Don Clarke’s, Chinese Law Prof Blog, heartily recommended for attorneys with an interest in China, takes note that 800,000 judgments — the number given by Supreme People’s Court president Xiao Yang — have gone unexecuted.
While Don cautiously and with merit suggests that we haven’t as yet the perspective to say if this is objectively good or bad, the gut tends me towards the position that it should not give much confidence in the value of a Chinese judgment.
Indeed, that a number was even publicized gives credence to the notion that unexecuted judgments have become a problem of major proportions in the eyes of the judiciary — one need only note below the euphemistic phrase “?????.” Even granting the questionable perception of openness, supposedly fostered by government, the number 800,000, without a verifiable basis, is very likely itself under-reported.
Xiao Yang’s remarks:
?????????????? 80??????
???????? ?????2006-10-31
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????80????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
The The Vast Chinese Archive of Unexecuted Judgments by AsiaBizBlog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
This is a huge problem in China, no doubt about it. We have a client that recently won a multi-million dollar arbitration award and it took all sorts of time and machinations to get it enforced and then executed upon. It took five times as long and was five times as costly as it should have been, considering there were no legal issues. But, the other side kept fighting it on ridiculous points that the court would address. The client got the money, but will (like most foreign companies) do whatever it can to avoid the same situation. This was in Shanghai. Had it been elsewhere, it would have been even worse. It is not clear to me why things are so bad. Is it incompetence? Inexperience? Corruption?