China expands smart court system

BEIJING - China's court system intranet has been extended to 3,523 local courts and 9,277 tribunals across China, enabling all judicial officers to receive the same information when doing legal work, according to an official from China's supreme court.

"Based on advanced technology, the smart court system enables us to manage all of our work online, make judicial process information open to the public in accordance with the law, and provide comprehensive intelligent services," said Xu Jianfeng, director of the Supreme People's Court Information Center, on Friday.

China's national database of legal documents, the biggest in the world, now includes information on 122 million legal cases, more than 6 million trial records and 240,000 items of judicial personnel data.

Xu noted that judges now can use the database to share information with the Ministry of Public Security, National Administration for Code Allocation to Organizations, Ministry of Agriculture, and banks.

"We will also cultivate legal technology professionals to help build the smart court, modernize the judicial system and boost judicial capacity in the future," said Xu.

China included the building of a smart court in the State Informatization Development Strategy issued in 2016, elevating it to the level of national strategy.