[author]ZUO Weimin

[content]

Local Courts in Judicial Reform: Reflections Based on Reform Practices

Zuo Weimin

Professor, Law School of Sichuan University

Abstract: Observing reform practice, a notable trend in China’s judicial reform is that, under the promise leadership role of the central authorities, local courts have consistently retained an active role. The interplay of central and local factors makes the initiative of local courts indispensable to judicial reform. In centrally led pilot reforms, the initiative of local courts takes the form of policy refinement within the framework of central pilot documents, as well as innovation in the spaces deliberately left open, with the aim of comprehensively and faithfully implementing higher-level reform directives. In locally initiated reforms, the initiative of local courts manifests in actively designing reform proposals and seeking the diffusion of reform experiences, provided that central approval and support are in place. This is linked to local needs, policy resources, performance expectations, and institutional capacity. To advance judicial reform more deeply, it is essential to uphold the principle of central top-level design while also valuing and supporting the innovative practices of local courts. By improving the pilot reform mechanism and related arrangements, local courts can be guided to exercise their initiative in the right direction and thereby contribute valuable grassroots experience to the central top-level design.

Keywords: Local Courts; Judicial Reform; Initiative; Top-Level Design; Pilot

Introduction

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the CPC Central Committee has established top-level design as an important concept for deepening reform, emphasizing the systematic promotion of reform with leadership and organization. It established that further comprehensive deepening of reform requires adherence to the thinking and working methods of system integration, achieving a dialectical unity of overall planning and layered implementation. China's judicial reform has also become increasingly centrally planned, presenting clear objectives and characteristics of top-down promotion. At the same time, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that advancing Chinese modernization requires handling the "relationship between top-level design and practical exploration" well. Among this, "all regions and departments should blaze new trails based on their specific realities, especially in frontier practices and unknown areas, encouraging bold exploration and daring to be the first, seeking ideas and methods to effectively solve new contradictions and problems, and striving to create fresh experiences that can be replicated and promoted." Furthermore, for some reforms, "we must adopt the method of pilot exploration first, and then roll them out after gaining experience and seeing clearly."

Against the backdrop of the Party Central Committee emphasizing the better exertion of "two initiatives" (central and local), what role should local courts play in judicial reform? In what areas is their initiative reflected, and how can it be stimulated? Specifically, how can local courts better participate in reform and effectively innovate under top-level design? These questions are worthy of in-depth discussion. In particular, it is necessary to systematically grasp the real operating conditions based on long-term participatory observation of local courts' judicial reform practices, summarize characteristics and models, and thereby propose effective improvement plans.

Regarding the issue of central-local relations in the judicial field, the legal academia has focused on topics such as the centralization of judicial power, judicial "de-localization" reform, local judicial power, and the impact of central-local relations on judicial reform. Relevant research mainly analyzes the centralization trend of China's judiciary since the 18th National Congress theoretically, focusing specifically on the evaluation of the pros and cons of judicial de-localization and de-administratization reforms such as the unified provincial management of human, financial, and material resources of local courts and the construction of cross-administrative region courts. However, there is less attention paid to the changes and impacts on the corresponding modes, forms, and characteristics of judicial reform, and there is a lack of research conducting typological analysis of local court initiative based on judicial reform practices.

This article intends to explore the following core questions: First, under the overall trend where local courts are increasingly subject to management and influence from the central and superior courts, are local courts in practice strictly executing orders in judicial reform, or do they still retain initiative and creativity? What significance do this initiative and creativity have for a "strong central" judicial reform? Second, can the court system achieve a "strong central, strong local" pattern in judicial reform? How can the initiative of local courts be correctly exerted? This article argues that under the guidance of the overall goals and pilot plans determined by the central government, local courts still maintain initiative and proactivity in judicial reform, and certain practices even possess pioneering qualities. The relationship between central management and local court initiative is not merely a zero-sum game but can be a complementary relationship. The moderate exertion of local court initiative can assist local governance while better realizing the judicial reform goals set by the central government and expanding their effects, contributing to the realization of judicial modernization and the comprehensive rule of law. The overall idea for future reform could be to build a "strong central, strong local" court judicial reform model, where, while maintaining the local courts' primary function of execution, their decision-making and innovative functions are appropriately exerted in specific matters within local areas and small scopes.

1. Manifestations of Local Court Initiative in Judicial Reform

"Control Rights" theory posits that the control of higher-level governments is mainly manifested in three aspects: goal setting, inspection and acceptance, and incentive distribution. There are three scenarios: strong control, weak control, and no control. Strong control mainly refers to high pressure applied by the superior in terms of target tasks, assessment/supervision, and incentives; weak control refers to the superior not proposing clear target tasks and assessment requirements for local policy implementation, and not allocating relatively direct incentive measures; no control refers to the superior's attention not covering the relevant matters. In these three scenarios, the central government plays the roles of decision-maker, coordinator, and supervisor respectively, and correspondingly, the local government plays the roles of executor and governor, with the initiative of the two increasing broadly.

Inspired by this, and based on long-term participatory observation of China's judicial reform practice since the 18th National Congress, the author can roughly categorize two models:

First, the Central Pilot Reform Model, generally manifested as "Central Top-Level Design + Local Court Authorized Pilot Reform," which includes pilot reforms authorized by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Supreme People's Court (SPC). This model effectively solves problems such as insufficient incentives for local pilots, information asymmetry between central and local levels, and insufficient pilot innovation capabilities through governance mechanisms such as direct central decision-making on reform content, cross-level vertical and horizontal mobilization, whole-process pilot supervision, and inducement-type innovation support. For example, the NPC Standing Committee authorized the SPC to carry out the reform of separating complicated and simple cases in civil procedure in 20 cities.

Second, the Local-Led Reform Model, generally manifested as "Central Macro Guidance + Local Court Spontaneous Reform," which can be called local reform. For example, the central government's directional spirit of promoting the reform of the litigation system strictly "centered on trial" was implemented by local courts as the reform of the substantive operation of criminal court trials. In areas where the central government pays insufficient attention or has no specific decision-making content, local courts may still autonomously promote local reforms. For example, local courts independently carried out reforms on the trial methods for complex civil cases without specific policies, reform plans, or regulations issued by the central government.

Three points need to be clarified: First, allowing local courts to carry out led-type reforms in certain fields and scopes is also a requirement of the central top-level design; second, in practice, some local-led reforms, after bottom-up experience transmission is adopted by the central government, may transform into central pilot reforms; third, broadly speaking, local reforms are often carried out in the form of "pilots," but there are differences in authorization authority. Based on this, this article will discuss the different behavioral modes of local courts and their causes and effects under these two judicial reform models respectively.

1.1 Central Pilot Reform Model—Taking the Reform of Civil Procedure Program Simplification as an Example

In December 2019, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the Decision on Authorizing the Supreme People's Court to Carry Out Pilot Work on the Reform of Diversifying Complexity and Simplicity in Civil Procedures in Certain Regions, authorizing the Supreme People's Court to carry out a two-year "Pilot Work on the Reform of Diversifying Complexity and Simplicity in Civil Procedures" (hereinafter referred to as "Simplification Reform") in 20 cities.

