On the morning of January 8, the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People’s Court, in collaboration with the Provincial Department of Justice, held a press conference. Once again, the judicial and administrative sectors joined forces to tackle the long-standing challenge of forensic expertise that has plagued the judiciary. At the press conference, the Zhejiang High Court released the “Minutes on Further Standardizing Certain Issues Related to Forensic Expertise in Civil Litigation” (hereinafter referred to as the “Minutes”), recently formulated and issued by the court. The “Minutes” aim to further standardize the procedures for commissioning forensic examinations, strengthen scrutiny of repeated expert appraisals, enhance the quality and efficiency of forensic expertise, and effectively boost public trust in the judicial system.
   In professional matters, the expert witness is referred to as the “scientific judge” of the case facts.
A civil loan dispute between Xing and Pan reached a certain court in Zhejiang. Pan glared angrily at the promissory note that Xing had submitted to the court, firmly insisting that both the character “four” in the sum of 410,000 yuan and the digit “4” in the Arabic numeral “410,000” had been altered after the fact. He claimed that he had only borrowed 110,000 yuan.
　　Was the amount 110,000 or 410,000? Pan requested an expert appraisal. After the appraisal agency organized a consultation among appraisers, it was discovered that the paper at the place where the character “肆” appeared in the capitalized amount had been damaged. When examined under a document examination device, the fluorescent reaction of the “∠” strokes in the characters “肆” and “4” within the phrase “肆拾壹万元” was entirely different from that of the other handwriting on the promissory note.
　　The truth has come to light, and the judge has accepted the expert opinion. Since an expert examination is an “evidentiary investigation activity” in which an expert, following statutory procedures and employing scientific techniques or specialized knowledge, identifies and evaluates specialized issues involved in a dispute and provides an opinion, experts are accordingly referred to as “scientific judges.”
“Expert opinions play an important role in civil litigation,” said Ye Xiangyang, Deputy Chief Judge of the First Civil Division of the Zhejiang High People’s Court. Since 2010, courts across the province have collectively accepted 2.558 million civil and commercial cases and entrusted external judicial appraisals in 127,000 cases. Each year, the number of judicial appraisals accounts for roughly 5% of all civil and commercial cases.
Cases involving forensic appraisals often deal with specialized issues beyond the scope of law. The facts of these cases tend to be relatively complex and difficult to ascertain, and the parties involved frequently dispute key factual matters. As a result, courts must entrust external appraisal institutions to clarify the truth. If a party disagrees with the initial appraisal, they may request a second—or even multiple—appraisals. This not only complicates the judicial proceedings and increases the difficulty of establishing the facts of the case but also objectively exacerbates the antagonism between the parties, making the case itself increasingly challenging to resolve. According to statistics, the rate of mediation or withdrawal in first-instance civil cases involving appraisals is approximately 45.38%, whereas the mediation or withdrawal rate for all first-instance civil cases in the province during the same period stands at around 77%.
　　 Tighten controls on imports and say “no” to “scalpers” disrupting the market.
　　Since the implementation of the socialization reform of forensic expertise in 2005, the previous practice of judicial organs conducting and reviewing expert appraisals internally has been transformed. However, the inherent contradiction between the neutrality that appraisal institutions should uphold and their tendency toward profit-seeking under the influence of market mechanisms has gradually become apparent. In civil litigation, phenomena such as repeated appraisals, prolonged appraisal periods, and insufficiently reasoned appraisal opinions have plagued trials for years, hindering the smooth progress of civil proceedings and casting doubt on the credibility of both appraisal opinions and court judgments among the parties involved.
　　At the 2014 National People's Congress, Qi Qi, President of the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People's Court, put forward a proposal as a delegate to “further strengthen and standardize forensic identification work.” In 2014, the Zhejiang Provincial Political and Legal Work Conference also identified resolving issues related to litigation-related forensic examinations as a key priority.
