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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Administrative Litigation in China: Assessing the Chief
Officials’Appearance System
Tianhao Chen1, Wei Xu2and Xiaohong Yu3
1
School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China,
2
School of Public Policy and Management,
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and
3
Department of Political Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Corresponding author: Xiaohong Yu; Email: xyu@tsinghua.edu.cn
Abstract
The Chief Officials’Appearance System (COAS), introduced in 2015, requires government leaders to
appear in court and explain their actions. Unlike other post-2014 legal reforms aimed at reducing political
influence in administrative litigation, the COAS uniquely actively involves political officials. This approach
is based on the belief that increased participation will help officials to gain a better understanding of public
concerns and improve administrative litigation quality. However, few studies have examined the system’s
effectiveness, and existing research relies on anecdotal evidence with limited analysis. To address this gap,
we conducted a systematic empirical inquiry using 1,551 administrative litigation cases filed in a Beijing
local court and extensive field research in 12 other provinces. Contrary to official expectations, we found
the system reproduced the administrative grievances it was tasked with resolving. Moreover, when chief
officials appear in court, administrative litigation is characterized by a renewed triad of apathetic state
agencies, increasingly agitated plaintiffs and strategically empowered courts.
摘摘要要
2015 年引入的行政机关负责人出庭应诉制度(COAS) 要求行政机关负责人在行政诉讼中出庭应
诉。迥异于2014 年后其他旨在减少行政诉讼中政治影响的改革措施，行政应诉制度主动要求行
政官员参加诉讼，认为这将有助于官员更好的理解公众关切，并提升行政诉讼效果。虽然这一制
度引发了普遍的讨论，研究者却对该制度的有效性莫衷一是。既有研究主要依赖文本与个案证
据，为弥补这一不足，我们利用北京某地方法院的1551 起行政诉讼案件进行了系统的实证分析，
并在12 个省份进行了广泛的田野调查。与官方的预期相反，我们发现行政应诉制度再生产了其本
应解决的行政争议。当行政机关负责人出庭时，冷漠的行政机关、日益激动的原告和策略性赋权
的法院共同构成了行政诉讼新三方关系。
Keywords: administrative litigation; Chief Officials’Appearance System; strategic local courts; legal consciousness; dispute
resolution
关关键键词词:行政诉讼;行政机关负责人出庭应诉制度;策略性的地方法院;法律意识;争议解决
In 2015, the revision of the Administrative Litigation Law (ALL) introduced the Chief Officials’
Appearance System (xingzheng jiguan fuzeren chuting yingsu zhidu 行政机关负责人出庭应诉制度,
COAS hereafter). The revised law requires agency leaders, rather than their legal counsel, to appear
in court and defend their administrative actions.
1
The authorities, including the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, the State Council (SC) and the Supreme People’s
Court (SPC), expected the COAS to “enhance the administrative agencies’legal consciousness,
raise the quality of trial and law enforcement, and properly resolve the conflicts between
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London. This is an Open Access article,
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unre-
stricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1 Art. 3, Administrative Litigation Law of the People’s Republic of China (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo xingzheng susong
fa), 1 November 2014.
The China Quarterly (2024), 1–21
doi:10.1017/S0305741024000018
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018 Published online by Cambridge University Press
‘mandarins’(i.e. government officials) and citizens,”thereby improving the effectiveness of admin-
istrative litigation cases (ALCs) in practice.
2
Administrative litigation in China has long been seen as a “frail weapon that [has] failed to
reduce administrative arbitrariness.”
3
This point of view is revealed in previous studies from two
perspectives. First, substantially, the ALL allows only limited litigant rights. For example, the
ALL stipulates that plaintiffs may only challenge concrete rather than abstract administrative acts
and that courts can review only their legality and not propriety.
4
Even after its 2015 revision, the
ALL’s breadth and depth for judicial review improved only modestly.
5
Second, in practice, with
Chinese courts deeply embedded in local politics, the act of pursuing administrative litigation is
often portrayed as an ultimately ineffective endeavour, akin to breaking an egg by throwing it
against a stone.
6
For example, Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li have described how local officials
have pre-empted, derailed or undermined administrative lawsuits, forcing villagers to rally support
from sympathetic elites, mobilize collective appeals or stage public protests in order to obtain
redress for grievances.
7
In sum, scholars opine that ALCs in China are notoriously difficult to
file, adjudicate and enforce, owing to the political embeddedness of the Chinese judicial system.
8
The most recent reforms since the Fourth Plenum of the 18th Party Congress and the 2015 revi-
sion of the ALL are aimed at resolving such political embeddedness, by centralizing the manage-
ment of courts and experimenting with administrative courts. However, some studies have
shown that these reforms have been ineffective at tackling such embeddedness.
9
Chao Ma, Chao-
Yo Cheng and Haibo He, for instance, explore the impact of designated jurisdiction in ALCs.
10
In 2014, the SPC designated that the railway transport courts (RTCs) would accept and hear
ALCs, because they were under the direct administration of the provincial high courts and presum-
ably more independent. Through analysis of 238,000 court decisions in 2015–2019, it was found
that only at the primary level were the RTCs more likely to side with citizens. Such effects became
statistically insignificant in cases against high-level agencies.
11
Nevertheless, other studies reveal a more positive outcome for administrative litigation. For
example, some scholars argue that audacious and reform-minded local courts have strategically
used ALCs as hedges against powerful local governments.
12
With bottom-up judicial innovation,
expanded jurisdiction and coordinated and more enforceable decisions than before, local courts
have become regular and strategic participants in local politics and consequently have enhanced
their status therein.
13
Nonetheless, both groups of studies have empirically engaged with reform
measures that are aimed at fending off the political impacts on ALL operations in China.
