Supreme Court Takes Aim at Urban-Rural Discrimination in Personal Injury Payouts

The top judicial authorities’ amendment to the decades-old standard comes after central leadership said in April 2019 that the system of compensation for personal injury should be reformed. Photo: VCG

China’s top court is amending a judicial interpretation of civil cases concerning compensation for personal injury, in a bid to close a gap between rural and urban areas in terms of judicial equality.

The changes to the 2003 guidance document (link in Chinese), issued by the Supreme People’s Court, stipulate that compensation for disability and death will be standardized. Compensation sums will be calculated according to the previous year’s average per capita disposable income of urban residents in the region, ending earlier stipulations that often led to significant discrepancies between payouts to people from urban and rural areas.