Hearings looking to expand in scope

More kinds of civil and commercial cases are expected to be heard at special courts outside affected jurisdictions to reduce possible interference.

As pilot programs for judicial reform forwarded by the central leadership in 2013, the Beijing No 4 Intermediate People's Court and Shanghai No 3 Intermediate People's Court deal mainly with administrative disputes in which governments are named as defendants.

Wu Zaicun, president of the Beijing court, said that they had handled the capital's first environmental public interest litigation.