The COAS, however, employs a rather different logic. By bringing officials back into administra-
tive litigation, it instead aims to increase political officials’participation. The belief that court
appearances by chief officials can significantly contribute to the resolution of administrative dis-
putes was based, at least in part, on the recognition of agency leaders’disproportionate influence
in shaping and carrying out policies.
14
Sadly, not many studies have evaluated whether such a dif-
ferent logic would, in practice, boost the effectiveness of the ALL in China. Most of these studies are
2 General Office of the CPC Central Committee and General Office of the SC 2006; SPC 2007.
3O’Brien and Li 2004.
4 Finder 1989;Pei1997.
5 He, Haibo 2018.
6 Finder 1989.
7O’Brien and Li 2004.
8Pei1997; He, Haibo 2018.
9 Zhou et al. 2020; Wang, Yuedan 2021; Ma, Cheng and He 2022.
10 Ma, Cheng and He 2022.
11 Ibid.
12 Liebman 2007; He, Xin 2013; Yu, Xiaohong 2014;2021.
13 He, Xin 2013; Yu, Xiaohong 2014;2021; Ng and He 2017.
14 Zhang, Zhiyuan 2014.
2 Tianhao Chen et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018 Published online by Cambridge University Press
based on anecdotal evidence and thus lack explanatory power.
15
The current article aims to provide
one of the first systematic empirical examinations of the COAS. We chose Beijing as the most-likely
case for a systematic analysis. Specifically, we examined 1,551 ALCs that were held in a Beijing court
from 2015 to 2018 and conducted in-depth interviews with judges, administrative officials, plaintiffs
and lawyers. In addition, we also undertook a brief analysis of national ALCs taken from the China
Judicial Politics Database (CJPD) and supplemented this with in-depth interviews in 12 other pro-
vinces and data drawn from internal documents.
Contrary to official expectations, our findings reveal mixed results regarding the impact of the
COAS. On the one hand, the COAS was not well received by either chief officials or plaintiffs. In
Beijing, chief officials appeared in only 62 out of 1,551 relevant cases, mainly to meet evaluation cri-
teria set by their superiors. Moreover, the COAS seemed to generate more grievances than it resolved.
On average, plaintiffs were 5.08 times more likely to appeal to higher courts or file second suits when
chief officials appeared in court. On the other hand, we observed surprisingly impartial and even stra-
tegic responses from the court. Whether chief officials appeared in court or not had no significant
effect on the outcome of judicial decisions. Looking more closely at the officials who took the
stand in Beijing, we found that outgoing officials lost more frequently than their younger and possibly
more promising colleagues. Moreover, the national implementation of the COAS revealed a similar, if
not worse, scenario. By and large, we found that the COAS is characterized by a renewed triad in
ALCs: indifferent state agencies, increasingly agitated plaintiffs and strategic and empowered courts.
Furthermore, the unintended impacts of the COAS carry certain implications. As evidenced in
the subsequent sections, the ineffectiveness of this “Chinese medicine”can be attributed to the
transformed conditions it was originally designed for, particularly heightened legal awareness
among citizens and the strategic empowerment of the courts in China.
16
These altered circum-
stances, as demonstrated by existing research on Chinese administrative litigation, are the outcome
of progressive legal reforms implemented in China over the past four decades.
17
Still water runs
deep, and the perverse impact of the COAS implies that a rule-based approach to dispute resolution
would be a more desirable and effective route than a paternalistic one.
The rest of this paper is organized into seven sections. In the next section, we introduce the
development of the COAS and propose our hypotheses based on the established discussions around
the triad of administrative litigation in China. The third section reports the data and our method-
ology. Subsequently, we explore the impacts of the COAS by examining the triad involved in the
ALCs –that is, the plaintiffs, governments and courts. The article then continues by providing a
preliminary examination of the national implementation of the COAS. Finally, we summarize
our findings and discuss their implications for effectively resolving administrative disputes in
China’s transitional context and suggest an outlook for future research.
The Chief Officials’Appearance System
Institutional background
According to Article 3 of the ALL (2015), “the person in charge of an administrative agency against
which a complaint is filed shall appear in court to respond to the complaint, or, if he or she is
unable to appear in court, authorize a relevant employee of the administrative agency to appear
in court.”This is often referred to as the COAS clause.
Traditionally, administrative agencies have tended to be absent from court hearings in China.
Scholars have argued that the absence of accused agencies has impeded effective communication
15 He, Xin 2013; Li, Huai 2016; Yu, Shaoru 2016; Hong and Huang 2021.
16 Zhang, Zhiyuan 2014; He, Haibo 2018.
17 Liebman 2007; Minzner 2011; Hou and Keith 2012; Ahl 2014; Liebman 2014; Zhang, Taisu, and Ginsburg 2018; Ahl
2019; Wang, Yuedan 2021.
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among parties and left plaintiffs dissatisfied.
18
In response, between the late 1990s and early 2000s,
local courts in the provinces of Shaanxi and Jiangsu recommended that government leaders actively
participate in trials. These early experiments were documented and promoted as effective practice
by the People’s Court Daily, an official media outlet.
19
Subsequently, in 2006 and 2007, the central
authorities, including the CCP Central Committee, the SC and the SPC, acknowledged the benefi-
cial outcomes of this system and decided to implement it nationwide. In 2013, when the National
People’s Congress (NPC) initiated the revision of the ALL, numerous legislators demanded a sum-
mary of the successful local experiences of the COAS and made corresponding revisions to the
ALL.
20
Consequently, in 2015, the COAS was formally written into law.
The SPC soon followed suit and further developed the COAS through a series of judicial interpre-
tations (JIs).
21
These developments can be summarized in four aspects. First, the definition of “chief
officials”was expanded to include not only the principal and deputy chiefs but also individuals who
manage the implementation of the administrative act or who are in charge of such management
work.
