Judicial Reforms – European Chinese Law Research Hub

How to Evaluate Prosecutors? China’s Shift from “Line Appraisal” to “Case-Process Ratio”

20. September 2024

A new paper by Peter Chi Han Chan and Wanqiang Aiden Wu

The Supreme People’s Procuratorate in Beijing ^{photo by EditQ}

In 2020, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) initiated a transformative reform in the performance evaluation of prosecutors that promises to reshape the legal landscape significantly. For decades, Chinese prosecutors were assessed mainly on the volume of cases they handled by their department leaders, also known as the “Line Appraisal” model. This approach emphasized quantitative metrics, like conviction rates and case closure speed, sometimes even at the expense of thoroughness and the quality of justice. The result was a prosecution system that tended to prioritize quantity over quality, raising concerns about fairness and the effectiveness of the legal process.

Recognizing these limitations, the SPP launched the performance evaluation reform of “Case-Process Ratio 案-件比”. This innovative approach shifts the focus from sheer numbers to a more nuanced evaluation of the prosecutorial process, aiming to reduce unnecessary procedures and improve the overall efficiency and quality of case handling. The “Case-Process Ratio” measures the balance between the number of cases and the procedural steps required, with an ideal ratio indicating that each case is handled with minimal yet sufficient procedural actions to ensure justice.

The “Case-Process Ratio” model introduces several key improvements to the prosecutorial system. By focusing on reducing unnecessary procedures, it encourages prosecutors to streamline their case management, saving time and resources. This change is expected to enhance the efficiency of legal proceedings and reduce the burden on all parties involved. Additionally, by incorporating the perceptions of the involved parties into the evaluation process, the model emphasizes the importance of public trust in the legal system—a crucial factor in maintaining social stability and the rule of law.

This new model deviates from the traditional result-oriented approach of the “Line Appraisal” model, which focuses mainly on departmental indicators such as conviction rate of the prosecution department and arrest rate of the arrest department. Drawing upon two universal experiences, the “Case-Process Ratio” pioneers a more holistic assessment, taking into account parties’ perceptions of the prosecution process and underscoring the socio-political implications of prosecutorial conduct. This is also an ambitious move for the SPP to gradually evolve from being a mere crime controller to a “social governor”, who clearly enjoys a more integrated jurisdiction and a wider reach in terms of institutional power.

This reform is more than a technical adjustment; it reflects a broader transformation in the role of Chinese prosecutors. Historically, prosecutors in China were seen primarily as crime controllers, focusing on conviction rates and the supervision of legal processes to maintain social order. However, the SPP’s new evaluation model is part of a broader set of reforms aimed at transforming prosecutors into “social governors”—figures who not only enforce the law but also contribute to the governance and well-being of society. This expanded role requires prosecutors to consider the broader social impact of their actions, manage cases in a way that is more attentive to the personal experiences of those under their jurisdiction, and ensure that the legal process is perceived as fair and just by the public.

However, the new model is not without its challenges. One of the most significant concerns is that while the “Case-Process Ratio” model aims to improve procedural quality, it may still inadvertently reinforce the prosecutor’s traditional role as a crime controller. For instance, the traditional metric of case closure speed has not been eliminated and remains one of the core indicators in the overall evaluation system, albeit less emphasized than before, prosecutors may still feel pressured to close cases quickly, potentially prioritizing speed over quality. The procedural controls introduced by the new model, while designed to ensure fairness and efficiency, could also limit prosecutors’ flexibility, forcing them to adhere to strict guidelines that may not always suit the nuances of individual cases.

On the whole, the “Case-Process Ratio” model is part of a larger wave of legal reforms in China, designed to modernize the prosecutorial system and align it with broader goals of national governance. These reforms include the integration of arrest approval and prosecution powers, the introduction of the plea leniency system, and efforts to enhance the standardization of legal processes. Together, these changes aim to create a more cohesive and effective legal system that can better respond to societal needs.

As China’s legal system continues to evolve, the “Case-Process Ratio” model represents a significant step forward in the quest for a more efficient, just, and socially responsive prosecutorial system. Its success will depend on how well it can balance the need for procedural integrity with the broader goals of legal and social governance. The shift from a caseload-driven model to one that prioritizes procedural quality marks a turning point in the role of prosecutors in China. It signals a move towards a more holistic approach to justice—one that recognizes the importance of fairness, efficiency, and public trust in the legal system. As this reform unfolds, it will undoubtedly serve as a valuable case study for legal systems worldwide, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities of modernizing prosecutorial practices in a rapidly changing society.

The paper From “Line Appraisal” to “Case-Process Ratio”: Will the New Case Quality Assessment System Facilitate the Changing Role of Chinese Prosecutor? was published in the Hong Kong Law Journal. A free draft is uploaded to SSRN.

Peter C. H. Chan is Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Law where he also serves as the Associate Programme Director of LLMArbDR programme. His publications and contact information can be found on SSRN.

Wanqiang Wu is a PhD candidate at Shanghai Jiao Tong University who is entering the academic job market and is open to employment opportunities. His research focuses on China’s criminal justice system, employing empirical research methods and socio-legal analysis. His publications and contact information can be found on Google Scholar.