　　A survey conducted by the Zhejiang High People's Court found that, during the trial process, cases involving external judicial appraisals are predominantly disputes over personal injury compensation, accounting for nearly 60%. Specifically, disputes over liability in motor vehicle traffic accidents account for nearly half of all appraisal cases, at 47.63%. Meanwhile, the proportion of pre-litigation unilateral appraisals in personal injury compensation disputes is relatively high. However, because these unilateral appraisals are conducted without the participation of the opposing party and lack oversight from the other side, their credibility tends to be lower, leading to greater disputes between the parties during litigation and a relatively low rate of acceptance in court proceedings.
　　This is closely related to the frequent involvement of “scalpers” in personal injury dispute cases. Particularly in road traffic accident disputes, “scalpers” first buy out the victim’s compensation claim and then, through falsification, improper collusion, or even threatening appraisal institutions, obtain favorable appraisal opinions. They then demand exorbitant compensation amounts.
　　In May 2012, after Hou was injured in a traffic accident, he encountered Zhang—a “judicial scalper”—leading to a tragic incident. While Hou was hospitalized, Zhang showed up at his door offering to handle the claim on his behalf: Zhang would advance the litigation-related expenses and then take 50 percent of any compensation awarded. Hou handed over all evidence materials related to the case as well as his ID card to Zhang. Following an expert appraisal, Hou was determined to have a Grade-9 disability. The court ruled that the defendant must pay nearly 130,000 yuan in compensation; after deducting relevant expenses, Hou was left with a remaining sum of 80,000 yuan. When Hou learned that he had actually received only 40,000 yuan, in January 2013 he went to the kindergarten where Zhang’s child attended, intending to blackmail Zhang. However, his whereabouts were discovered, and when he was confronted, Hou fatally stabbed the kindergarten principal. Ultimately, Hou was convicted of intentional injury and sentenced to prison.
　　Standardizing pre-litigation appraisals and curbing the involvement of “scalpers” have become urgent priorities in regulating appraisal-related work in civil litigation. To this end, the "Minutes" strongly promote the model of Road Traffic Accident Mediation Centers, encouraging parties involved in traffic accidents to immediately turn to these centers upon occurrence of an accident, thus eliminating the need to seek assistance from scalpers and effectively cutting off the space for scalpers to enter the dispute resolution process at its very source. When entrusting external appraisals, Mediation Centers can leverage the "Zhejiang Courts External Commissioning Agency Information Platform" to prevent new vulnerabilities from emerging in the commissioning process. Furthermore, it is explicitly stated that pre-litigation appraisals commissioned by Mediation Centers carry the same evidentiary force as judicial appraisals commissioned by courts.
　　Meanwhile, the “Minutes” refine the review criteria for pre-litigation unilateral expert appraisals and emphasize that the costs of such pre-litigation unilateral appraisals shall be borne by the party commissioning the appraisal. By clarifying the allocation of these costs, the document aims to encourage a reduction in self-commissioned appraisals and curb the involvement of unscrupulous “appraisal brokers.”
　　 Bilateral constraints solve the problem of excessively long review periods.
　　The investigation found that some parties submit requests for expert appraisal rather arbitrarily, with vague and general content—and some even use expert appraisals to delay litigation. Some court personnel fail to conduct the necessary review of parties’ requests for expert appraisal, particularly those for re-appraisal, and sometimes even comply with every request submitted. Moreover, the appraisal periods are excessively long, thereby undermining the efficiency of judicial proceedings.
　　In July 2014, a survey of cases pending for more than 18 months across all courts in Zhejiang Province revealed that nearly two-thirds involved issues related to expert appraisals. Among the cases involving appraisals in 2013, the average number of days deducted from the statutory trial period due to appraisal procedures was 81.34 days, with the longest appraisal taking as long as 500 days. With regard to specific types of appraisals, those outside the three major categories—such as medical malpractice assessments and construction cost appraisals—tended to take longer; by contrast, appraisals in personal injury compensation disputes were relatively shorter, though still lasting around 70 days. To address these issues, the "Minutes" takes a two-pronged approach, strengthening bilateral oversight between courts and appraisal institutions to enhance the efficiency of judicial appraisals. Courts have established an internal management system for nodes related to external entrustments of judicial appraisals. “By fully leveraging the existing management system for trial information flows and integrating appraisal-entrustment nodes into it, we can automatically calculate the time elapsed between each node. This makes the impact of each stage on trial efficiency clearly visible and ensures that responsibilities for each stage are explicitly traceable. As a result, the entire appraisal-entrustment process is brought under strict supervision, encouraging court trial departments and judicial technical management personnel to proactively speed up the process and effectively prevent intentional delays,” said Rao Wenjun, Director of the Judicial Appraisal Division of the Zhejiang High People’s Court. Currently, some courts in Ningbo and Jinhua have already implemented this node-based management system for external appraisal and assessment entrustments, achieving positive results. In the first half of this year, all courts across the province will adopt this unified approach.
