(3) Right to fair trial

- China will improve the legal stipulations regarding judicial proceeding to guarantee litigants' right to fair trial.

- Guaranteeing criminal defendants the rights to plead, receive legal aid and request an avoidance (of a judge or witness).

- Guaranteeing the personal rights and right of defense of lawyers when they perform their duties.

- Further improving the system to have witnesses and expert witnesses appear in court and the system of protecting the witnesses.

- Improving the system of eliminating illegal evidence; all confessions by suspects and defendants extorted by torture or other illegal methods, as well as testimonies and statements of witnesses or victims collected by violence, threat or other illegal means will be eliminated and not used in working out the verdict. In addition, the stipulations on evidences used to examine and decide cases of death penalty will be strictly observed, and more strict standards will be adopted in this regard.

- Implementing the Decisions of the Supreme People's Court on Audio-Visual Recordings of Court Trials. The system of producing audio-visual recordings of the whole process of suspect interrogating in major cases will be established.

- Continuing to push forward standardized measurement of penalty. The people's procuratorates will make suggestions on penalty measurement to the people's courts when handling criminal cases. The discretion in penalty measurement will be institutionalized. Guidelines on penalty measurement by the people's courts will be worked out, so will regulations of the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security on standardizing procedures of penalty measurement to guarantee openness and fairness in penalty measurement.

- Observing more stringent judicial procedures for death penalty and review of death penalty. China will improve the trial procedures of death penalty cases. The trial of all death penalty cases of second instance will be open to the public. The review of death penalty should include the questioning of the defendant, and listening to the opinions of his/her attorney if the attorney so demands. Legal supervision by the Supreme People's Procuratorate over the review of death penalty will be strengthened. The Supreme People's Court will publicize typical cases to clarify the norms of application of death penalty.

- Amending the Law of Civil Procedure. China will further improve the procedures of bringing an action, case acceptance and pre-trial preparation, establish small-claim and public-interest litigation systems and improve the systems of preservation, evidence, service of litigation document, publicizing of court rulings and trial supervision to protect the litigants' litigation rights.

- Amending Administrative Procedure Law. China will further improve the rules regarding the acceptance of administrative cases, examination procedures and proofs to guarantee the right of individuals and organizations to legal aid in cases of administrative malfeasance.