Judicial Transparency as Judicial Centralization: Mass Publicity of Court Decisions in China

16. May 2023

A new paper by Lei Chen, Zhuang Liu and Yingmao Tang

Beijing Dongcheng People’s Court _{^{Photo by 冯正虎}}

China runs the largest online program for publicizing judicial decisions in the world. The mass publicity of court decisions in China, this article (draft here) argues, is part of the broader trend of the Chinese judiciary becoming increasingly centralized. The mass publication of court decisions in China seems puzzling: Disclosure of government information is often linked to an aspiration for political participation, which contributes to accountability and creates an obligation for responsive government. As a style of governance, transparency is usually associated with democracies, and few authoritarian states show much interest in government transparency.

In this article, the authors explain the reform towards greater transparency of the Chinese judiciary in a principal-agent theoretical framework and contextualize it within strategic moves of the central and the local governments in this setting. Previous studies of the political system in China have documented a deeply rooted agency problem between the central government (the principal) and local courts (provincial courts and courts at the lower levels – the agents), often discussed as “local protectionism”: The primary goal of the Supreme People’s Court is that centrally stipulated laws are applied in a unified way for the entire country, however, such application may conflict with local interests and social stability in local communities. Hence, in practice, courts often function as a local apparatus that protects local interests. This tension between the central government and the SPC on the one hand and local governments and respective courts on the other is a result of the structure of the Chinese political system. For example, local courts’ finance and personnel are controlled by local governments. While it is on the reform agenda to make the high court at the provincial level control and manage the finances of all courts in the province, control over personnel remains with the local governments. More importantly, information asymmetry embedded in the multiple-layered government structure and thereby the inability for the centre to monitor the local.

Responding to this dilemma, the Supreme People’s Court carries out a reform towards transparency. The mass publicity of court decisions, this article contends, is a top-down effort to address the principal-agent problem. By means of establishing a centralized judicial data collection system, the Supreme People’s Court can more directly control the information reporting process within the judicial hierarchy and reduce information asymmetry. By making mass local court decisions publicly available on a centralized venue, it attempts to curb wrongdoing and improve decision consistency and quality in local courts through public oversight. Together, the transparency reform helps the centre (i.e., the SPC) rein in local courts.

As in most principal-agent settings, agents, here local courts, responded strategically, by disclosing fewer decisions than required. After the Supreme People’s Court mandated judicial decision disclosure for courts in 2014, disclosure rates remained low, at 39.4%, 44.5%, and 47.9% in 2014, 2015, and 2016, respectively, with strong regional variations. For example, the disclosure rate of Tianjin in 2016 was about 71%, while that of Hainan was only 16%.

In the existing personnel arrangement, local governments control the appointment and promotion of judges. Yet an increasing number of provincial high courts are now presided over by judges or
officials who have work experience at the SPC or other agencies of the central government. Our data shows that judicial decision disclosure rates increased at courts that were headed by cadres with work experience in the central government. We find that the presence of these cadres is associated with more than a 10 percent higher disclosure rate of judicial decisions by the respective court. This finding suggests that the dispatched judicial cadres were quite successful in promoting transparency of the courts in their jurisdictions according to central policy – just as they are in promoting other central policies.

The transparency reform is to be contextualized within other reforms toward a more centralized judicial sector in China. Local protectionism of courts, that is, courts serving local interests rather than following the law, is well documented in the literature. The requirement that all judgements be uploaded to the centralized website enables the SPC to supervise local courts’ behaviour not only through public oversight but also through steering legal development in a certain direction, and aligning local judicial decisions with its own policy goals. For example, the SPC can easily search for local judgements and check whether their decisions are consistent with judicial interpretations and guiding cases.

The article Judicial Transparency as Judicial Centralization: Mass Publicity of Court Decisions in China was published in the Journal of Contemporary China. A draft version is available here.

Lei Chen is Chair of International Arbitration and Chinese Law at Durham Law School, UK. He has been elected as a Titular Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and a Fellow of the European Law Institute.

Zhuang Liu is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include the role of the courts and judicial behaviour, as well as law and development. His work has appeared in several leading academic journals specialising in law, economics, and China studies.

Yingmao Tang is an Associate Professor at Peking University Law School. His research interests include international finance regulation, investment law and the Chinese judicial system. His recent work focuses on opening China’s capital markets, online judicial transparency and big data & computational legal studies.

The Quota Reform in Chinese Courts and Its Implications

13. July 2022

A new paper by Ying Sun and Hualing Fu

^{Haikou Intermediate People’s Court. Photo by Anna Frodesiak}

From the year 2014 a new round of judicial reform was launched in Chinese courts all over the country. For Chinese judges, the most significant change is the “quota reform”(员额制改革). The quota reform aims to professionalize the ranks of adjudicators: by edging out a given percentage of judges, only the better qualified judges would be re-appointed. The background of the quota reform is the plan to reduce the level and the intensity of both political and bureaucratic control over judges in adjudication and to decentralize judicial power to the rank and file judges only, restoring individualized judging while enhancing judicial accountability.

