It’s not that difficult getting into court in China. Lots of courts, lots of judges to choose from (forum shopping is quite easy here). It’s much tougher to actually go through the entire process and get a favorable judgment, depending on who you are.

But that’s the easy part. Taking that court judgment and trying to do something with it (i.e., getting the other guy to pay you) is the most difficult part of the entire process.

What can go wrong? Here are just a few common problems you might face:

1) Defendant hides/transfers assets – easy to do if defendant is part of a group company. More frequent use of asset preservation during the litigation process is helping with this problem.

2) Political connections – that local court that’s in charge of enforcing the judgment may have a very good relationship with the defendant.

3) Local protectionism – defendant might have strong local ties, might be a big employer/taxpayer, etc.

4) Corruption – I don’t need to tell you what this means. Everyone has their price.

5) Bureaucracy – Local court cannot secure the cooperation of other government agencies necessary to enforce judgment.

The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) and the Ministry of Justice have been working on all these problems, but the latest news concerns #5. Here’s the scoop:

China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) has formed a national network with 19 central organizations, including the People’s Bank of China and the State Administration of Taxation, to ensure that court decisions are enforced in a timely manner.

While announcing the establishment of the network at a press conference held in Beijing Tuesday, SPC also released a document entitled “Opinions Pertaining to Issues in Building and Improving Linked Enforcement Mechanism.”

Good deal for two reasons. First, this is a formal acknowledgment of the problem, which is always the initial step in solving it:

My name is [insert name of local court here], and I have a substance abuse problem with enforcing judgments.

Second, a team has been put together to address the problem, and the choice of who should go on that team must have required at least some thinking about how to address this issue. Someone at the SPC did not pull a 25-page document like this out of their ass a day before it was released. Yes, I’m setting the bar low here; I’m trying to emphasize the positive as much as possible (the cynic in me expresses himself below after this next quote).

SPC spokesman Sun Jungong said these organizations should actively assist courts in enforcing court decisions, which had previously not always been done in a timely manner thus causing public complaints.

He said those who hinder or intervene in the enforcement of court decisions would be subject to investigation.

The assistance provided by relevant departments, such as local law-making and political advisory bodies, should be considered in assessing local governments’ performance with regard to their “comprehensive management of social security,” he said.

OK, it’s just a first step. As I hopefully made clear above, this is primarily a problem at the local level, so getting SAIC or NDRC involved (these are State-level institutions) does not fix anything unless those bodies are then able to push responsibility downwards to their counterparts at the grassroots level.

I applaud the effort, but I’ll remain a cynic until I see some results. It’s easy for SAIC to write a memo to local AIC chiefs, encouraging them to cooperate with courts and other agency officials. However, that local AIC official is the one who has to deal with political pressure from municipal and business leaders in his community.

I’m interested to hear what local litigators think about this.

Note: none of this stuff applies to anyone out there holding onto a foreign court judgment. If you have one of those and want to enforce it in China, you’re pretty much shit out of luck. Foreign arbitration awards can be enforced here, but not court judgments. Sorry.