In January 2020, the Supreme People's Court released the Pilot Plan for the Reform of Diversifying Complexity and Simplicity in Civil Procedures and the Implementation Measures for the Pilot Reform... (hereinafter referred to as "Central Pilot Documents"), systematically deploying five major reform measures. As a pilot court authorized to carry out the reform, the Intermediate Court of City X in Province W and the 22 grassroots courts within its jurisdiction (hereinafter referred to as "X City Intermediate Court" and "X City Two-Level Courts") launched the reform pilot work in 2020.

It should be pointed out that many key measures were not proposed for the first time in this reform, nor were they directly designed by the central top-level. Instead, they underwent a developmental process of "Local Court Innovation — Adoption and Promotion by the Supreme Court — Enactment into Law." Therefore, the innovative practices of local courts are the source material for central pilot-type judicial reform. Moreover, the main reason for the introduction of this pilot reform was not the active request of the central decision-making layer, but because after the Supreme People's Court designated pilot courts for the reform of the mechanism for separating complicated and simple cases in 2017, courts at all levels actively explored and innovated practices for separating complicated and simple cases. To a certain extent, these broke through the legal framework such as the Civil Procedure Law at the time, involving matters of legislative essence. Thus, the innovative practice of local courts is also an important driving force for pilot reform.

The following text will focus on exploring how local court initiative becomes an important content of pilot reform rules and practices. In short, in the Central Pilot Reform Model, local court initiative is manifested in two aspects: policy refinement and tool innovation, both aimed at fully executing the reform requirements set by the superior.

1.1.1 Policy Refinement within the Framework of Central Pilot Documents

Policy refinement refers to the policy behavior where lower-level organs, based on the requirements of upper-level policy content and combined with local reality, convert policy texts to produce policy actions that match their own governance context and can clearly indicate the direction or method of action. Based on considerations such as avoiding blame and pursuing political performance, within a top-down pressure-based system, the stronger the control imposed by the superior, the more active the local attitude towards refining policies to pursue better pilot results. In the central pilot-type Simplification Reform, the two-level courts of X City formulated "Implementation Rules" type reform documents for each of the five reform measures, fully absorbing the spirit and specific rules of the central pilot documents. They actively pursued the highest degree of realization of the central reform goals, specifically manifested in the substantial optimization of indicators such as the application rate of various reform measures and the average case trial period after the pilot reform.

Taking the reform of improving small claims procedures as an example, X City Intermediate Court issued reform documents such as the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of Small Claims Litigation in X City and the Implementation Plan for Small Claims and Summary Procedures in X Cityin April 2020. These fully absorbed the requirements and regulations of the central pilot documents regarding appropriately raising the threshold for the subject matter of small claims cases, clarifying the scope of applicable cases, simplifying trial methods and judgment documents, reasonably determining trial periods, and improving the conversion mechanism with summary procedures and ordinary procedures. Furthermore, in order to achieve the goals pursued by the central pilot documents such as increasing the application rate of small claims litigation and reducing case handling time, they added pressure and increased stakes on this basis.

In practice, there are mainly three methods:

First, directly setting higher procedural application rate targets. The Implementation Plan for Small Claims and Summary Procedures in X City explicitly requires that the application rate of small claims procedures in grassroots courts should not be lower than 20%, and those with conditions can set higher application targets.

Second, expanding the scope of application for small claims procedures. On one hand, substantive requirements such as "clear facts, clear rights and obligations, small dispute," and "simple" were deleted. The Implementation Plan... stipulates that money payment cases within 50,000 RMB where the law does not explicitly forbid the use of small claims litigation shall all be filed as small claims cases. On the other hand, a "default" approach was adopted to increase the agreed application rate. The Detailed Rules... require that for simple money payment cases with a subject matter between 50,000 and 100,000 RMB, it is basically defaulted that the small claims procedure should apply unless the parties raise an objection.

Third, further shortening the trial period. The Detailed Rules... stipulate that under normal circumstances, small claims cases should be concluded within one month; in special circumstances, it can be extended to two months. This is shortened by one month compared to the regulations in the central pilot documents. Under comprehensive implementation and intensified promotion, the application rate of small claims litigation in X City's two-level courts (20.71% in 2020, 26.90% in 2021) increased significantly and was higher than the average level of pilot courts nationwide during the same period.

1.1.2 Carrying out Innovation within Reserved Exploration Space

Local court innovation mainly manifests in two forms: target innovation and tool innovation. Specifically, target innovation refers to the locality creatively proposing new goals, requirements, and results; tool innovation refers to the improvement of specific operational mechanisms to achieve goals under established policy objectives. Top-down pilot reforms often have specific reform goals and requirements set by the central government, so local courts mainly demonstrate tool innovation, with the function of better completing the reform tasks set by the superior.

Taking the reform of improving online litigation rules as an example, the central pilot documents stipulated reform points such as granting online litigation equal legal effect to offline litigation, expanding the scope of online litigation, clarifying the legal effect and submission rules of electronic materials, adjusting online trial rules, and innovating electronic service mechanisms. The online litigation platform is the key to ensuring the realization and smooth operation of online litigation. However, in the early stage of reform, the construction of online litigation platforms was not sound, and there was a lack of unified platform setting standards. To achieve the above reform goals, X City's two-level courts improved specific operational mechanisms beyond the rules. For example, they optimized and upgraded the litigation service hall to guide online filing and built the "Court Judicial Think Tank Big Data Platform" to achieve unified and standardized electronic service. In particular, they created the unique "X E-Litigation" (X 易诉) online litigation platform. This platform can utilize functions such as big data analysis, intelligent push, and electronic evidence to provide intelligent and integrated auxiliary services for judges, and realize online handling of the entire litigation process including online filing, online mediation, online pre-trial evidence exchange, online trial, and electronic service. These innovative practices effectively promoted the realization of reform goals: on one hand, the online filing rate and online trial application rate increased significantly and stabilized after the pilot reform; on the other hand, the application rate and success rate of electronic service generally improved, effectively shortening the service cycle and thereby improving case handling efficiency.

In summary, in the central pilot-type judicial reform, local pilot courts still have their own considerations regarding whether to reform, how to reform, and the focus of reform. However, they are more inclined to proactively formulate implementation details for various reforms within the framework of central documents, combining their own development needs and advantages, and carrying out discretionary reforms within their autonomous scope. It should be said that the layered governance strategy characterized by vertical high-level promotion and intermediate-level coordination ensures that grassroots courts still pursue the comprehensive implementation of pilot policies as their fundamental pursuit, effectively solving the difficult problem of policy implementation distortion.

1.2 Local-Led Reform Model—Taking the Reform of Substantive Operation of Criminal Trials in Local Courts as an Example

In 2014, the CPC Central Committee adopted the Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Advancing the Rule of Law, explicitly proposing to advance "reform of the litigation system centered on trial." In 2015, the "Fourth Five-Year Reform Outline" of the courts proposed the overall goal of "ensuring the facts of the case are investigated in court, evidence is cross-examined in court, opinions of the prosecution and defense are delivered in court, and judicial decisions are formed in court," highlighting the core requirement of "substantive operation of trials." It can be seen that at the beginning of the reform, the central government did not propose clear target tasks and assessment/inspection requirements for local policy implementation, nor did it allocate direct incentive measures. It only stipulated the general direction of principles, providing a conceptual line of thought for local court reform. Under the macro guidance of "trial-centeredness" from the central government and the Supreme People's Court, X City Intermediate Court dug deep into the spiritual connotation of the central government and, aiming to exert pioneering spirit, took the lead nationwide in exploring and launching the "reform of substantive operation of criminal trials" starting in February 2015.