22
This expansion is a small concession to busy government leaders in the hope that it will pro-
mote compliance with the COAS. Second, JIs instructed chief officials to show up in four types of
cases: those involving significant public interest, those generating enormous publicity, those poten-
tially leading to mass incidents and those where the court makes such demands in writing.
23
Third, when appearing in court, agency leaders are expected to actively participate in the proceedings
by, for example, “mak[ing] statements and defences, submit[ting] evidence, debat[ing], offer[ing] final
opinions on the case and explain[ing] the regulatory documents serving as the basis”for the case.
24
In
other words, they cannot remain silent in the courtroom. Last, in cases when chief officials fail to
appear, JIs instruct local courts to record officials’absence, issue judicial suggestions to their superiors
and disclose such information to the public.
25
To summarize, the COAS is a multipurpose system
tasked with effectively resolving administrative conflicts, enhancing the awareness and consciousness
of administrative officials, and raising the overall level of law enforcement in China.
Moreover, unlike other legal reforms introduced in China since 2014 that mainly aim to
empower the judicial system and fend off local protectionism,
26
the COAS instead embodies a dras-
tically distinctive logic. It is deeply rooted in China’s paternalistic meritocracy, with competent and
virtuous rules put in place to look after the people’s interests, and the role of citizens confined to
participation and communication.
27
By placing chief officials on the stand, the COAS in effect fur-
ther tilts unbalanced suits between citizens and “mandarins.”The expectation that court appear-
ances by chief officials would substantially help to resolve administrative disputes at least
partially dwelt on agency leaders’undue influence in policymaking and implementation.
28
Existing studies on the COAS have predominantly relied on anecdotal evidence and focus on the
appearance rate of officials.
29
However, by using anecdotal evidence, these studies have failed to
18 Li, Huai 2016. According to Arendt 1990 and Hol 2005, a party in court is not present as a private person but as a public
person playing the role of a legal figure. Appearance in the court, with its procedural setting, “offers conflicting parties
the space to fight out their differences in a controlled manner”Hol (2005, 46). The rules of the game consequently guar-
antee that the conflict will be played out fairly with similar weapons. The absence of one party from the scene, therefore,
entirely defeats the theatrical effect of a modern court system.
19 Liu and Zhu 2003.
20 ALO 2015, 421.
21 SPC 2015;2018;2020.
22 Art. 128, SPC 2018; Art. 2, SPC 2020.
23 Art. 129, SPC 2018; Art. 4, SPC 2020.
24 Art. 11, SPC 2020.
25 Art. 129, SPC 2018; Arts. 12 and 14, SPC 2020.
26 Zhou et al. 2020; Wang, Yuedan 2021; Ma, Cheng and He 2022.
27 Shi and Lu 2010; Shin 2012; Lu, Jie, and Shi 2015.
28 Zhang, Zhiyuan 2014; He, Haibo 2018.
29 He, Xin 2013; Li, Huai 2016; Yu, Shaoru 2016; Hong and Huang 2021.
4 Tianhao Chen et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018 Published online by Cambridge University Press
generate a systematic evaluation on the effectiveness of the COAS. The two major studies that have
employed large data sets again mainly focus on the appearance rate.
30
Nevertheless, as illustrated
above, existing studies of the ALL, along with the legislators’expectations, reveal that using the appear-
ance rate is simply insufficient to testify to the effectiveness of the COAS in practice, as administrative
litigation itself involves not only the necessary participation of governmental officials but also that of
judges and ordinary citizens. Thus, this article aims to provide a more comprehensive and systematic
examination of the COAS by looking at not only the appearance rate of officials but also court
judgments and considers whether the system can effectively resolve citizens’grievances.
Theory and hypotheses
With the balance between parties interrupted by the appearance of chief officials in line with the
COAS, what might happen in ALCs in China? How effective is COAS in resolving administrative
conflicts in practice? This study aims to examine the profound impact of the COAS on the triad
of ALCs –namely, the plaintiffs, accused administrative agencies and courts. Incorporating findings
from previous studies on administrative litigation in China, we propose three hypotheses regarding
the abovementioned questions.
First, from the plaintiff’s perspective, does a court appearance by a chief official lead to a better
resolution of administrative disputes? Advocates of the COAS claim that when chief officials directly
engage with ALCs, the plaintiffs should at least be psychologically appeased, as they can finally meet
the agency leaders in person.
31
Accordingly, plaintiffs should accept court decisions and be less
likely to appeal. However, sceptics note that when chief officials appear in court defiantly, ordinary
citizens may be further agitated and become more inclined to appeal.
32
Thus, we test the following
opposing hypotheses.
H1a: When chief officials take the stand, the plaintiff will be less likely to appeal or file a new suit
over the same issue.
H1b: When chief officials take the stand, the plaintiff will be more likely to appeal or file a new suit
over the same issue.
Second, from the perspective of administrative agencies, do court appearances by chief officials
lead to more lawful administrative actions? Advocates argue that the system is instrumental in
improving the legal consciousness of both chief officials and administrative staff. When chief offi-
cials show up in court, the agency as a whole may recognize the importance of laws and will operate
more in compliance than they would otherwise.
33
Consequently, the COAS could lead to fewer
ALCs over time. Moreover, better administrative performance could bode well for administrative
agencies in courts. Plaintiff claims with merit would be settled through negotiations and therefore
economize court time. Hence, when unsatisfied plaintiffs file complaints, courts have fewer grounds
to affirm their complaints, and the plaintiff success rate declines. However, if the COAS does not
function as designed, we might observe few changes in either the number of ALCs or the win
rates for administrative agencies.