　　With regard to appraisal agencies, the “Minutes” explicitly require that when commissioning an appraisal, a specific appraisal deadline must be set. If an appraisal agency exceeds the deadline or requests an extension, it must provide a clear explanation of the reasons; otherwise, it will face adverse consequences. The “Minutes” also impose limits on the number of times an appraisal agency can request additional materials, thereby preventing such agencies from using the request for supplementary materials as a pretext to delay the appraisal process.
　　 Fully ensure and eliminate any concerns about expert witnesses appearing in court.
　　In judicial practice, the rate of expert witnesses appearing in court is low. On the one hand, parties often lack the ability to effectively challenge expert opinions, and such challenges tend to be merely formalistic, yielding limited results and directly undermining their willingness to request that expert witnesses appear in court. On the other hand, expert witnesses’ professional competence is not adequately respected, and their personal safety is not sufficiently protected, causing them to hesitate about appearing in court. According to incomplete statistics, the rate of expert witnesses appearing in court for forensic examinations commissioned by courts across the province is less than 1%. To enable parties to have their objections to expert opinions more effectively addressed through methods such as having expert witnesses testify in court, the “Minutes” stipulate that dedicated seating areas for expert witnesses should be set up in courtrooms, along with separate waiting zones clearly separated from those for the parties. Expert witnesses will be allowed to provide prepared responses during court proceedings; any objections raised by the parties that were not included in their initial applications may be submitted by the expert witness in written form after the hearing. Once an expert witness has completed testimony, they may leave the courtroom ahead of schedule in accordance with established procedures. If it is genuinely difficult for an expert witness to appear in court, they may undergo cross-examination at a pre-trial conference or via remote video conferencing. These multiple measures are designed to boost expert witnesses’ willingness to appear in court and enhance the effectiveness of their testimony.
　　 Openly available online, creating a fully transparent platform for commissioned appraisals.
　　During the survey, the parties involved generally reported that they knew very little about the appraisal institutions, which affected their choice of such institutions and led to a lack of openness and transparency in the appointment of appraisers. To address this issue, the “Minutes” specifically emphasize the need to make full use of the “Zhejiang Courts’ Information Platform for External Appraisal Institutions.” Except when the parties unanimously agree on an appraisal institution, any appraisal institution designated by the court must be selected through the platform via a computerized, random “lottery” process.
　　In 2014, the Zhejiang High People's Court established and began using this information platform, leveraging the internet to publicly disclose on the Zhejiang Legal Information Network information related to forensic appraisal, assessment, and auction institutions voluntarily accepted by courts upon their commission. www.zjsfgkw.cn A dedicated section will be established to publish information that is completely open and transparent, accessible for all internet users to query.
　　This year, the Zhejiang High People’s Court will also consider implementing a system under which forensic examination and appraisal documents commissioned by the courts are promptly posted online, making the appraisal opinions publicly available to the general public and subjecting them to oversight by society at large. This move is intended to compel appraisal institutions to standardize their practices, enhance the accuracy of their appraisal opinions, and address the current widespread issue of insufficiently detailed reasoning in appraisal reports.
   Strengthen regulation to adapt to a trial-centered approach.
Pan Guangjun, Director of the Judicial Appraisal Administration Division of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Justice, introduced that the province has implemented a strict institutional approval system. Over the past six years, the number of forensic appraisal institutions under the administration of the Department of Justice—engaged in three major categories of forensic appraisal services—has remained stable at 53. Currently, there are 723 forensic appraisers in the province.