1.2.1 Independently Designing Reform Plans

Different from the central pilot-type judicial reform where local courts can only refine policies within the framework of central pilot documents, in the local-led judicial reform, local courts have higher autonomy. They can creatively propose new goals and innovate mechanisms and means to achieve goals under established objectives, realizing a combination of target innovation and tool innovation. This is manifested in local courts being able to combine local actual conditions to independently design reform plans or redesign during the execution of central directional policies. Through the integration of policy issues, layering of goals, and refinement of tools, they independently decide the content such as reform objects, goals, measures, promotion methods, and effect evaluations, making the policy execution path clearer.

Regarding reform objects and goals, local courts set the substantive operation of criminal trials as the core essence of realizing the directional reform goal of "trial-centeredness." This limits the judicial system reform, which spans the litigation stages of investigation, prosecution, and trial and involves power subjects such as public security, procuratorate, and courts, to the field of court trials. This transforms it into a technical and operational reform concerning litigation procedures and even litigation skills. At the same time, the Pilot Plan for Reform of Substantive Operation of Criminal Trials of X City Intermediate Court basically limited the reform objects to criminal first-instance cases applied to ordinary procedures where the prosecution and defense have difficulties in identifying facts and there are major disputes over evidence, excluding simple cases and official crime cases that fit the "expedited handling for minor crimes" mechanism or where the defendant pleads guilty entirely.

Regarding reform measures, the reform of substantive operation of criminal trials covers key points required by central documents such as "evidence adjudication, appearance of witnesses and appraisers in court, illegal evidence exclusion rules, and strengthening equality between prosecution and defense." It actively refined these directional policies and issued a series of pilot documents and institutional norms for substantive trials. Moreover, X City's two-level courts extended the reform to aspects such as pre-trial conference procedures, operational norms for witnesses appearing in court (such as the mechanism for police appearing in court), and court evidence investigation methods (such as physical evidence investigation, video evidence investigation), thereby enriching the connotation of the reform of substantive operation of criminal trials.

Specifically at the rule level, the reform measures of local courts can be divided into institutional improvement and institutional innovation. The former involves local adjustments to relevant systems within the existing legal framework; the latter aims to create new systems not prescribed by existing laws and judicial interpretations, potentially breaking through the existing legal framework. To ensure the legitimacy of the reform, local-led reforms often focus mainly on institutional improvement. Taking the reform of witness investigation methods as an example, the trial rules formulated by X City Intermediate Court basically refined the operational process within the original legal framework and failed to fully realize the reform goal of the principle of direct verbal trial. This is manifested as: on one hand, the trial rules lack breakthroughs regarding conditions for witnesses appearing or not appearing in court, failing to establish review standards for the necessity of witness appearance, making it difficult to shake the traditional written trial mode; on the other hand, the trial rules failed to fully introduce and adapt the cross-examination system, resulting in insufficient rationality of the witness investigation method.

At the same time, the possibility of institutional innovation was explored in local rules. Taking the reform of the illegal evidence exclusion mechanism as an example, the 2012 Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on the Application of the Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC (hereinafter "CPL Judicial Interpretation") only made general provisions for the preliminary review of "exclusion of illegal evidence" applications during pre-trial conferences. However, the X City reform document explicitly requires that the prosecution organ should provide evidence for the legality of evidence during the pre-trial conference stage, and the court should immediately make a decision on whether to initiate the "illegal evidence exclusion" investigation procedure. If the prosecution and defense reach a consensus, there is no need to initiate it again during the trial. This rule creatively established a preparatory review system, which helps to resolve the procedural issue of "illegal evidence exclusion investigation" first in the pre-trial conference.

Regarding reform promotion methods and effect evaluation, X City Intermediate Court decided to promote reform by adopting demonstration trials and "Top Ten Trials" selection competitions, rather than simply setting assessment indicators to strengthen the execution of lower-level courts. To avoid a lack of scientificity in the pilot effect evaluation, X City Intermediate Court actively cooperated with the theoretical circle, chose to compare the control group cases with pilot cases, and designed an evaluation system covering the implementation effect of the trial mechanism for substantive operation of criminal trials, the implementation effect of the evidence investigation mechanism, and the implementation effect of supporting mechanisms to analyze the reform results and limitations, and continuously improve the pilot plan at the operational technical level.

1.2.2 Actively Seeking the Diffusion of Reform Experience

Different from the central pilot-type judicial reform, where the central government has formed a highly mature and relatively systematic top-level design plan after repeated research, and the innovation space for local courts is small and often plays a role of trial-and-error rather than generating new ideas, in the local-led judicial reform, the intentional policy ambiguity of the central government leaves a large innovation space for local courts. Encouraged by implicit or explicit political performance incentives, local courts will be more active in seeking the diffusion of reform experiences through various methods such as strengthening publicity, participating in internal competitions and seminars of the court system, and submitting decision-making consultation reports to superiors, specifically to obtain adoption and promotion by superiors. It should be said that the degree of policy diffusion significantly affects the implementation effect, but it is a complex process involving the interaction of multiple mechanisms such as learning, economic competition, imitation, and coercion.

In practice, the diffusion of experience from the reform of substantive operation of criminal trials in X City Intermediate Court went through three stages: same-level diffusion, province-wide promotion, and national pilot promotion. Specifically, because X City Intermediate Court actively sought the diffusion and promotion of local reform experience, relevant achievements were first spread through mutual learning among courts at the same level in the adjacent region, then experienced bottom-up policy adoption and promotion from the municipal level to the provincial level and then to the central level. After the central government summarized the reform experiences of various places and formed a top-level design plan, it promoted execution top-down nationwide. Finally, diffusion from advanced areas to follow-up areas was achieved in the central pilot-type reform, realizing the transformation from local practice to national policy.

From the perspective of results, the reform objects, goals, directions, key measures, and specific rules independently decided by X City Intermediate Court largely influenced the subsequent pilot reform promoted top-down by Province W and even the central government, constituting the basis for the superior to formulate reform plans and normative documents. This fully demonstrates the positive model significance of exerting local pioneering spirit for central top-level design. For example, the "Three Procedures" and relevant reform requirements of the "Five-Year Outline" formulated by the Supreme People's Court were deeply influenced by the results of the reform of substantive operation of trials in X City.

2. Reasons for the Initiative of Local Courts

Through the analysis of practice, a prominent trend existing in the macro aspect of China's judicial reform can be found: against the background of increasingly strengthened management of judicial reform by the central government, local courts are always exerting initiative. The aforementioned research also fully explains that local court initiative plays an important role in judicial reform, and overall the pros outweigh the cons, which is worthy of affirmation. Therefore, the author intends to explore the deep-seated reasons why local court initiative can continue to exist and play a role under the "strong central" background. This can be analyzed from two levels: normative and practical.

2.1 Local Court Initiative Has Legitimacy at the Normative Level

The initiative of local courts in China is embedded in two sets of relationships: one is the "Central-Local Relationship" as the grand background, and the other is the "Supreme Court—Local Court Relationship" within the court system. Moreover, the Central-Local relationship determines the hierarchical relationship within the court system.

