Zhou Qiang, secretary of the leading Party members’ group and president of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), asked courts to make good judicial responses to the regular epidemic prevention and control and complete this year’s trial and enforcement work.

Zhou made the remarks at a special meeting of the leading Party members’ group of the SPC held on June 8.

A report on trial and enforcement work of courts nationwide in this year was made at the meeting. Affected by the sudden epidemic of COVID-19, in the first quarter of this year the number of cases received, concluded and processed by courts nationwide decreased, but the epidemic didn’t much influence the courts’ trial and enforcement work. The number of litigation cases pending for more than three years continuously decreased, and the number of petition letters related to litigation dropped significantly. Performance indicators of case enforcement were stable.

Zhou said that courts made breakthrough during the period of epidemic prevention and control as they adjusted key tasks, fully implemented requirements to prevent and control the virus according to law, took up their responsibilities to ensure stability in employment, financial operations, foreign trade, foreign investment, domestic investment and expectations, and ensure security in employment, basic living needs, operations of market entities, food and energy, stable industrial and supply chains and the normal functioning of primary-level governments.

Courts at all levels benefited from the construction of smart courts, resolving disputes as soon as possible with online case filing, hearings and enforcement proceedings, which greatly limited the influence of the epidemic on their work.

Zhou asked courts nationwide to shoulder responsibility for balancing a normalized situation of epidemic prevention and control with the overall recovery of the national economy, and to fully implement the resolution made by the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress.

Courts should cultivate a sound rule of law environment and service high-quality economic development with the aim of winning the battle against poverty and achieving the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

They need to continue to provide a good response to the normalized situation of epidemic prevention and control, service the six stabilities and implement the six guarantees, and at the same time strengthen Civil Code training, Zhou said.

Zhou also urged to reinforce adjudication supervision and management to ensure the year’s work tasks are completed, improve the trial performance evaluation system for judicial personnel, continue to explore and solidify smart court construction, conclude trial and enforcement steps put in place during the epidemic prevention and control period and use informationized methods such as mobile micro courts to promote judicial work mode transformation.

In addition, courts should pay attention to transferring powers to lower level ones by effectively supervising them, further implement a judicial responsibility system and build a new mechanism of adjudication supervision and management to fully supervise and control judicial power.