A keen interest in the details of the quota reform drew the author (Ying Sun) to conducting interviews and observations in Guangdong province, Henan province and other places. She gained first-hand insights into how the quota reform is implemented and how the judges saw it.

Before the reform, the number of judges in Chinese courts were calculated in three groups:

the overall size of the judiciary, including judges, but also political and managerial staff and supporting personnel;
the number of judges, i.e. those with proper judicial qualification and, importantly, the percentage of judges in the overall established judicial size; and
the number of so-called “frontline judges” (yixian faguan一线法官), i.e. judges who actually adjudicate cases as judges and their percentage among judges excluding judges holding management positions who are assigned to non-judicial posts.

In 2002, nationwide, there were approximately 210,000 judges and 150,000 of them were frontliners. ^[1] The number and percentage of the frontline judges had remained stable (211,990 judges in 2014) prior to the reforms. A remaining three types of judges did little or no judging. The first group involved judges in management positions, including presidents, vice presidents and chief judges in professional chambers and their deputies; the second, judges who had transferred from professional chambers to political and administrative departments within the courts; the third, judges whose sole responsibility was to execute judgments. The long term objective of quota reform was to limit judgeship to judges whose principal job was to judge.

The reform caused a significant shake-up in the overall profile of the judiciary, with a large number of former judges ceasing to be judges. The court at hand however was able to absorb and neutralize the reform impact throughout its implementation.

First, the quota reform’s ambition to separate judges from administrators forced judges holding political and administrative offices to make a choice. And their choices were clear: the majority of them decided to stay in the administrative departments, while predictably few were willing to give up their status and ranking, especially those holding key positions.

Second, the quota reform unintentionally gave rise to a renewed exodus of middle career judges who left for law firms or other private sector employment. The trend of able judges leaving the judiciary for other careers was well-known, and the quota reform was intended to reign in the problem. However, by reducing the size of the judiciary and creating uncertainty among judges, the reform triggered another miniature exodus – judges, fearful of being left out and worried about the future prospect in an uncertain environment, seized the opportunity to leave the judiciary.

Third, the quota reform posed a significant challenge to courts as they had to contend with a sizeable group of judges who participated in the quota selection but failed and as a result were demoted to the rank of judicial assistants. They did so by offering a transition period, or grace period, during which some of the disqualified judges were allowed, de facto, to adjudicate as judges.

The centre-piece of judge quota reform was to free frontline judges from bureaucratic control in judicial decision that they used to be subjected to, and to abolish the vetting system that required judges to submit their draft opinions to leaders for approval, all to facilitate and promote individualised judging. And indeed, gradually, judging started to shift away from a collective endeavour with decisions subject to multiple layers of vetting and approval. The quota system was successful in placing individualised judging and accountability at the centre of adjudication in the vast majority of cases and in shifting the focus of judicial decisions from a fixation on the social impact of a decision to emphasis on its internal legal quality within an increasingly self-referencing judicial universe. With the new focus on the court-centric and rules-based dimension of judging, as the reforms require, judges do increasingly look for legal guidance to craft a decision. On the other hand, while the rise of individualised judging has created space for judges to deliberate individual cases, it does not reduce judicial accountability. Rather, it created an opportunity for reconfiguration of the control system. Riding on the tide of standardisation, a higher court is filling the gap that the reforms created at the local level and exercising real leadership.

Notwithstanding the fanfare, self-contradictions and tensions, the reforms have been muddled through to create a more identifiable, distinct judiciary. It is now well established that judges are those who judge, excluding political and administrative officers from holding the title of judgeship. The quota reform reflects the contradictions of judicial reform in a party-state. As the quota reform story testifies, the judiciary within a political system can explore spaces for its professionalization project – judges can judge on their own most of the time and in most of the cases. In that process, the Party could be both a helping and a restraining hand, and the bureaucratic system in which the court is an integral part creates both positive and negative incentives for the reform.

Ying Sun and Hualing Fu’s paper was published with The China Quarterly, find it here.

Dr. Ying Sun is an associate professor at the School of Law, Sun Yat-sen University, China. She teaches constitutional law and comparative legislatures. Her research interests include election process, the Chinese people’s congress system, judicial reform and law-making politics in China. Hualing Fu is the dean and the Warren Chan professor in human rights and responsibilities at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong. He specializes in public law and criminal law, with a focus on China, and cross-border legal relations in the Greater China region. His other research areas include the constitutional status of Hong Kong, in particular central–local relationships in the Hong Kong context and national security legislation.

[1] Xiao, Yang. 2002. “在全国法院队伍建设工作会议上的讲话” (Speech at the national conference on court personnel construction project), ChinaCourt.org, 8 July, https://www.chinacourt.org/article/detail/2002/07/id/7829.shtml. Accessed 16 September 2018.

European Chinese Law Research Hub

Tag: Judicial Reforms

A new paper by Peter Chi Han Chan and Wanqiang Aiden Wu

A new paper by Lei Chen, Zhuang Liu and Yingmao Tang

A new paper by Ying Sun and Hualing Fu