34
30 Li, Huai 2016; Hong and Huang 2021.
31 He, Xin 2013.
32 Li, Huai 2016. Notably, plaintiffs may also resort to extra-legal means to resolve such conflicts, such as mediation and
petitions. See, e.g., Minzner 2006;2011; Wang, Juan 2012; He, Xin, and Feng 2016; Ng and He 2017. We, however,
believe that such practices will not significantly impact our analysis for two reasons. First, we double-checked data
from the CJO, and no chief officials appeared in court hearings in mediated cases. Second, since a reform in 2014, law-
related petitions are no longer accepted by local governments.
33 He, Xin 2013.
34 Yu, Shaoru 2016.
The China Quarterly 5
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H2a: After chief officials appear in court, the number of ALCs will decrease, while the win rate of
administrative agencies will increase.
H2b: After chief officials appear in court, there will be no significant changes in either the number of
ALCs or the win rate of the administrative agencies.
Finally, from the perspective of the court, do the appearances of agency leaders impact judicial
decisions? Advocates of the system argue that it has the potential to enhance court authority. Xin
He, for example, contested that the COAS tilted the balance of power towards the courts, as judges
took the lead and chief officials served supporting roles.
35
With enhanced authority, judges would
be at liberty to follow the law to the letter and rule accordingly. Their decisions would not be
affected by whether chief officials took the stand. Conversely, others have argued that judges’
face-to-face interaction with chief officials, often with higher ranks, would create even greater
opportunity for administrative interference.
36
This would increase the likelihood of favourable rul-
ings for administrative agencies.
H3a: In cases where chief officials appear in courts, the court’s decisions are no different from when
chief officials do not take the stand.
H3b: In cases where chief officials appear in courts, the courts will be more likely to rule in favour of
administrative agencies.
Research Design
To examine the aforementioned hypotheses, the present study combines a detailed case study of the
COAS practices in a Beijing local court as the most-likely case and a preliminary analysis of the
national implementation of the COAS. Broadly speaking, we employ quantitative and qualitative
data to assess the COAS’s impacts on the ALC triad.
Beijing as the most-likely case
We examine the COAS in Beijing as the most-likely case, and its design adheres to the principle of
inverse Sinatra inference, which suggests that if the system fails there, it will fail anywhere.
37
As the
capital city, Beijing enjoys considerable geographical advantages, and its courts have played a key
role in China’s legal reforms. Specifically, prior studies have noted that the impact of administrative
litigation is shaped by the level of economic development, local legal environment and judicial per-
formance in the designated locality.
38
As shown in Figure 1, according to economic development, as
measured in GDP per capita, judicial transparency, as measured in the number of ALCs published,
and legal environment ranking, Beijing constitutes one of the best scenarios for developing admin-
istrative litigation (see also Table A1 in the online Appendix).
For ALC disposition, as shown in Figure 2, between 1988 and 2016, the national average plaintiff
win rate was 14.8 per cent, fluctuating between a high of 23.1 per cent (in 1992) and a low of 7.7 per
cent (in 2012).
39
From 2013 to 2016, plaintiffs in Beijing prevailed in ALCs at roughly the same rate
(11.9 per cent) as those nationwide (11.7 per cent).
35 He, Xin 2013.
36 Yu, Shaoru 2016; Hong and Huang 2021.
37 Levy 2008.
38 Pei 1997;O’Brien and Li 2004; Li, Ji 2013; Ng and He 2017.
39 As noted by scholars, a considerable proportion of plaintiffs withdrew their cases, and some obtained the desired judicial
relief. Pei 1997 and Peerenboom 2008 therefore estimate that the plaintiffs’actual winning rate may be more than 30%.
The odds of plaintiffs in China prevailing are significantly higher than those of plaintiffs in other countries, such as the
US and Japan.
6 Tianhao Chen et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018 Published online by Cambridge University Press
We further limit our analysis to ALCs against district-level governments in Beijing for two rea-
sons. First, since the most recent judicial reform, all ALCs against district-level governments in
Beijing are now under the jurisdiction of one court. Analysing these cases exclusively enables us
to control court-level variation. Second, we reasonably expect the court appearance of district-level
officials to have a greater impact than the appearance of officials at other levels, as higher-level gov-
ernments enjoy greater authority and greater public trust in general.
40
This is consistent with the
research design of a most-likely case.
We employed two sets of original data from Beijing: judgments downloaded from China
Judgments Online (CJO), the official publishing platform for court documents, and interviews
with plaintiffs, judges, government officials and lawyers. First, we manually compiled a database
of 1,551 cases filed against district-level governments in Beijing from 2015 to 2018 (COAS
Databank). Judges confirmed in interviews that they released all cases online, and our case study
is therefore exempted from the missingness issue that has plagued most studies using CJO
data.
41
Based on logistic models, we assess the effect of the COAS in Beijing on dispute resolution
and case outcomes and report the empirical results in the later sections.
42
Second, we conducted
Figure 1. Regional Distribution of Published ALCs, GDP per Capita, and Legal Environment Ranking in 2016
Sources: Data regarding the number of ALCs were retrieved from China Judgements Online (https://wenshu.court.gov.cn). Data on GDP
per capita were collected from the China Statistical Yearbook 2017. Data on legal environment ranking were collected from the 2017
“Report of the NERI index of marketization of China’s provinces.”
Notes: Circle size represents the legal environment ranking: the higher the ranking, the larger the circle. Beijing is ranked second out of
31 provinces.
40 O’Brien and Li 2004; Li, Lianjiang 2004.
41 Ma, Yu and He 2016; Liebman et al. 2020; interview with judge, Beijing, July 2020.
42 See online Appendix C for the empirical strategy, model specification, and descriptive statistics.
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Figure 2. Number of ALCs and Plaintiff Win Rate in China and Beijing, 1988–2018
Source: Zhongguo falü nianjian (Law Yearbook of China), various years.
Notes: Only in four years (2013–2016) did the authorities report the win rates of plaintiffs in ALCs in Beijing. Please refer to Appendix B for the calculation of the plaintiff win rate and the original data. Since
2017, the Law Yearbook of China no longer reports the case disposition of ALCs.
