BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 5.2 million disputes were resolved in 2020 on China's online mediation platform with a success rate of 65 percent, saving more people the bother of going to court, according to the Supreme People's Court (SPC).
Mediation applications have surged more than 300-fold on the platform since the launch of the service in early 2018, said the SPC. It added that 2020 saw an average of 66 submissions for the service in every minute within the working time.
The country's 3,502 courts have all opened mediation services on the platform so far. Also, 32,937 mediation organizations have moved in and brought the number of online mediators to 165,333, said Qian Xiaochen, head of the case-filing tribunal of the SPC.
They have settled more than 13.6 million disputes in three years.
Data showed that China's courts accepted 13.14 million civil lawsuits in 2020, a decrease of 5.17 percent from 2019. The number of successful pre-trial mediations in these cases rose to 4.24 million in 2020 from 1.46 million in 2019.
This can be partly attributed to the platform's increasingly prominent role in the country's legal dispute-settlement system, said Qian.
Mediation on the platform needs to conclude in a maximum of 30 days. Otherwise, a court trial might ensue. On average, it takes 23.33 days for a dispute case to be resolved, according to Qian. Enditem
