On September 2, 2014, the Supreme People’s Court held a seminar with the theme of “playing the role of maritime judiciary, serving and protecting national maritime strategy” and with a view to celebrating the 30^th anniversary of China Maritime trial. The Vice-Chairperson of the National People's Congress (NPC) Wan E’xiang and the President of the Supreme People’s Court Zhou Qiang attended the seminar and gave speeches.

    The vice chairperson of the NPC Wan E’xiang pointed out that over the past 30 years of reform, development and stability of the maritime courts of our state has improved rapidly and established a set of maritime judicial systems whose jurisdiction can cross administrative regions. Featuring the “five high-levelness”, namely, high level of judicial protection system, high quality of judges, high level of jurisdiction, high level of trial specialization and high level of recognition at home and abroad, the maritime trial team have fairly and effectively handled a lot of maritime cases in accordance with laws and provided strong judicial protection for the national reform and opening up, shipping trade and scientific development of maritime economy. We need to speed up cultivation of international maritime judicial talents and focus on developing their comprehensive capabilities of maintaining national maritime sovereignty, handling major international maritime matters and participating in formulation of international maritime conventions and rules in order to ensure that the maritime trial team can not only handle cases in a fair and highly efficient way, but also step forward bravely to protect major interests of our state under key circumstances.

    The president of the Supreme People’s Court Zhou Qiang emphasizes that we need to vigorously implement the strategy of high-quality maritime trials and further strength international credibility of maritime trials. We need to adhere to those value orientations that are widely accepted at home and abroad and conducive to the development of international shipping trade and correctly use those international treaties joined by our state as well as laws of our state in order to effectively maintain international shipping and trade order. We need to stick to the principle of open, fair and highly-efficient trial, make efforts to improve the quality of trials and judgment documents and handle the relationship between equal protection of lawful rights and interests of domestic and foreign parties and promotion of development of foreign trade and shipping undertakings in accordance with laws and fairly handle foreign-related maritime cases in order to build a good image of China’s judiciary. We should also make good use of internet ideas to put forward innovation of maritime and judicial system and mechanism, promote application of information technology in an all-round way and make efforts to realize modernization of maritime trials as well as demonstrate China’s modern judicial civilization to the whole world.

    The feature film 30 years of China Maritime Trials was played during the seminar. Such a film has reviewed the 30-year history of China Maritime Trials and summarized the achievements and experiences over the past 30 years.

    The President of Guangzhou Maritime Court Zhong Jianping, acting as the sole representative of the ten maritime courts across the state, delivered a keynote speech titled “strict performance of the power and authority entitled by constitution and laws and fair trials of foreign-related maritime cases in order to build a good image of our national judiciary”.

    The Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court He Rong, Professional Justice Committee Liu Guixiang, Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council Yuan Shuhong, former Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court Li Guoguang attended the meeting. Besides, persons in charge from relevant authorities such as the Law Committee of the Standing Committee of NPC, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Communications, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Commerce and State Oceanography Bureau, experts and scholars from related colleges and universities and Industry Associations, representatives from shipping and insurance enterprises, special supervisors and advisory representatives from the Supreme People’s Court, persons in charge of related departments from the Supreme People’s Court, those from some High People’s Courts and the ten maritime courts across the state joined the meeting as well.