8 Tianhao Chen et al.
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semi-structured interviews in Beijing from 2019 to 2022. In total, we interviewed 11 judges, three
government officials, one plaintiff and five lawyers. To increase the credibility of our findings, we
also triangulated the interview data with related internal documents and news reports.
Examining the national picture
In addition, to determine if the significance of our findings, derived from the Beijing case analysis, can
be corroborated at the national level, we also look into the relevant national data. We sourced the
national data from two different channels: ALCs from the CJPD and interviews in 12 representative
provinces, as well as some internal documents. First, we pulled all relevant ALCs from CJPD using
syntactic rules. Owing to the unsolvable anti-crawling techniques of the CJO, the CJPD contains
approximately 70 per cent of all published cases but is nevertheless one of the most comprehensive
databases of Chinese judicial decisions.
43
Second, we conducted interviews with judges, officials
and plaintiffs in 12 other provinces: Zhejiang, Henan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Guangdong,
Qinghai, Shaanxi, Tianjin, Liaoning, Hebei and Xinjiang.
44
These provinces were selected because
they are representative of the broader context. Furthermore, we acquired internal documents from
our interviewees. We combined these two approaches and are confident that examining the national
picture of the COAS provides valuable insights to complement the analysis of the Beijing case.
The COAS and Plaintiffs
Have chief officials’appearances in court helped to resolve administrative disputes? Using Models
1–3, we test H1 in this section and report the empirical results in Table 1. The independent variable
is whether chief officials appeared in court, and the dependent variable is whether the plaintiff
appealed or filed a new suit over the same issue. Models 4–6 test H3, and the dependent variable
is whether the court decided in favour of the plaintiffs. We report only the results for Models 3 and
6 with both time and district fixed effects controlled.
As shown under Model 3, when government officials appeared in court, the plaintiffs were 5.08
times more likely to appeal or file a new suit over the same issue (1/exp (-1.626) = 5.08). This result
is statistically significant at the 1 per cent nominal level. Contrary to our expectation, there seems to
be a reproductive function of the COAS even in the best-case scenario. It seems ironic that a system
introduced to resolve disputes has ended up generating more of them. Through interviews with
judges, lawyers, government officials and plaintiffs, such a “reproductive”function can be under-
stood by the “mismatched”expectations at both ends: pragmatic plaintiffs and indifferent and
sometimes overconfident officials.
First, plaintiffs have grown increasingly pragmatic in ALCs. On the one hand, they have cher-
ished the opportunity to communicate face-to-face with chief officials, expecting it to help address
their grievances. They have felt treated with greater respect and consequently expect more favour-
able results. Judges noted that the plaintiffs “were very excited and thought that they would even-
tually obtain favourable results. Oftentimes plaintiffs were more than eager to communicate with
chief officials …some even approached chief officials immediately after trials, and some officials
were willing to explain to them again about government policies.”
45
On the other hand, plaintiffs’enthusiasm for meeting with chief officials is irrelevant to the deci-
sion of appeal. As one plaintiff noted in an interview, “I prefer higher-level government officials to
appear in courts because they can resolve the problem more efficiently and they would be exempted
from individual interests …If the agency can honour my claims, I’m willing to withdraw.”
46
A
43 Liebman et al. 2020.
44 See Table E1 in the online Appendix for further details.
45 Interview with judges, Beijing, December 2019.
46 Interview with plaintiff, Beijing, April 2022.
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judge further confirmed this pragmatism: “Currently, [the plaintiffs] no longer consider it an hon-
our to shake hands with leaders …what they want is real benefits, such as better compensation in
land acquisition cases.”
47
Another judge even mentioned that in one case, “the plaintiff and his law-
yer refused to meet with chief officials in courts. They feared that they would lose the case if officials
did take the stand.”
48
The judge had to make a concerted effort to persuade the plaintiff to meet the
officials.
Second, chief officials seldom actively participated in trials. Their indifferent and sometimes
overconfident behaviour risked further angering the aggrieved plaintiffs. It has been widely reported
that chief officials remain silent most of the time. As one judge noted, the chief officials “were voice-
less …many remained silent throughout the trial …most of the time, they simply read a prepared
statement at the end of the trial.”
49
The chief officials’caution is understandable: “most district
heads don’t have backgrounds in law. They fear that once they say something wrong, it will be
recorded and used against them in the courtroom.”
50
Some officials made statements that only further agitated the plaintiffs. In one interview, the offi-
cial stated:
Generally speaking, we have done a fair job in terms of “the administrative rule of law.”We are
thoroughly cautious about the entire administrative process, whether in granting permissions
or imposing penalties. You can see from the overall outcomes of our ALCs –we rarely make
mistakes and seldom lose cases, but some plaintiffs are very stubborn. They do not trust us but
simply insist that we are wrong …taking the stand is mostly to satisfy the emotional needs of
the plaintiffs, as we all know they trust their leaders.
51
When pragmatic plaintiffs met with indifferent or even overconfident officials, the COAS gen-
erated more administrative disputes, which was the opposite of what the policy was designed to do.
Table 1. Regression Results
Assessing the Impact on Dispute
Resolution Assessing the Impact on Case Outcome
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6
Chief officials’
appearance
-0.895**
(0.383)
-1.102**
(0.473)
-1.626***
(0.539)
0.902**
(0.456)
0.287
(0.534)
-0.171
(0.667)
Control variables Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Time FE No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
District FE Yes No Yes Yes No Yes
Observations 1,551 1,468 1,468 1,551 1,468 1,468
Pseudo R2 0.123 0.134 0.146 0.224 0.203 0.262
Notes: Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *, ** and *** represent significance at the 10%, 5% and 1% nominal levels, respectively.