China's decision-making layer has always attached importance to smoothing out central-local relations, requiring the full exertion of the two initiatives of the central and local governments. Among them, Comrade Mao Zedong published "On the Ten Major Relationships," explicitly pointing out that "on the premise of consolidating the unified leadership of the central government, the powers of the localities should be expanded to give them more independence and let them do more things," and "having two initiatives, from the central and the local, is much better than having only one." This clarified the principle of governance that "we want both unity and particularity." Subsequently, the principle of "fully exerting the two initiatives of the central and local governments" was written into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, and is finally expressed as "The division of functions and powers between the central and local state organs is guided by the principle of giving full play to the initiative and enthusiasm of the local authorities under the unified leadership of the central authorities." Since the 18th National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has also made important statements on central-local relations many times. For example, at the Third Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee, he emphasized, "We must exert the two initiatives of the central and local governments well, ensure the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee and the unification of the state system and government decrees... While resolutely implementing the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee, localities must exert subjective initiative and carry out work creatively in combination with local reality."

In central documents, decision-makers have put forward many specific requirements on how to exert the two initiatives of the central and local governments. For example, in 2018, the Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Deepening the Reform of Party and State Institutionsrequired "scientifically setting central and local powers, smoothing central and local responsibility relations, better exerting the two initiatives of central and local governments... The central government strengthens macro affairs management, and localities manage their own region's affairs well... reasonably setting up and configuring institutions at all levels and their functions." In 2019, the Decision... on Upholding and Improving the System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics... emphasized on one hand "improving various systems to firmly maintain the authority of the Party Central Committee and centralized and unified leadership," and on the other hand required "improving the institutional mechanisms to fully exert the two initiatives of central and local governments," advocating "endowing localities with more autonomy and supporting localities to carry out work creatively," thereby "building a work system with clear powers and responsibilities, smooth operation, and vitality from the central to the local level." In 2024, the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization (hereinafter "Resolution on Further Deepening Reform") pointed out adherence to the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee over further comprehensive deepening of reform, emphasizing "the Party Central Committee leads the overall design, overall coordination, and overall promotion of reform," and encouraging all regions and departments to "blaze new trails based on actual conditions, creating fresh experiences that can be replicated and promoted. Follow the mass line of the new era, and fully absorb social expectations, the wisdom of the masses, expert opinions, and grassroots experience into the reform design." It can be found that relevant documents, on the one hand, highly emphasize the centralized and unified leadership of the central government, requiring localities to fully execute pilot plans coordinated by the central government; on the other hand, they highlight the positioning of the people as the main body of reform, attaching importance to fresh local experiences and innovative practices.

Correspondingly, the Supreme People's Court also attaches great importance to the practical experience of local courts at all levels and encourages local courts to fully exert initiative and creativity under the guidance of top-level design, so as to achieve benign interaction between top-level design and grassroots exploration. This spirit is directly reflected in the text of the People's Courts' "Five-Year Reform Outlines": The "Fourth Five-Year Outline" emphasized strengthening top-level design more, focusing on the systematic, holistic, and synergistic nature of reform measures, but also clearly stipulated "encouraging lower-level courts to try first under the unified arrangement and deployment of the central government, summarize pilot experiences in a timely manner, and promote institutional innovation." The "Fifth Five-Year Outline" highlighted respect and protection for local court innovation, encouraging local court initiative by improving mechanisms such as implementation and fault tolerance. It required "coordinating different regions to conduct differentiated exploration, promoting the benign interaction and organic combination of top-level design and grassroots exploration," considering that "elevating beneficial experiences into universal and long-term institutional designs" is a key element in ensuring the steady and far-reaching progress of court reform. Although the "Sixth Five-Year Outline" diluted the mention of top-level design and grassroots innovation, it still adhered to the overall requirement of "two initiatives." At the central management level, it emphasized reporting procedures for some reform matters, while regarding local initiative, it still required courts at all levels to "enhance reform initiative and sense of responsibility, research and launch detailed reform measures according to local conditions, and carry out exploration and innovation in an orderly manner."

In summary, the overall trend of China's judicial reform is to strengthen the management capacity and level of the central and superior authorities to eliminate the negative impact of local factors on judicial reform. However, "Central-Local Relations" always advocate for local initiative, and the "Supreme Court—Local Court Relationship" also emphasizes the innovative role of local courts. It can be seen that the central government subjectively allows, acknowledges, and encourages local courts to exert a certain degree of initiative, which possesses legitimacy at the normative level.

2.2 Judicial Reform Practice Requires Local Court Initiative

2.2.1 Reasons at the Central Level

First, the central government needs local courts to provide pilot experiences. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "We must combine top-level design with crossing the river by feeling the stones," and "respect the pioneering spirit of the masses," emphasizing better exertion of the two initiatives of the central and local governments. Through pilot exploration, replicable experiences are formed for major reforms, which are then elevated to institutional achievements and finally rolled out on a large scale. It should be said that whether it is pilot reform or local reform, the behavior of local courts in judicial reform often caters to the discourse promoted by the central government such as "trying first" and "relying on local pioneering spirit and initiative." It fundamentally does not violate or break through the existing legal framework, is not contrary to the central political requirements, and conforms to the judicial policy of the superior court, belonging to encouraged legal behavior. At the same time, the central top-level design also needs local courts to provide inspiration, experience, and objective feedback and evaluation of reform effects; otherwise, judicial reform decision-making will face two risks: first, the probability of generating erroneous decisions increases, and they are difficult to correct in time; second, the decision is correct but lacks local adaptability, reducing reform effectiveness. Therefore, China's judicial reform must ensure national legal unity under central management while creating possibilities and incentive factors for the formation and development of a benign local order.

Second, under China's system and scale, the central government objectively cannot manage everything uniformly. General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out, "The Party's leadership over major work is comprehensive, not managing every detail." Moreover, China has a vast territory with vastly different conditions in different places. Judicial reform involves a wide range of matters, affects complex social relationships, and practical problems are difficult to predict. The central government cannot make a priori plans, decisions, and deployments detached from local actual conditions, nor can it manage all reform matters uniformly. At the same time, there are information problems within the state such as information asymmetry, information fragmentation, and difficulties in supervision and accountability. Although the progress of digital technology has significantly enhanced the central government's information acquisition and processing capabilities, the central government is still in a relatively weak position regarding information compared to local pilot courts and cannot be omniscient and omnipotent. Furthermore, although General Secretary Xi Jinping explicitly stated that "China is a unitary state, and judicial power is fundamentally a central power," the central government largely considers the role of local courts when designing judicial reform plans. This is reflected in the fact that tasks the central government cannot complete personally are delegated to local courts (especially High and Intermediate Courts) with corresponding authority. Taking the reform of the appointment of judges in provincially managed local courts as an example, the central government intended to resolve issues of local protectionism and administrative interference in the judiciary by taking back the power of appointment for local court leadership and judges. However, objectively, the central government lacks the capacity and resources for unified management, so currently, it has only been taken back to the provincial level. In practice, many matters such as the appointment of leadership team members of intermediate and grassroots courts are still delegated to municipal or even grassroots management.

