Chinese courts will continue to push to make court information more accessible to people, the spokesman for China's top court said on Thursday as contact information for the country's court system was rolled out online.

Starting on Thursday, people can find basic information about 3,496 Chinese courts, including names, addresses and phone numbers, on Baidu Map.

"It means all the Chinese courts, except the military ones, can be found in yellow on the blue map when people surf the Internet," said Sun Jungong, spokesman for the Supreme People's Court.

It took the top court about 30 days to collect, integrate and publish basic information about the courts, Sun said, adding that the map will be updated regularly.

"With this map, we let people find where the court they want to go is located, telling them how and when the court was established and who the court's president is. It aims to help them easily understand appeal procedures and reduce the burden of a lawsuit," he said.

The top court will improve the map by adding more messages, such as any big or influential cases a court is hearing. All this will help people better understand the workings of the courts, Sun said.

Information about the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, the first IP tribunal established at the beginning of November, is also included on the map, he said.

It is not the first time that Chinese courts have made their work transparent via the Internet. In November 2013, the top court launched its micro blog on Sina Weibo. So far, it has made more than 3,000 postings and attracted almost 9.4 million followers.

By early last month, 3,636 court micro blog accounts have been added to the platform, meaning more than 90 percent of Chinese courts have the means to interact with the public via the service, according to Sina.

Cao Zenghui, an employee responsible for the platform, said that the number of court micro blogs has been rapidly rising, and now includes courts in Henan, Sichuan, Shandong and Hebei provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. "In addition, showing trials via micro blog has become routine," he said.

caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/05/2014 page4)