judgment records analyzed
Research project
Missing Cases in China’s Courts
Measuring the gap between the cases Chinese courts hear and the judgments the public can actually see.
A window that is closing
Public records reveal the courts. Their absences reveal something, too.
China Judgments Online became one of the world’s largest public collections of court records. But courts vary enormously in what they upload—and since 2021, whole categories of cases have disappeared.
This project estimates what is missing, where, and when, creating a court-by-court view of judicial transparency across China.
courts represented nationwide
of court-level estimates
civil, criminal and administrative
The method
Case numbers leave a trail.
Chinese courts assign cases sequential numbers. Even when only a portion of judgments are public, the range and distribution of those numbers lets researchers estimate the full caseload.
The logic echoes the “German Tank Problem”: a statistical method originally used to estimate wartime production from observed serial numbers.
See the estimates in the portal ↗Observed case numbers
001002—004
—006007—
—010011—
Observed7
→
Estimated total12
Illustrative sequence
What the data show
Transparency is uneven—and moving backward.
Three patterns emerge from the national court-level estimates.
Not every kind of case is equally visible.
Criminal cases have historically been more available than administrative or civil cases.
Geography shapes the public record.
Many coastal provinces disclose a larger share of judgments than courts in western regions.
The window narrowed after 2021.
Public availability declined substantially after years of expanding access.
Research collaboration
Project Team Members
A collaboration among scholars at Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego.
Benjamin Liebman ↗
Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Rachel Stern ↗
Professor of Law and Political Science, UC Berkeley
Margaret Roberts ↗
Professor of Political Science, UC San Diego
Xiaohan Wu ↗
Political Science Ph.D., UC San Diego
Explore the evidence
Where are court records available—and where are the gaps?
Filter by province, court, year, and case type. Compare estimated caseloads with the judgments disclosed online.
Launch the court case portal
