China’s Supreme Court Promises to Pay Attention to the Internet

Wang Shengjun

Yesterday, China’s Supreme Court president Wang Shengjun gave the Court’s work report to China’s National People’s Congress. In it, he said something that has captured the attention of Chinese net users:

[…We must] place emphasis on listening to the opinions of the grassroots masses and other strata of society, we must place more emphasis on supervising public opinions about the news, we must pay more attention to the mood on the internet, respond quickly to the concerns of society, and unceasingly strengthen and improve the work of the Court.

It’s a short statement, to be sure, but in the eyes of a Hunan Supreme Court justice who spoke with the Beijing Times, it is suggesting that the Court will push for tighter controls on the internet but that it also may open up some information about high-profile cases in response to the demands of the net-using public. This seems to make sense given the amount of fretting the government has been doing about internet rumors over the past year; the Supreme Court is certainly in a position to squash some of the rumors that crop up with actual evidence, should it deign to release such information to the masses.

But clearly, the Supreme Court is not about to become the Court of Public Opinion. NPC rep Zhou Xiaoguang told the Beijing Times that public opinion was a serious obstacle to the administration of justice, an opinion that seems to be echoed in Wang Shengjun’s comments. It’s likely, then, that the government will take steps to further control internet public opinion.

As for the potential increased openness, we’ll have to wait and see. Increased transparency would be a great way to influence public opinion without censoring it, and I imagine it would be quite well-received online. But, uh, probably don’t hold your breath waiting for it. What people say at the NPC is one thing; what the government actually does is often quite different.