Court pushes for more mediation

Mediation should be further promoted to resolve civil cases involving marriage, family inheritance, housing, and disputes among neighbors, a senior official with the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said yesterday.

"We want to apply such a practice to more civil cases to resolve disputes instead of litigation," Shen Deyong, executive vice-president of the SPC, told a symposium in Beijing yesterday.

Since June this year, mandatory mediation has been used in courts on a trial bases in the provinces and municipalities of Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, Hebei, Gansu, Chongqing and Shanghai.