China tries out India-like PILs in judiciary

China has commissioned a national pilot project to test public interest lawsuits largely planned on the lines of India’s public interest litigations, but mainly pursuing cases related to pollution, drug and food safety.

The country’s prosecuting departments have filed five public interest lawsuits involving environmental pollution with the courts since July 2015 as part of the national pilot programme aimed at protecting public resources.

In July, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) launched a two-year pilot programme in 13 provinces and regions, including Beijing, Shandong, Guangdong and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region to handle such litigation, SPP spokeswoman Xiao Wei was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily on Thursday.

“At present, the courts have accepted the five cases and are investigating,” she said.

Public interest litigations mainly refer to lawsuits related to ecology, protection of state-owned assets, transferring state-owned land-use rights and food and drug safety.

Figures provided by the SPP show that, between July 1 and December 31, the pilot prosecuting departments followed 501 public interest litigation clues, resulting in 383 administrative cases and 118 civil cases.

There were 313 public interest lawsuits involving environmental and resources protection, 118 cases on transferring state-owned land use rights, 59 cases dealing with protection of state-owned assets and 11 cases for food and drug safety.

China commissioned studies on Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in 2011 and some of the officials visited India to study the system.

According to Zheng Xinjian, director at the SPP’s procuratorial department for civil and administrative cases, prosecuting departments in the pilot areas will proceed using information reported by the public or by conducting active investigations.

“We will investigate and verify the facts of a case and visit the sites to obtain evidences,” he said.

“Then we will issue suggestions for the administrative departments to correct their mistakes or supervise them in the performance of their duty,” he said.