On his Chinese Law and Politics blog, Carl Minzner questions the recent conventional wisdom that citizen activism is leading to a higher number of court cases in China, and includes statistics on the various kinds of cases heard in China in recent years to prove his point:
There have been several references recently to the “skyrocketing” or “rapidly increasing” caseload of Chinese courts as a result of increased citizen legal activism. But the numbers just don’t support this.
True, the annual work reports of the Supreme People’s Court over the last ten years do seem to reveal a substantial increase in the total number of Chinese court “cases” since the mid-1990s. But careful analysis of the numbers reveals that this is actually an artifact of what judicial authorities are counting as a “case.” Numbers of civil cases (citizens suing each other) and administrative cases (citizens suing the state) have remained relatively stable, or even declined, compared to levels reached in the 1990s. [Full text]
– Also on this topic see the proceedings of a conference titled “Rural Discontent, Rule of Law and Social Unrest in China: Implications for U.S. Policy” held last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
