Keeping with my recent litigation theme is this nugget from Xinhua:

A senior official of the Communist Party of China on Wednesday urged relevant departments to clear up long-delayed court verdicts to maintain social stability in face of the global financial crisis.

"To execute the verdicts is in urgent demand for tackling the global financial crisis and to boost economic development," said Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at a tele-conference.

It will also help ease social conflicts and maintain social stability, Zhou said.

If cases were delayed because the verdicts were not appropriate, they should be corrected first, he noted.

Officials found to be corrupt will be severely punished, he said.

China started an eight-month campaign Wednesday to clear up a backlog of court verdicts, according to Wang Shengjun, President of China’s Supreme People’s Court.

I’m not really sure what to make of this. In years past, verdicts were generally not seen as upholding the spirit of the "Harmonious Society" and were, in fact, often discouraged in favor of settlements. In some cases, judges pushed attorneys very hard indeed to ensure that settlements were reached. This resulted in quite a backlog in some courts, where judges were willing to let their dockets fill up with cases that were "pending" while the parties were given lots of time to settle.

The Xinhua article here uses "execution of verdicts," but I wonder whether we are really talking about verdicts or settlements, or perhaps both. Big difference.