Control variables include plaintiff characteristics (whether the plaintiff is an individual or an organization, the number of plaintiffs, whether
they are represented by a lawyer), defendant characteristics (whether there are co-defendants, whether they are represented by a lawyer),
judge characteristics (whether the court head is involved), and case characteristics (number of laws cited, type of case). Please see the online
Appendix D for the full table of regression results.
47 Interview with judge, Beijing, December 2019.
48 Interview with judges, Beijing, March 2022.
49 Interview with judge, Beijing, December 2019.
50 Interview with judge, Beijing, March 2022.
51 Interview with government official, Beijing, January 2020.
10 Tianhao Chen et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018 Published online by Cambridge University Press
The COAS and Administrative Agencies
Have the appearances of officials in court induced any changes in administrative behaviour? No evi-
dence confirmed that the COAS visibly impacted administrative behaviour between 2015 and 2018,
based on Figure 3. The figure shows the number of ALCs and plaintiff win rates in the 16 districts of
Beijing, and the vertical dashed lines are the time of each court appearance by chief officials.
Specifically, we found that no consistent trend existed in terms of the number of ALCs or the
local plaintiff win rates across the 16 districts after chief officials appeared in court. We found a
slight, short-term decline in ALCs and a decrease in the plaintiff win rate in three districts,
Shunyi 顺义, Dongcheng 东城and Changping 昌平, but only for one quarter. Consistent with
H2b, the COAS did not induce any consistent or significant changes in either the number of
ALCs or the win rate of administrative agencies.
This lack of impact is due in part to government officials’overall indifference towards the system
in both the timing and frequency of court appearances. First, most chief officials appeared in courts
at the end of the year when the annual cadre evaluation was underway. As supported by Figure 4,
73.6 per cent of chief officials took the stand in the fourth quarter, which was significantly higher
than the proportions in the other three quarters. In one interview, the government official explained
that “chief officials are under the pressure of the annual evaluation, and taking the stand is one of
the evaluation indicators …[chief officials] are so busy at work. Thus, we sometimes have to remind
them to complete this task before the end of the year.”
52
Second, the frequency of chief officials’court appearances is consistent with the minimum stan-
dards set for cadre evaluations. According to a 2018 internal document, “if the annual number of
ALCs is higher than five and lower than ten, the chief officials shall appear in courts at least twice a
year; if the annual number of ALCs is higher than ten, the chief officials shall appear in courts at
least three times.”
53
Figure 5 shows the number of ALCs and the frequency of chief officials’court
appearances in Daxing 大兴district from 2010 to 2019. The number of appearances was exactly two
or three times, although the overall number of ALCs fluctuated considerably in the given period.
The COAS and the Courts
Has the COAS impacted judicial decisions in any meaningful way? As shown in Table 1, the system
has had no significant impact on the rulings in ALCs. Consistent with H3a, the Beijing court ruled
in an impartial fashion and did not discriminate between cases with and without the presence of
local leaders.
What explains this surprising finding? A closer investigation suggests that strategies adopted by
local courts offset the possible impacts of the COAS. First, both the case records and our interviews
indicate that when chief officials took the stand, court leaders assumed the roles of presiding
judges.
54
As shown in Figure 6, in cases where chief officials testified, presidents of the court
heard 61.3 per cent of relevant ALCs, and division chiefs heard 25.8 per cent. This might be
owing to a courteous reaction from the court, but it strengthened the psychological grounds for
judges to make decisions impartially.
Second, courts were more likely to favour young and promising government leaders than older,
outgoing officials. In 62 cases in which chief officials showed up in court, 33 officials were involved.
The numbers of cases and officials were too small for multivariate analysis; we therefore carried out
a descriptive bivariate analysis. Figures 7 and 8plot chief officials’tenure and age against judgments
in the cases. On average, district-level chief officials in Beijing were 46 years old and had been in
office for 22 months. Interestingly, there was an adverse relationship between chief officials’tenure
52 Ibid.
53 Art. 9, Daxing Government, 2008, “Daxing qu xingzheng shouzhang chuting yingsu zanxing banfa”(Interim measures
for chief officials to appear in court). Internal documents, on file with authors.
54 Interview with judge, Beijing, December 2019.
The China Quarterly 11
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Figure 3. Number of ALCs and Plaintiff Win Rate by District in Beijing, 2015–2018
Source: COAS Databank.
Notes: The bars here represent the number of ALCs; the lines represent the plaintiff win rate; and the vertical dashed lines represent the timing of each court appearance by chief officials.
12 Tianhao Chen et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018 Published online by Cambridge University Press
or age and case outcomes. Young and promising chief officials generally won more cases than their
outgoing colleagues. To some extent, the strategic consideration of Chinese judges resembles the
“strategic defection”of Argentinian judges. Gretchen Helmke notes that Argentinian judges tended
to rule against the government when it began to lose power.
55
The judges’lack of institutional secur-
ity incentivized them to distance themselves from the outgoing government.
56
Similarly, in our
interview, one court leader commented, “When deciding cases, we must consider the political,
legal and social effects …Most of our work relies on the support from the governments, and we
need to ensure their support, not to make them ‘lose face’.”
57
In that sense, young and promising
chief officials may be able to ensure better cooperative terms with the court.
Figure 4. Timing of Chief Officials’Court Appearances
Source: COAS Databank.
Figure 5. Frequency of Chief Officials’Court Appearances in Daxing District, 2010–2019
Sources: Internal documents provided by the interviewee.
55 Helmke 2002.
56 Ibid., 300.
57 Interview with judge, Beijing, March 2022.
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A Comparative Picture
The Beijing case shows that contrary to the authorities’original intent, the COAS produces a per-
verse impact on the triad involved in an administrative dispute. This case offers detailed and sys-
tematic evidence of the mediocre performance of the COAS. However, there remain two
Figure 6. Rank of the Presiding Judges
Source: COAS Databank.
