Social Harmony at the Cost of Trust Crisis: Goals of Civil Justice in China

Abstract

This article addresses ‘social harmony’ as the ultimate goal of civil justice in China and its adverse impact on the public's trust in the justice system. The author introduces and analyses this issue in three dimen-sions: statutory law, judicial policy, and comments from scholars. This article attempts to view the situation in the context of the rapid transition China's justice system is undergoing as a result of continuous reforms. As the author indicates, although the law provides diverse and vague purposes of civil procedure, in practice the goal of dispute resolution always takes precedence over right protection, with the ultimate policy goal of ‘social harmony’. The pre-eminence of this fundamental policy goal, coupled with the common use of informal procedures and the tradition of judicial mediation, creates a civil justice with the following main features: (1) emphasis on dispute resolution especially by judicial mediation, while neglecting protection of private rights and justice; (2) overemphasis on speed or efficiency; (3) the dualism of ‘ordinary’ and ‘summary’ procedures; (4) a focus on developing procedures for routine cases and a lack of mechanisms for handing hard cases; (5) the user orientation intended by lawmakers being overridden by judges' broad powers and discounted by some binding opinions of the Supreme People's Court.