2.2.2 Reasons at the Local Level

First, local courts have an objective need to solve local problems and improve local governance levels through reform. Compared to the central government, local courts (especially grassroots courts) are closer to the source of judicial disputes and have more opportunities to directly contact, understand, and handle various emerging types of new disputes. The problems faced are more complex, and they are more "sensitive" to legal issues arising from various changes and needs of social development. At the same time, China's local courts are deeply embedded in the local political system, forming a leadership system by the peer-level Party committee dominated by "block" management (territorial management). Courts also need to actively cooperate and play an important role in central tasks of social governance such as promoting economic development and maintaining social stability. This determines that there is a close collaborative relationship between local courts and external organs. When facing prominent local judicial problems, endogenous dispute resolution needs and local governance expectations both drive local courts to seek change to break through the established rule framework. This is specifically manifested in actively fighting for the right to try first in pilot reforms and carrying out local reforms to release autonomous space. In fact, whether it is pilot reform or local reform, both expand local autonomy to varying degrees. The former expands the local power spectrum through authorization leveraging, while the latter releases local governance space through independent exploration. Based on this, local courts tend to prioritize solving prominent problems in local trial practice through judicial reform, forming local rules, and assisting in the improvement of the local governance system.

Second, local courts need to fully exert initiative to complete judicial reform tasks with high quality. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Closely combine with reality, adapt to local conditions, take active action, identify the main contradictions and the main aspects of contradictions faced by oneself, formulate practical and specific reform measures, and prevent copying and pasting, and rough homogenization." Therefore, although central pilot documents attach high importance to the enforceability and guiding nature of practices, trying to refine and clarify the applicable standards, key nodes, operating procedures, and conversion mechanisms of various procedures as much as possible, the regulations on some reform contents still possess characteristics of being principled, point-based, and generalized. This reserves appropriate exploration space for local pilot courts, fully reflecting the rigidity and elasticity of institutional rules. This is mainly based on two considerations: On one hand, based on considerations such as coordinating the tension between central policies and localities and encouraging local exploration and innovation to promote development, central policies (especially strategic policies where a mature framework has not yet been formed) sometimes need to adopt relatively macro and principled expressions without specifying detailed operational rules and implementation paths, so as to adapt to the different situations of various places. It should be said that the mix of clear and vague orders is one of the meta-systems that allow China's leadership to possess sufficient flexibility and conduct adaptive governance. On the other hand, local courts are constrained by institutional complexity when executing reform policies. Relatively loose institutional logic goals and means settings can give them necessary autonomy, which is conducive to their barrier-free mobilization of situational knowledge and adaptive organizational behavior to alleviate the pressure of institutional complexity. In fact, when the central government promotes different types of reform pilots, it also chooses differentiated policy tools such as command-type, incentive-type, inducement-type, and autonomous-type. This is mainly influenced by policy attributes and the policy environment. The former includes content clarity, issue urgency, and execution difficulty, while the latter involves external factors such as institutional arrangements for pilot promotion, policy support, and authoritative pressure. Among them, except for command-type tools, most reserve large space for independent performance by local courts. Therefore, under the existing institutional pattern and resource capability conditions, local courts can only guarantee the high-quality execution of the central top-level design by fully exerting agency and innovation, and optimizing the combination of institutional resources by formulating relevant systems and norms for specific reform matters.

Third, local court initiative helps judicial reform achieve good results. On one hand, in central pilot-type reforms, local courts fully exerting initiative can strengthen the execution and implementation of reform documents, and can also provide innovative ideas for the central government's subsequent reform promotion and legislative planning. On the other hand, compared to top-down pilot reforms, some "spontaneous evolution" type local reforms have stronger self-consistency and adaptability, and are more conducive to maximizing the goals and interests of local courts. Objectively speaking, the "spontaneous evolution" type local reforms spawned by real problems faced by local courts have the following advantages compared to "external intervention" type reforms: First, reform resistance is small. Central pilot-type reforms need to ensure implementation through whole-process monitoring, strict supervision, and objective effect evaluation, while "spontaneous evolution" type local reforms have higher acceptability and encounter less resistance, and can achieve high policy execution without excessive resource input. Second, the reform effect is strongly sustainable. Central pilot reforms generally have a term of 1 to 2 years, belonging to short-term assessment reforms, which may have the problem of insufficient sustainability, manifested as significant changes in relevant reform indicators before and after the pilot period. However, "spontaneous evolution" type local reforms are often a long-term reform practice, which will adjust strategies as the specific situation changes, and continuously reshape the system and judicial behavior of local courts, making their reform effects more sustainable. Third, they may be forward-looking and can make up for the lack and omission of central attention. For example, the Supreme People's Court released fourteen batches of "Selected Cases of Judicial Reform of People's Courts" starting in 2017, providing replicable and promotable. " experience and samples" for local courts, and successful reform experiences can serve as the basis and material for the central government to promote a new round of judicial reform nationwide.

3. Factors Influencing the Exertion of Local Court Initiative

While deeply recognizing the value of local court initiative, we must also realize that there are inherent limitations and a "double-edged sword" effect in its exertion. In the environment of China's pressure-based system and tournament system, local courts are influenced by multiple factors in judicial reform. These influencing factors are not only important bases for explaining why local court initiative has relevant limitations but also key to exploring how to correctly exert local court initiative. Whether in central pilot-type or local-led judicial reform, local initiative is generally closely related to factors such as local endogenous needs, policy resources, performance expectations, and action capacity. Local courts will compare costs and benefits based on these factors to adjust their willingness to act. When costs are lower and benefits are higher, local courts will take initiative. Moreover, the initiative of lower-level courts is often closely related to the reform plans formulated and required to be executed by higher-level courts.

3.1 Local Needs

Local needs refer to the endogenous needs of local courts to better complete main responsibilities such as trial and execution and effectively participate in local social governance. When the existing institutional framework and policy supply make it difficult to support the realization of expected governance goals, local courts' willingness to actively reform to eliminate negative factors increases. The more urgent the local needs, the stronger the willingness of local courts to carry out reform. If the central pilot reform policy matches local needs, the execution level and initiative of local courts are often higher, and reform measures with a higher degree of matching are easier to implement and generate innovative practices.

Taking the reform of improving summary procedure rules as an example, local courts hope to save time and improve trial efficiency by participating in pilot reforms, but the improvement of summary procedures has limited effect on solving actual local problems. This is manifested as: First, after the pilot reform, due to the application of summary procedures in cases served by public announcement, the average trial time for cases applying summary procedures in X City's two-level courts did not decrease but increased. Second, the shortening of court trial time is limited; omitting links such as "notification of rights and obligations," "declaration of court discipline," and "verification of party identity" during the trial can only save 2 to 3 minutes. Third, the application rate of simplified judgment documents increased, but the time saved in writing is limited. Furthermore, for many grassroots courts, "formally collegiate, substantively single" has long been the norm in ordinary civil procedures. Although the reform of expanding the scope of the sole-judge system can save costs on selecting jurors and reduce costs for clerks in recording collegiate panels and notifying jurors, its significance for the actual needs of local courts such as saving judicial human resources and accelerating trial processes is limited. Therefore, local courts often do not regard it as the focus of reform execution, specifically manifested as insufficient initiative of local courts regarding such reform measures.

3.2 Policy Resources

Policy resources refer to the human, material, financial, and policy support resources required to complete reform goals, mainly coming from allocation by superiors and independent investment by localities. If allocation from the superior is low and resources invested by the locality are high, the willingness of local courts for autonomous reform is insufficient. Under China's current system, the court system has never been able to grasp substantive discourse power in the allocation of public financial funds. Although the reform of unified management of funds for courts below the provincial level has strengthened the influence of High Courts in areas such as budget preparation for local courts, funding for major cases, and special project funds, overall, the financial incentives that higher courts can provide to lower courts remain quite limited. In fact, except for a few reforms requiring large resource inputs such as creating new court organizations and court informatization and digital transformation judicial reform in the court system mainly involves adjustments to legal rules, trial methods, judicial management, and judicial power operation modes. The required policy resources are limited, so the negative impact on local courts' initiative in judicial reform is not significant.

