Zhao Rui, from the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang Province, said the reason he won his lawsuit against his county government over a real estate dispute, was because the city court designated a neighboring county court to handle it.

"If it had been handled by my county court, the result would have been hard to say," Zhao told China Youth Daily.

In a separate case, villagers of Donghu in Linhai County, Zhejiang, sued the county government over a land ownership dispute and also won after the city court named the neighboring Yuhuan county court to preside over the case.

Results like these are expected to become commonplace following the release by the Supreme People's Court (SPC) release of two important judicial interpretations yesterday, aimed at reforming the administrative litigation jurisdiction system.

From next month, all cases with State agencies above county level as plaintiffs, common lawsuits or collective lawsuits with major social significance and large foreign-related cases or cases with Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan parties involved, will be handled by the intermediate people's court during the first hearings, according to the new regulation.

Litigants can also apply for a first hearing in an intermediate people's court if they think the case is large and complicated or not suitable for a grassroots court to hear.

An intermediate court will either accept to deal with it by itself or designate another grassroots court to take it.

Designated administrative trials have recorded higher successful rates for the plaintiffs.

In the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang, for example, nearly half of the administrative cases in the first nine months of last year concluded in favor of the plaintiffs, compared with a national average of 30 percent for similar cases, Zhao Daguang, president of the SPC's administrative trial tribunal, said.

Between 2003 and last year, courts handled 473,837 administrative cases of first trials.

"Administrative trials have made great contributions in protecting the lawful rights of citizens, legal persons and other organizations," SPC vice-president Xi Xiaoming told a press conference yesterday in Beijing.

However, local protectionism is sometimes said to influence an independent and fair judgment, as local governments are in fact superiors of local courts in various aspects such as financial support and personnel management.

"A county court can hardly try the county government" has been a popular phrase in administrative trials.

The designated trials are designed to overcome such problems brought by local protectionism.

After being designated to a different court, judges and courts will at least practice their judicial power without direct pressure and intervention from local authorities, Xi said.

(China Daily January 17, 2008)