The Primary People's Court of Qianhai Cooperation Zone of Shenzhen City of Guangdong Province (Qianhai Court) is a demonstration court for China’s comprehensive judicial reform that was established on Dec. 2, 2014 with the approval of the Supreme People’s Court. Hu Chunhua, Vice Premier of the State Council, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee at that time, and Zhou Qiang, Party secretary and president of the Supreme People’s Court at that time, jointly inaugurated the nameplate of the court.
Hu said that he anticipates the Qianhai Court will implement the overall instructions made by the Central Government on judicial reform and could achieve a series of judicial innovations and secure justice.
Zhou said that the establishment of the Qianhai Court would have a great impact on the construction of the country’s socialist rule of law system and help further build China into a country under the rule of law.
The Qianhai Court strives to provide examples for national judicial innovation and to become a top-notch court in China and the world. It will adopt a global vision and take advantage of its brand-new institutional structure to make systematic, forward-looking and replicable decisions.
Basic information
The court now has 160 employees, 80 of whom are permanent staff. Currently, it has one president and two vice presidents. The Qianhai Court has three adjudication agencies and one judicial administrative agency.
Judicial Reform
The Qianhai Court strictly follows the requirements of the Supreme Court for building a pilot court for comprehensive judicial reform and pays great attention to overall coordination and advancement in its judicial system reform. At present, the comprehensive judicial reform items that can be carried out by a grass-roots court have been initially implemented. In combination with its development plan, the Qianhai Court is making reform attempts and practical explorations on the authority, procedures, and power established by regional judicial standards.
The court is accelerating the reform of its external management system, implementing the city-level unified management of its staff, finance and properties, carrying out a cross-regional centralized jurisdiction method for the commercial cases relating Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and establishing an external guarantee mechanism for the court to independently and impartially exercise its judicial power. The Qianhai Court also strives to build a streamlined and efficient judicial administrative organization and judicial team organizational structure, implement and enforce the separation of judicial power from executive power, and improve the court’s internal guarantee mechanism for the independent exercise of judicial power in accordance with the law.
At the same time, the court is following judicial rules to strengthen trial management and trial supervision, highlight the differentiation and precision of case-handling responsibility evaluation and accountability, and carry out in-depth reform of the judicial power operation mechanism. The court hearing-centered litigation system is improving and a series of reforms regarding pre-trial preparation, collegiality, and cross-examination will be propelled to fully improve the quality and efficiency of court hearings. A fairer and more efficient litigation document delivery system for cases relating foreign, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan parties and extraterritorial law ascertainment and application system will be established by the court. The Qianhai Court also aims to establish an honest litigation mechanism to prevent litigants from abusing their right to appeal, to form a professional trial team, and appoint Hong Kong jurors to continuously deepen the reform of the trial mechanism for cases relating to foreign, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan parties, so as to improve the credibility of inter-regional and international justice.
The court is forming an elite team of judges and a professional adjudication assistant team, continuously constructing a security system and an evaluation system for judicial competence, and promoting the reform of the judicial personnel management system to realize the classified management and diverse development of its judicial personnel. In addition, a diversified dispute resolution system is under improvement, an international, market-oriented, professional, legal-based litigation and mediation service platform is under construction, and a classification mechanism for simple and complex cases is to be reformed.
Goals
The court is committed to building itself into a first-class court with international credibility, serving the implementation of national development strategies and providing strong judicial protection for the development of the Qianhai & Shekou free trade area and the Qianhai Cooperation Zone, and constructing a pilot court for comprehensive judicial reform to serve as an example for the same kind of reform of national courts.
To construct a first-class court, the Qianhai court will create a first-class legal environment with first-class judicial services; build first-class judicial credibility with first-class judicial levels; and create a first-class international judicial image with first-class judicial quality.
Scope of Litigation
The court has centralized jurisdiction over commercial cases relating to foreign countries, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan that fall within the scope of Shenzhen.
The court has jurisdiction over the first-instance civil and commercial cases and enforcement cases that should be under the jurisdiction of grassroots courts within the jurisdiction of the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone. It also has jurisdiction over all first-instance foreign, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan-related commercial cases within the jurisdiction of Shenzhen. The maximum litigation target amount to be adjudicated per case is no more than RMB 50 million yuan for the court.
In addition, the court has jurisdiction over general intellectual property cases in the Qianhai & Shekou free trade area.
The court has jurisdiction over the first-instance general intellectual property civil cases except those regarding patents, new varieties of plants, layout designs of integrated circuit, tech-secrets, computer software, well-known trademark recognition dispute cases and monopolistic dispute cases that happen in the Qianhai & Shekou free trade area.
The court has jurisdiction over the first-instance general intellectual property civil cases involving less than 10 million yuan, and all the parties’ residences are located in Shenzhen.