Therefore, the reform topics that local reforms can effectively address are relatively limited. Although local courts will still exert initiative and achieve results under the action of multiple factors without specific central planning, this utility has applicable boundaries. Not all reform topics are suitable for solution via local reform. Especially in areas with significant impact on the rights of parties and involving multi-departmental collaboration, central pilot-type reforms should be carried out. In fact, local courts have two specific goals in innovative actions: risk avoidance and performance acquisition. Among them, seeking reform legitimacy and avoiding risks are primary goals, so they will choose factors with high controllability and recognition by relevant subjects to implement innovation, seeking innovation utility to the maximum extent. This indicates that local court innovation is generally limited to areas with lower reform risks, and many topics are ones they cannot or are unwilling to touch. Moreover, when the reform topic itself exceeds the actual resources and power scope available to the local court, local reforms may encounter dilemmas such as fragmentation due to lack of superior coordination, compartmentalization, and difficulty in penetrating systemic problems, and the reform effect will inevitably be limited. Therefore, when local reform enters deep waters, it requires the intervention of higher power subjects and the input of more power resources, requiring a holistic top-level design and full consensus beyond the local and court systems.

3.3 Performance Expectations

Performance expectations refer to the results that local court initiative can produce, focusing particularly on positive incentive effects, such as official promotion, optimization of trial quality management indicators, improvement of judicial fairness and efficiency evaluation, enhancement of judicial credibility, and adoption of reform experience by superiors. Performance expectations reflect the benefits that the acting subject can obtain, and thus have a positive correlation with the reform willingness of local courts. Competition between local courts and political tournament systems still exist. When the allocation of attention from superior leadership is undetermined, the more actively and proactively local courts carry out innovative reforms, the easier it is to obtain attention, affirmation, adoption, and rewards from superiors. Furthermore, in today's China, regardless of the reform effect, actively carrying out reform is itself a sign of political progress, and the official and even the whole society hold a preconceived appreciative attitude towards reform. Moreover, the central government always emphasizes the initiative and creativity of leading cadres and encourages officials to forge ahead and start businesses through means such as setting up fault-tolerance mechanisms, focusing on solving problems of disorderly conduct, inaction, unwillingness to act, and incompetence. This shows that in China's cadre evaluation system, compared to mistakes and errors in reform, laziness and negligence are even less tolerated. This further strengthens officials' subjective willingness to solve practical problems, gain superior attention, and improve political achievements through reform, and this regular understanding also applies to the court system.

Under the influence of performance expectations, presidents of local courts have a strong willingness to carry out local reforms, especially pursuing attracting superior attention through local innovation. This easily leads to two bad tendencies:

First, utilitarian tendency. The original intention of many local courts launching reforms is not to solve practical problems in trial and execution work, but to compete for the attention and focus of superior leaders. Once relevant reforms fail to facilitate experience diffusion, they are unwilling to continue promotion. Research has found that under China's unitary system, orders, support, and recognition from superiors have the most significant impact on the diffusion behavior of local innovation. However, most local reforms cannot attract special attention from the central level, and reform experiences lacking superior attention are difficult to achieve horizontal diffusion. Therefore, local reform experience can eventually only become a kind of local knowledge, resulting in many reform projects of local courts being hastily launched and ending silently. In the choice of reform projects, local courts tend to choose short-term projects that are easier to shine and have low political risks, especially resource-intensive political achievement projects, such as court informatization construction projects, while there are fewer reforms involving substantive issues and deep systemic mechanisms. Moreover, this reform orientation of attracting superior attention to obtain performance incentives will make lower-level courts more inclined to actively request instructions from or accept the influence of higher-level courts, making judicial activities more accepted by higher courts, thereby strengthening the management of higher courts and their ability to influence lower courts, which may erode judicial independence and fair justice to a certain extent.

Second, formalism tendency. When judicial reform innovation becomes a systemic organizational demand, the central government's call to encourage local pioneering spirit, after layer-by-layer transmission through the pressure-based system, alienates to a certain extent into a political task and a yardstick for measuring the political performance of local courts, creating "toss-and-turn" (restless) local courts. A typical example is the requirement to create "one brand per court" widely launched by courts everywhere. When local court innovation is not endogenous and generated to solve practical problems but is seen as a work task that must be completed, it will inevitably spawn a large number of formalistic reform measures that deviate from the main responsibility of trial and execution. This will not only greatly increase the work pressure and burden of grassroots judicial personnel and aggravate the contradiction between people and cases in the court system, but may also weaken the judicial function of courts and reduce judicial credibility. Moreover, blossoming innovation competitions and disorderly competition will lead to judicial fragmentation, thereby undermining the unified application of national laws and posing challenges to the stability and predictability of legal application and judicial adjudication.

3.4 Action Capacity

Action capacity refers to the ability of local courts to promote reform, mainly manifested as the ability to reasonably refine central policy documents or independently formulate a relatively scientific reform plan and promote effective execution by relevant courts. This is directly related to the reform consciousness and attention level of the court president, the overall quality of court judicial personnel, experience in participating in pilot reforms or carrying out autonomous reforms, and the level of judicial management. In particular, elite courts in areas with higher levels of economic development tend to have stronger action capacity and are more willing, experienced, and qualified to refine central pilot plans or independently carry out innovative judicial reform activities, and their reform influence is also greater.

Therefore, the planning and execution level of local reforms is often limited. On one hand, the rationality of reform planning independently designed by local courts is limited. Local courts (especially grassroots courts) rely on relatively limited experience sources and scope to support institutional design, so they are more prone to inappropriate or overly radical regulations. In comparison, reform documents designed by the central top-level are more stable. For example, the Rules for Pre-trial Conferences in X City issued by X City in the reform of substantive operation of criminal trials added the applicable situation of "if the defendant does not plead guilty, a pre-trial conference should be held" based on the CPL Judicial Interpretation, which belongs to a local norm breaking through central documents. However, this regulation improperly expanded the scope of application of pre-trial conferences, detached from the original restrictions on case circumstances and sentencing, causing unnecessary cases to occupy scarce trial resources and aggravating the formalization of pre-trial conferences. On the other hand, due to the limited control power of local courts themselves, the execution of local reforms by lower courts is insufficient. For example, some grassroots courts did not select reform objects according to the case types determined by the Criminal Trial Substantive Reform Plan of X City Intermediate Court, resulting in many cases entering the reform that were suitable for summary procedures, completely admitted guilt and accepted punishment, or where the defendant pleaded guilty with few disputes, or pleaded guilty but had disputes over sentencing circumstances, or ordinary procedures simplified for trial, etc., which lacked the necessity for adversarial trials. This not only reduced the scientific nature of reform effect evaluation but also showed the tendency of selective execution by lower courts to avoid the heavy and choose the light in reform, especially the unwillingness to include major, difficult cases and cases where the defendant does not plead guilty into the reform objects of substantive operation of criminal trials.

