Online judicial auctions become new trend   

全國近700家法院入駐淘寶 網絡司法拍賣漸成趨勢

3月8日，在網絡司法拍賣研討會上，“淘寶司法拍賣”公布的數據顯示，截至今年2月，全國已經有21個省(區市)入駐淘寶網司法拍賣平臺，入駐法院近700家，完成近9萬次拍賣。其中，浙江、江蘇、福建、河南、貴州、北京等6省市全部法院都已入駐淘寶網司法拍賣平臺。 [查看全文]

(ECNS) - A judicial auction platform on Taobao.com, China's most popular online shopping site, has attracted many Chinese courts, the China Youth Daily reported Monday.

By the end of February, about 700 courts from 21 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities had conducted nearly 90,000 auctions on the platform, according to data released Sunday at an online judicial auction seminar.

Auction items have included numerous assets from lawsuits, such as vehicles, machines, houses, factories, commercial property, land, options, mines, ships and trademarks.

The experiment, which two courts in Zhejiang province began piloting in 2012, is now accepted by an increasing number of courts.

Some courts view online auctions as more convenient and transparent compared to traditional auctions, which have been blamed for high costs and low efficiency, as well as being a hotbed for corruption, the newspaper reports, citing Zhai Jingmin, a former vice president of the Beijing Higher People's Court, and Chu Hongjun, vice president of the Jiangsu Higher People's court.

Jiangsu's courts concluded judicial auctions worth 4 billion yuan ($640 million) in 2010, but the figure jumped to 12.7 billion yuan in 2014 after online auctions went into trial use, Chu says.

But online auctions have sparked controversy for dealing a heavy blow to the business of traditional auction companies, the newspaper says.

Xiaojian Guo, a law professor at Renmin University of China, says online judicial auctions have been written into a proposal on deepening court reforms by China's top court.

Sun Yimin of the Fujian Higher People' Court was also optimistic. The six judicial explanations on the top court agenda this year include an explanation of online auctions, Sun told the paper.