Figure 7. Scatter Plot of Chief Officials’Tenures and Case Outcomes
Sources: Case outcome data are from COAS Databank; chief officials’tenure and age data are from official government websites.
14 Tianhao Chen et al.
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unanswered questions: first, to what extent do the patterns observed in the Beijing case apply to its
implementation on a national scale? Second, how can we comprehend the implications of these pat-
terns in effectively addressing administrative grievances in China during its transition? We explore
the first question in this section and the other in the conclusion.
Initially, we extracted relevant ALCs from the CJPD by utilizing syntactic rules. In total, we iden-
tified 28,805 judgments where chief officials appeared in court, and 146 of them involved city-level
leaders, who are equivalent to district-level leaders in Beijing.
58
Figures 9 and 10 report the propor-
tion and disposition of these cases, respectively. Broadly speaking, government leaders across China
rarely attended court hearings. On average, chief officials attended 929 cases, while city-level offi-
cials in each province attended five between 2015 and 2018. Beijing has witnessed the most court
appearances by higher-level officials. Quite interestingly, a significant number of plaintiffs obtained
favourable outcomes in the COAS cases. The average win rate for plaintiffs in the COAS cases was
43.1 per cent at all levels and 41.9 per cent at the city level, well above the aforementioned national
rate of 12.9 per cent. We leave systematic or even causal examination of this issue for future multi-
variate analysis.
Additionally, we conducted extensive interviews in 12 other provinces (see Figures 9 and 10,
highlighted in bolded italics). Generally, the interviews provided a similar but dimmer scenario con-
cerning the implementation of the COAS. First, when chief officials appeared in court, the court-
rooms were equally characterized by pragmatic plaintiffs and silent officials. As a judge in Qinghai
province noted, “plaintiffs were the so-called nail households (dingzihu 钉子户), ones who refused
Figure 8. Scatter Plot of Chief Officials’Ages and Case Outcomes
Sources: Case outcome data are from COAS Databank; chief officials’tenure and age data are from official government websites.
58 In China’s administrative hierarchy, Beijing is a municipality directly under the central government and its districts are at
the same level as prefectural cities.
The China Quarterly 15
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to relocate and came to court only to claim better compensation. They wouldn’t be pleased by sim-
ply meeting the officials in person. Instead, sometimes they even interrogated the officials and we
had to interrupt and stop them.”
59
Such pragmatic accounts were also reported by judges from
Jiangsu and Liaoning.
60
Moreover, government officials seldom actively attended trials. A report
in Zhejiang mentioned several instances of officials’inactive participation, including remaining
silent when questioned, playing with their phones in the courtroom, or leaving the court in the mid-
dle of a hearing.
61
The High People’s Court in Henan conducted a survey with 300 administrative
judges and reported that only 26 per cent agreed that the “COAS effectively resolved administrative
Figure 9. COAS Cases Involving City-level Officials, 2015–2018
Source: CJPD.
Notes: The dark bars represent the number of COAS cases that plaintiffs won, and the light bars represent the number of COAS cases
that the relevant public agency won. The vertical dashed line marks the average number of COAS cases across the 31 provinces. The
data tabs show the total number of COAS cases for each province. The plaintiff win rate is in parentheses.
59 Interview with judge, Qinghai, August 2022.
60 Interview with judges, Jiangsu, April 2022; interview with judges, Liaoning, April 2022.
61 Internal documents, on file with authors.
16 Tianhao Chen et al.
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disputes,”23 per cent observed “no visible effect”and 45 per cent noted that “although the COAS
was not effective in resolving the disputes, it did soothe the plaintiffs’emotions.”
62
Second, from local court reports, we found that chief officials often appeared in court only when
required to do so for their performance evaluation. For example, in Qinghai province, the admin-
istration only recommended that officials appear, and they seldom did.
63
In Liaoning province, a
judge tried to persuade the provincial administration to install a Suzhou-style cadre evaluation
mechanism to force agency leaders to appear in court: “it was impossible, [he ridiculed,] to force
officials to take the stand without a gun.”
64
In contrast, in provinces where the number of court
appearances was included in the cadre evaluation scheme, such as Guangdong and Zhejiang,
some chief officials offered to attend court by the end of the year.
65
When the weight of court
Figure 10. All COAS Cases, 2015–2018
Source: CJPD.
Notes: The dark bars represent the number of COAS cases that plaintiffs won, and the light bars represent the number of COAS cases
that the relevant public agency won. The vertical dashed line marks the average number of COAS cases across the 31 provinces. The
data tabs show the total number of COAS cases for each province. The plaintiff win rate is in parentheses.
62 Ibid.
63 Interview with judge, Qinghai, August 2022.
64 Interview with judge, Liaoning, April 2022.
65 Interview with judge, Guangdong, June 2022; interview with judge, Zhejiang, April 2022; internal documents, on file with
authors.
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appearances in cadre evaluations was reduced, however, as reported by Zhejiang courts, the motiv-
ation to appear diminished significantly.
66
Third, on a national level, we observed a greater variety of activist/strategic responses to the lack
of official appearances at local courts. For instance, many courts endeavoured to persuade local
Party committees, people’s congresses or local governments to issue specific directives mandating
chief officials’court appearances. One Liaoning judge even used his close personal connections
with the agency leader to encourage him to be the first mover.
67
More audacious judges capitalized
on theatrical court hearings when officials were present. One judge from Zhejiang commented that
“sometimes I would intentionally tolerate plaintiffs’emotional expressions to exert extra pressure on
administrative agencies.”
68
Another Qinghai judge used the court hearing as a platform to dissem-
inate legal knowledge and he often directly interrogated chief officials in order to send a clear signal
that he was going to rule against the agency. According to him, “it had proven effective to facilitate
the after-hearing coordination. After the hearing, the agencies would be more than happy to nego-
tiate with plaintiffs.”