3.5 Reform Plans of Superior Courts

Superior judicial reform tasks generally reserve exploration space for lower courts, but the space for lower courts to exert initiative varies in different reform measures. Taking the reform of separating complicated and simple cases in civil procedure as an example, judging from the specific regulations of central pilot documents, the order from large to small is: Improving Online Litigation Rules > Optimizing Judicial Confirmation Procedures > Improving Small Claims Procedures > Improving Summary Procedure Rules ≈ Expanding the Application Scope of Sole-Judge System. The author believes this is mainly related to factors such as the specificity of the reform text, the connotative capacity of reform measures, and the degree of institutionalization of reform measures. For example, X City's two-level courts' reform of "Improving Summary Procedure Rules" basically just executed the requirements of the central pilot documents. Apart from exploring simplified document templates such as element-style, form-style, and order-style, there was not much policy refinement and tool innovation. The reasons are as follows: First, the degree of concretization of summary procedure reform rules is high. Different from directional expressions such as "innovating electronic service mechanisms," the central pilot document's regulations on summary procedure reform are quite specific and detailed. While giving policy goals, it also clarified specific reform plans. Second, the degree of institutionalization of summary procedures is high. China's civil procedure summary procedure has formed a highly systematic rule system, and the degree of procedure simplification is relatively high, so the innovation space in improving efficiency is limited.

In practice, China adopts an administrative-led approach combining leadership decision-making and political mobilization to promote judicial reform, highly emphasizing the execution of local pilot courts. Moreover, pilot documents sometimes exhibit phenomena such as absolutism in expression, politicization of tasks in policy attributes, and maximization of management in target requirements. This makes the behavior of policy refinement and innovative exploration by local courts basically start from improving the application rate of relevant reform measures to reflect execution strength. This not only suppresses the space for local courts to transform pilot document requirements normally—including policy flexibility space, leadership attention space, resource support space, etc.—and makes it difficult to achieve trial-and-error adjustments and differentiated innovation effects intended by pilot reforms, but also reduces the practicality and adaptability of policies, raising execution costs.

In order to respond to vertical reform supervision/assessment and horizontal competition among local courts (both taking the intensity of pilot policy execution as the core indicator), local courts also tend to implement judicial reform more actively, strictly, and comprehensively in accordance with the guiding ideology and specific requirements of central reform documents. The excessive pursuit of execution by localities evolves in practice into a high level of excessive pursuit of assessment indicators, and executing policies by "increasing pressure layer by layer." This will not only trigger systemic reactions in local justice, causing new problems, but may also lead to inflated pilot results, obscuring inappropriate parts of reform documents, thereby misleading the central government's evaluation and final decision on specific measures and rules. Taking the reform of improving small claims procedures as an example, the application of small claims procedures by judges in grassroots courts in X City is mainly not driven by the consideration of saving judicial resources, but by assessment pressure. Under the situation where the court leads the promotion of procedural application and trial speed, the number of retrial applications for small claims cases in X City courts is not optimistic, and petitioning problems are prominent.

Furthermore, this may further weaken the ability of the grassroots to set local policy agendas, and even mold "waiting for instructions" type local courts that lack agency and initiative.

4. How to Correctly Exert the Initiative of Local Courts in the Future?

At the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the Party Central Committee "leads the overall design, overall coordination, and overall promotion of reform," and state organs should "conduct in-depth research to promote the implementation and effectiveness of reform tasks in their own departments and systems." All regions and departments must "establish a national game of chess mindset, consciously act within the overall situation, and go all out to implement the principles determined, measures clarified, and requirements raised by the Party Central Committee to the letter." At the same time, it is necessary to "adopt the method of pilot exploration first," "fully respect the pioneering spirit of the grassroots and masses, and encourage blazing new trails." It can be seen that the Party Central Committee is the decision-making core of the top-level design of judicial reform. The Supreme People's Court will focus on major deployments, important tasks, and key work involving the court system in the Resolution on Further Deepening Reform to promote reform. Local courts should, while ensuring the implementation of reform deployments, proactively explore and innovate through methods such as pilot reforms. At the same time, it is necessary to determine the boundaries of their role and guide local courts to exert initiative with correct methods, cultivating their agency and innovative ability to actively discover and solve problems. Based on this, the exertion of local court initiative in the future should abide by the following principles: First, ensure the exertion of local court initiative under the centralized leadership of the Party Central Committee, ensuring the unified and efficient execution of central deployments by local courts; Second, allow local courts to appropriately carry out local reforms in combination with reality in some matters, seeking to create fresh experiences that can be replicated and promoted.

4.1 Adhere to Central Top-Level Design

The primary thing is to fully affirm and maintain the trend of the central government appropriately increasing the intensity of judicial management. There are three reasons:

First, it can improve the overall level of the rule of law in the country. For example, after the reform of provincial unified management of human, financial, and material resources of courts, the central government's collection of management rights over local courts can effectively crack problems such as judicial local protectionism. This shows that strengthening superior management will enhance rather than weaken the independence of local courts. Second, it can increase the systematic, holistic, and synergistic nature of judicial reform, effectively touching on systemic obstacles and deep-seated problems of the judiciary. The central government possesses vast resources and highly concentrated political power. Through the "vertical and horizontal" governance system, it can achieve comprehensive management. State power provides the greatest potential for the pilot reform system. From reform practice, the will and determination of the high level are very important. If some important decisions do not have high-level final approval, it is difficult to break through the barriers of concepts and interests, and it is also difficult to bear the corresponding reform costs. Third, it can effectively stimulate the initiative of local courts. Moderate management means that while the superior releases factors such as promotion incentives, resource reliance, and institutional pressure, it leaves large local autonomous space. Driven by this, local courts will be more active in fighting for pilot opportunities, strengthening execution in pilot reforms, and spontaneously exploring reform topics of concern to superiors under central guidance. In summary, the drawbacks produced by local initiative can only be fundamentally corrected by strengthening central initiative, and the benign exploration results of local initiative also need to be normalized and absorbed by central initiative to be further improved.

4.2 Correctly Recognize and Guide Local Court Initiative

First, attach importance to the innovative practices and reform experiences of local courts.On one hand, unblock the bottom-up channel for the diffusion of reform experience. If the reform experience explored by local courts does not receive attention from the superior for a long time, the motivation for continuous promotion will be lacking. Therefore, superior courts should explore more ways to effectively discover the innovative achievements of local courts, such as research project declarations within the court system, achievement reporting, seminars, and selection of innovative cases. On the other hand, exert the filtering role of the superior on lower-level experience. Bottom-up experience transmission will increase the convergence of system design in the overall direction between upper and lower-level documents, but at the specific rule level, the applicability of reform experience must be evaluated from a higher stance. This mainly manifests as an effect of extracting the greatest common divisor of effective experience and filtering errors. At the same time, it should be noted that the editing and translation of pilot experiences by the superior often leads to the loss of certain key elements of pilot success in discourse construction. This requires strengthening accurate bottom-up transmission and introducing independent third parties, especially academic opinions, to verify and supplement official discourse.

