Civil and administrative disputes were successfully resolved through mediation

About 30 percent of civil and administrative disputes were successfully resolved through mediation last year, China’s top court said on Wednesday. Because Chinese courts had been dealing with so many civil and administrative cases — most of them relatively trivial — over the years, the Supreme People’s Court made case-handling reform a priority in early 2019. The reform required courts to first take up easy cases and those suitable for settlement and then resolve them in diverse ways, such as mediation. The choice to mediate or litigate depends on those involved in cases. Thanks to the reform, courts across the country witnessed a drop in the number of cases in 2020 after a 15 consecutive years of increases.

News from: Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China.