time,” Wu said.

“Most cases heard at the two courts are administrative lawsuits that might be easily influenced by local government interference, but we are now trying to hear some civil and commercial disputes across administrative regions,” said Wu Xielin, president of the Shanghai court.

For example, the two courts are trying to handle food and medicine safety cases.

Wu from Beijing also suggested exploring ways to tackle disputes involving the capital.

“We can reply on a cooperative development contract signed among Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, hearing cases in the whole region,” he said.