69
Concluding Remarks
Incorporated into the ALL in 2015, the COAS is a unique Chinese practice designed to increase the
participation of political officials in administrative litigation. Legislators initially hoped that the
COAS would effectively resolve such disputes by leveraging the undue influence of agency leaders
in policymaking and implementation. However, contrary to official expectations, this study finds
that the COAS reproduces the administrative grievances that it is tasked with substantially resolving.
Moreover, when chief officials appear in court, administrative litigation is characterized by a
renewed triad: apathetic state agencies, increasingly agitated plaintiffs and strategically empowered
courts in Beijing and beyond.
First, government officials’court appearances are often marked by their indifferent and some-
times even antagonizing attitude towards plaintiffs. In such cases, the officials’court appearances
do not lead to better litigation outcomes nor fewer disputes further down the line. Second, the
COAS generates more controversies than it solves: when government officials appear in court, plain-
tiffs file more appeals or pursue a second litigation. Finally, our findings corroborate He’s argument,
which posits that courts benefit from the COAS and are likely to be the only immediate beneficiar-
ies.
70
The courts rule impartially and display no significant differences in their rulings whether chief
officials appear in court or not. Our subsequent descriptive analysis highlights courts’strategic con-
siderations: young, promising government officials fare better than their older colleagues.
Additionally, we observed a greater diversity of positive and strategic behaviour among local courts
on a national scale than before.
What are the implications of such a renewed triad in effectively addressing administrative grie-
vances in China during this transitional period? First, as discussed above, scholars have dismissed
administrative litigation in China as no more than a “frail weapon”because of the political con-
straints courts face when adjudicating cases of “citizens versus mandarins.”
71
The stealthy empower-
ment of the courts manifested in our study showcases the lifting of such political constraints to
some extent. This results from the cumulative effects of several reform measures implemented
over the last four decades and the strategic behaviour of judges specifically introduced to carry
66 Interview with judges, Zhejiang, April 2022.
67 Interview with judge, Liaoning, April 2022.
68 Interview with judges, Zhejiang, April 2022.
69 Interview with judge, Qinghai, August 2022.
70 He, Xin 2013, 31.
71 Pei 1997;O’Brien and Li 2004.
18 Tianhao Chen et al.
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out the COAS.
72
The courts appoint their most prestigious and high-ranked judges to preside over
cases in which government officials take the stand, both to display their deference to officials and to
ensure their equal standing with government agencies. Although officials’court appearances did not
seem to make a difference overall, judges were more likely to rule against the government when the
officials were nearing the end of their term. In a less amiable legal environment, judges took the
initiative to consult upper-level governments or strategically used the theatrical court hearing to
exert extra pressure on local governments. Although still deeply embedded in the political system,
empowered courts may deliver impartial decisions and potentially resolve administrative disputes
more efficiently than before.
The second implication is the plaintiffs’enhanced legal consciousness. Contrary to the expecta-
tions of some scholars, the mere appearance of government officials in the courtroom did not
appease aggrieved citizens. In contrast, we observed adverse effects of officials’court appearances,
as citizens were motivated to take further legal action. As summarized by the interviewed judges,
this was partly owing to citizens’improved legal knowledge and the idea of social justice –that
is, their awareness of their own rights.
73
To some extent, the reproductive feature of the COAS
resembles the “mismatched discourse”Xin He and Yuqing Feng identified in China’s petition sys-
tem.
74
The mismatch between the “legal terms”employed by petitioners and the “channelling dis-
course”of petition officials is injurious to petitioners’experience and incentivizes them to make new
claims. In sum, both the citizen’s enhanced legal consciousness and the stealthy empowerment of
the courts in China imply that a rule-based approach of resolving disputes seems more desirable
and probable than a paternalistic one.
Having explored the implications of the COAS for administrative litigation and legal reforms in
China, we want to reflect on how related research might proceed in the future. This paper presents a
detailed examination of ALCs in a Beijing court from 2015 to 2018, supplemented by a rough
approximation of the overall situation in China. With more comprehensive national data, future
research could expand on this study and explore regional variations in the efficacy of the COAS.
Furthermore, to fully understand the interactions between officials and citizens, future research should
look beyond administrative litigation, which is often placed at the end of the conflict spectrum, and
look into the effectiveness of other dispute resolution mechanisms. Since the turn of the century,
China has pushed for a diverse set of conflict resolution mechanisms, including petitions, mediation
and arbitration. If in-person appeals to the leaders no longer work in the courtroom, we could
reasonably expect a similar trend in the implementation of other dispute resolution mechanisms.
Supplementary material. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0305741024000018
Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank Jianshu Shao for his invaluable support in data processing and
regression analysis. We thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. For their wonderful
research assistance, we thank Zhaoyang Sun and Xiangyi Ren. All errors remain our own. This work was supported by the
National Social Science Fund of China [23BZZ011].
Competing interests. None.
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Tianhao CHEN is an associate professor at the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University. His research
focuses on administrative law, administrative agreements, judicial governance and technology ethics. His work has been pub-
lished in Chinese Journal of Law,China Legal Science and Law Science.
Wei XU is a PhD candidate studying at the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University. Her research
focuses on platform antitrust, judicial reform, public administration and law.
Xiaohong YU is an associate professor in the department of political science at Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on
Chinese politics, judicial politics and empirical legal studies. Her work has been published in Journal of Empirical Legal
Studies,The China Review and Tsinghua University Law Journal.
Cite this article: Chen T, Xu W, Yu X (2024). Administrative Litigation in China: Assessing the Chief Officials’Appearance
System. The China Quarterly 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018
The China Quarterly 21
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024000018 Published online by Cambridge University Press
