China Is Taking Legal Secrecy to Uninvestible Levels
Foreign shareholders are already alarmed by Beijing’s revised anti-espionage law and the dwindling access to information. This will only darken sentiment.
The open-source database’s days may be numbered.
Source: AFP/Getty Images
For a country known for its penchant for secrecy, China Judgments Online is definitely an anomaly. It contains more than 140 million verdicts from over 3,500 courts and is ostensibly accessible to visitors all over the world. Since the Supreme People’s Court launched the platform in 2013, the searchable database has become a gold mine of information for lawyers, businesspeople, scholars, and anyone interested in the administration of justice.
But even such limited transparency appears too much for President Xi Jinping. Although the database was established shortly after he came to power, the government has recently unveiled measures foreshadowing its likely demise in the near future. Foreign investors have every reason to be alarmed.