Second, break the myths regarding local courts. After the central government put forward the thesis that "judicial power is fundamentally a central power," many researchers believe that there is no separation of powers in the court system, but this does not mean that local courts do not have autonomous space and can only execute decisions at the central level. In fact, correct central decision-making relies on good local practice. We should uniformly establish the understanding that "Exerting local court initiative ≠ Localization of courts ≠ Judicial local protectionism ≠ Judicial injustice," so as to avoid wrongly limiting local court initiative due to unclear concepts. In this regard, we can consider formulating a "List of Central and Local Judicial Powers," clarifying which reforms must be planned by the central government and which matters can be decentralized for local exploration. For example, some procedural matters and internal matters of the court system can be grasped independently by local courts. For reform matters planned by the central government, local participation is also needed through opinion expression, practice reports, innovative pilots under central guidance, and appropriate innovation in execution practice during the formulation and implementation of reform plans. Based on this understanding, efforts should be made to improve the capabilities of local courts. The key lies in establishing and improving the talent training and incentive mechanisms for local courts. On one hand, fully exert the role of judge colleges everywhere, court internal research offices, and professional judge training in improving the theoretical level and research ability of local court judges, cultivate judge teams capable of participating in the formulation of reform plans, and actively fight to participate in bottom-up pilot reforms to accumulate experience. On one hand, local courts should ensure the input and effective allocation of policy resources such as human, financial, and material resources, and increase incentives in salary, selection, and promotion for judges actively participating in local reform practices, so as to form positive guidance, which helps localities discover problems in time, independently set reform topics, and solve problems effectively.

Third, curb bad tendencies such as utilitarianism and formalism. On one hand, clarify that the source of reform legitimacy is the objective need to solve local endogenous problems and execute central deployments. The innovative motivation of local courts stems from real reform needs, which exist objectively and arise with judicial practice, and cannot be spawned by administrative orders. Therefore, grassroots innovation should not be forced as an assessment indicator. Ostentatious requirements such as "One Excellence per Court" and "One Brand per Division" that bring formalistic burdens to grassroots courts should be abandoned. On one hand, guide local courts to fully utilize existing resources to carry out differentiated reforms according to local conditions. Local needs, resource endowments, and action capabilities of courts everywhere are different, so local reforms should be carried out specifically according to local conditions, avoiding "follow-the-trend" style reforms based on utilitarian mentality and isomorphic competition, which occupy limited reform resources that should be applied to solve urgent local needs, thereby aggravating the degree of involution of autonomous reform in grassroots courts. Taking the reform of intellectual property criminal justice as an example, for the centralized jurisdiction of IP criminal cases and "three-in-one" trial reform promoted by the state, local courts need to comprehensively consider factors such as the number of cases in the region, case types, specialized trial resources, and geographical span to decide whether to reform and design differentiated strategies; otherwise, the institutional benefit will inevitably be lower than its negative impact. In addition, consideration can be given to applying big data and artificial intelligence technologies to screen performance indicators, mine performance data, and utilize performance information, thereby optimizing the performance management system of local courts in an all-round way, and avoiding negative guidance of specific reform behaviors of local courts by unreasonable performance evaluation indicators.

4.3 Improve the Pilot Reform Mechanism to Guarantee Local Court Initiative

First, the pilot plan should be rigid and flexible, with appropriate tightness. When designing a pilot plan, rigidity should be strengthened for matters that have been fully considered and where thorough execution is pursued; elasticity should be maintained for matters where certainty is insufficient and exploration is needed, reserving more space for localities to exert initiative. At the same time, attention should be paid to absorbing the opinions or suggestions of local pilot courts. The reform measures can also be clearly ranked in the pilot plan based on the degree of central importance to ensure that local courts reasonably allocate limited reform resources. Moreover, the pilot plan must consider the impact of factors such as differences in task volume, averaged allocation of institutional resources, and differences in self-achieved resource acquisition capabilities on the execution behavior patterns of different local courts. On one hand, ensure that the difficulty of reform execution matches the average level of resource capabilities of each pilot court, and provide special support for localities with insufficient resources; on the other hand, encourage local courts to effectively cultivate and mobilize various governance resources to enhance their own resource expansion capabilities.

Second, establish a scientific and objective reform promotion and effect evaluation system to ensure the combination of "trial pairing" and "trial and error." It should be pointed out that the pilot plan formulated by the central government is not necessarily correct and effective. Selective execution by local courts may also reflect problems with the policy itself. Therefore, pilot reforms must undergo a scientific process of trial-and-error pressure testing, effectiveness verification, and risk assessment. On one hand, the administrative, pressure-based reform promotion method should be transformed to avoid distortion of reform effect data. It is necessary to optimize the existing method centered on assessment indicators, cancel various unnecessary, inappropriate, and unreasonable assessment indicators based on reform reality and judicial laws, establish a reasonable interval mechanism, apply indicator systems differentially to local pilot courts, and prohibit practices with a "data-only theory" tendency such as ranking reform data and circulars. It is also necessary to explore diversified reform promotion methods, such as court trial observation, excellence promotion competitions, and reform experience sharing sessions, to deepen the internal methods of reform operation practice. In short, we must reflect on the modern management trend of excessive technification and statisticalization in judicial reform evaluation, re-emphasize the dominant position of humans, creativity, and value concepts as core factors for reform success, and exert human initiative through more diversified process management and incentive means. On the other hand, through the trial-and-error mechanism, problems and contradictions of the reform plan are revealed within a controllable range. Third-party evaluation is introduced to transform the existing pilot effectiveness evaluation mechanism. At the same time, public opinion and the opinions of grassroots judges should be taken as important bases for judgment to confirm the feasibility of reform measures to what extent, thereby avoiding reform idealism and vanity. For example, after scientific evaluation, the reform of the level of jurisdiction function of the four levels of courts was found to have large disputes and poor results, so the original legal provisions were resumed immediately after the pilot ended.

Third, strengthen the feedback mechanism of pilot reforms and promote the legislative conversion of reform results. Only by closely combining legislation with reform and adhering to the unification and connection of reform decision-making and legislative decision-making can reform be deepened within the framework of the rule of law, and reform results be legalized. Therefore, based on scientific and objective reform evaluation, effective measures can be distinguished from those with poor results after verification: For measures with poor results, the laws before the pilot should be restored, and relevant responsible units should be required to reflect deeply. For effective measures, distinctions should be made between measures with relatively mature and fixed experiences, measures where local courts innovate and explore but lack sufficient experience, and measures involving deep-seated judicial system issues with large disputes. Methods such as timely inclusion in legislative planning or continued in-depth reform to accumulate experience before inspection should be adopted respectively, elevating pilot reform results to legal documents in tiers and with planning. In particular, the procedures for amending laws after pilot reforms end should be improved. The NPC Standing Committee can establish a professional pilot legislative evaluation mechanism and conduct strict hearing procedures before amending laws to fully absorb opinions and suggestions from all sectors of society. This can ensure the authority and effectiveness of legal norms and incentivize local courts to actively explore and continuously innovate in pilot reforms.

5. Conclusion

In summary, how to handle the power distribution relationship between the central and local governments is one of the central challenges China faces in the process of building a modern state. Against the background of strengthened central management, local courts can still actively and proactively participate in judicial reform, and even play a pioneering role. This helps to realize judicial modernization, modernization of the rule of law, and comprehensive rule of law. In the future, we should avoid the two extremes of "restless" (toss-and-turn) and "waiting for instructions" in local courts. To this end, we should fully exert the initiative of both the central and local aspects, achieving equal emphasis on top-level design and local pilot practice. For matters centrally planned, necessary autonomous space should be consciously left for some content in the pilot reform plan, and the channel for local pilot experience to be absorbed into the top-level design should be unblocked. In fields where central attention leaves space, local courts can be encouraged to carry out local reforms differentially, providing more fresh experiences for central decision-making, making judicial reform plans more grounded, operable, and effective.

Original article published in "Chinese Journal of Law" (中外法学), Issue 5, 2025. Translated with permission.