China's Courts Are Live Online

China has a remarkable online system to provide live video streams of court trials. On this website: http://tingshen.court.gov.cn/ , China Court Trial Online, you can readily access the surveillance cameras in courtrooms all over the People's Republic of China, and watch the proceedings in realtime.

To use the site, simply scroll down to the map of China, and select any one of hundreds of courts from any of the provinces of China. (If like me, you can't read Chinese be sure to right click on Chrome and select 'Translate to English'.) The site contains archived videos of court hearings as well.

The video records are clearly quite extensive. Tonight, I was able to access both live and archived video of court proceedings in the Shenzhen Nanshan District People's Court:

. . . the Zigong City Gongjing District People's Court in Sichuan:

. . . the Wuhan Railway Transportation Intermediate Court:

. . . and the Lingqiu County People's Court in Shanxi:

According to the home page more than 12 million court proceedings have been posted on the site, and more than 20,000 will be broadcast today. The world's most populous country provides an opportunity to surveil its justice system, and vast resources to allow attorneys to learn from trials on a particular issue, or proceedings before an individual judge or panel.

I've seen videos posted online of appellate court oral arguments in American courts, but I'm unaware of such an extensive system being in place in the courts of any other country.