It is understood that judicial appraisals administered by the Provincial Department of Justice account for seven to eight tenths of all appraisals conducted in litigation proceedings. These appraisals fall into three major categories—forensic medicine, physical evidence, and audio-visual materials—and further subcategories totaling nine in all. Other types of appraisals frequently involved in litigation proceedings, such as construction cost assessments, product quality evaluations, forensic accounting, and technical appraisals related to medical malpractice and medical accidents conducted by medical associations, are not under the jurisdiction of the Provincial Department of Justice.
To promote the transformation and upgrading of the forensic science industry, since 2012, forensic institutions across the province have invested a total of 28.5374 million yuan in procuring laboratory instruments and equipment, establishing 36 laboratories covering 7 different categories of forensic examinations. A quality management system certified and accredited has been introduced, and all 53 forensic institutions in the province have established quality management systems; among them, 33 have obtained provincial-level accreditation. Since 2008, Zhejiang has issued more than 30 regulatory documents governing forensic science. The implementation of the "Regulations on the Administration of Forensic Science in Zhejiang Province" in 2009 marked the initial establishment of Zhejiang's comprehensive system for managing forensic science. In 2014, the Provincial Department of Justice successively issued four normative documents covering the standardization of forensic science administration, strengthening internal management evaluations of forensic institutions, disciplinary measures for violations in forensic practice, and legal aid for forensic services.
　　Under China’s current forensic appraisal management system, although courts are the ultimate users of forensic appraisal opinions, they are not authorized to supervise and manage appraisal institutions. Meanwhile, the regulatory authorities responsible for appraisal institutions, lacking insight into the quality of appraisal products, are unable to effectively oversee these institutions. To address this issue, the “Minutes” specifically designed a feedback form for forensic appraisals, which has been directly integrated into the courts’ trial information systems. Every case involving an appraisal commissioned by the court must have its final outcome accompanied by completion of this feedback form, thereby generating a comprehensive “user experience report.” This report will be regularly submitted to the regulatory authorities overseeing appraisal institutions, enabling them to evaluate and regulate these institutions in a more objective and thorough manner, ultimately encouraging appraisal institutions to enhance the quality of their appraisal opinions.
　　“Guided by the rule of law and adapting to the requirements of the litigation system reform centered on trials, we will strengthen communication and collaboration with the courts and refine the operational mechanisms that seamlessly link judicial appraisal management with trial procedures,” said Pan Guangjun. The provincial judicial administration departments will promptly inform their counterparts at the court level about any changes, penalties, or other relevant information concerning judicial appraisal institutions and judicial appraisers. In turn, the courts will promptly notify their respective judicial administration departments of cases where they do not accept appraisal opinions, instances of false or erroneous appraisal opinions, as well as details regarding the appearance of judicial appraisers in court and any violations of regulations or disciplinary infractions. These notifications serve as crucial bases for assessing and evaluating the qualifications of judicial appraisal institutions, conducting performance evaluations, and gauging the integrity of judicial appraisers. The interaction between courts and judicial administration departments represents the optimal approach for addressing the current challenges facing judicial appraisals.

　　Attachment 1: Speech by Rao Wenjun, Director of the Forensic Expertise Division of the Zhejiang High People’s Court, at the Press Conference on Standardizing Forensic Expertise in Civil Litigation Held by the Zhejiang High People’s Court and the Provincial Department of Justice.

　　Attachment 2: Speech by Pan Guangjun, Director of the Judicial Appraisal Administration Division of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Justice, at the Press Conference on Standardizing Judicial Appraisal Work in Civil Litigation Held by the Zhejiang Higher People’s Court and the Provincial Department of Justice.

　　Attachment 3： Speech by Ye Xiangyang, Deputy Chief Judge of the First Civil Division of the Zhejiang Provincial High People’s Court, at the Press Conference on Standardizing Expert Appraisal Work in Civil Litigation Held by the Zhejiang Provincial High People’s Court and the Provincial Department of Justice.