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White paper on political democracy (full text)
(china.org.cn)
Updated: 2005-10-19 11:01
X. Judicial
Democracy
China's judicial structure and system are important
components of the country's system of socialist political democracy. Over the
years, China has endeavored to build and improve its judicial system and working
mechanism, strengthen the building of judicial democracy, and guarantee the
legitimate rights and interests of citizens and legal persons through judicial
justice, and realize social fairness and justice.
China has set up separate judicial organs and
procuratorial organs under the people's congresses, and practices a judicial
system with separation between judicial organs and procuratorial organs. The
judicial system reveals the nature of the socialist system in which the people
are the masters of the country, and also learns from the experience of other
countries in their building of judicial systems. Chinese judicial organs use
facts as the basis and law as the yardstick, and punish crimes in strict
accordance with the law to protect the legitimate rights and interests of
citizens.
According to the Chinese Constitution and relevant laws,
the people's courts and people's procuratorates exercise judicial power and
procuratorial power independently in accordance with the law, and are
responsible to, and supervised by, the people's congresses. They are not subject
to interference by any administrative organ, public organization or individual.
The judicial organs carry out their duties independently within the limits as
prescribed by the law, and any interference in their independent exercise of
judicial power and procuratorial power in accordance with the law is a violation
of the Constitution and the law. Based on this, China has established a system
in which the courts independently exercise their judicial power to conduct
civil, administrative and criminal trials in accordance with the law, and the
procuratorates independently exercise their power to approve arrests, institute
public prosecutions, lodge protests and supervise law enforcement in accordance
with the law.
As the judicial organs of the state, the people's courts
take judicial justice as the aim, reform and complete the trial system in line
with the principle of independence in trial, and punish criminals and protect
the people through trials: they practice the system of defense in criminal
trials, attach importance to evidence, not give credence to confessions and see
to it that the rights of accused are protected. In civil trials, they pay
attention to protecting the rights of the litigants and provide judicial
guarantees for citizens to exercise their democratic rights and for litigants to
enjoy their civil rights. In administrative trials, they protect citizens'
legitimate rights from infringement by illegal conduct of administrative organs.
In 2004, local courts at various levels nationwide closed 644,248 criminal cases
of first instance, 4,303,744 civil cases of first instance and 92,192
administrative cases, and corrected, in accordance with the law, wrong judgments
in 16,967 cases, which accounted for 0.34 percent of the total effective
judgments handed down that year. In recent years, the people's courts have been
constantly improving litigation procedures to protect legal rights and interests
of citizens and legal persons, and truly solve the issue of difficulty in
enforcement.
China has established the Supreme People's Court and
people's courts at various local levels, as well as the military courts and
other special people's courts. By the end of 2004, there were 3,548 people's
courts at various levels and special people's courts, with a total of 190,627
judges.
As the state organs for legal supervision, the people's
procuratorates bear, in accordance with the law, the responsibility of cracking
down on criminal offenses, investigating embezzlement, bribery, misconduct and
infringement on the people's rights by state functionaries, as well as
exercising legal supervision over lawsuits and safeguarding judicial justice and
legal uniformity. With regard to the legal supervision over criminal lawsuits,
they supervise in an all-round way the placing of cases on file, investigation,
trial and execution of penalties, and give equal stress to both the extirpation
of crime and the protection of human rights. In legal supervision over civil and
administrative lawsuits, they protect the legitimate rights and interests of the
parties on an equal footing, with priority given to cases of unjust judgments
caused by serious violation of legal procedures, taking bribes and bending the
law, and committing irregularities for personal gain. In recent years, the
procuratorial organs have made public their operations, adopted the system of
notifying litigants of their rights and obligations, the system of public review
of non-prosecution cases, criminal appeals and civil administrative
counter-appeals, and a working mechanism that guarantees that lawyers perform in
accordance with the law in handling criminal lawsuits, in an effort to ensure
judicial justice. In 2004, procuratorial organs turned down requests for arrest
warrants in 68,676 cases, reversed prosecution decisions in 26,994 cases,
corrected 2,699 cases that had been improperly placed on file by investigation
organs, allowed appeals in 3,063 criminal cases and 13,218 civil administrative
judgments, demanded retrials in 4,333 cases, placed 5,569 criminal appeal cases
on file for re-investigation, and changed 786 original decisions.
China has established the Supreme People's Procuratorate
and the people's procuratorates at various local levels, as well as military
procuratorates and other special people's procuratorates. By the end of 2004,
there were 3,630 people's procuratorates at various levels, with 140,077
procurators.
Chinese judicial practice abides, both in institutional
and procedural terms, by the principle that everyone is equal and the principle
that the punishment must be made to fit the crime. The systems of trial by
levels, challenge, open trial, people's jurors, people's supervisors, lawyers,
legal assistance and people's mediation have been introduced to safeguard
judicial justice, and guarantee the democratic rights of the people and the
legitimate rights and interests of citizens.
- System of open trial. The system of open trial is
prescribed in both the Chinese Constitution and relevant laws. In recent years,
the Supreme People's Court requires courts at all levels to try cases openly and
in strict accordance with the law, in open courts and with evidence openly
submitted, question the witness openly, and announce all judgments openly. The
people's courts at various levels have further reinforced the system of open
trial. Except for cases which should be tried in camera, as specified by law,
they now hear all cases in public. Notice of cases to be tried in public shall
be announced in advance to open the entire process to the auditing of ordinary
citizens and the press. The people's courts also, on their own initiative,
invite deputies to the people's congresses and members of CPPCC organizations to
audit open trials so that the NPC deputies can supervise and the CPPCC members
can inspect judicial activities.
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