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China's Courts, Tenth "Best" Out of Twelve.

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

Just came across this article discussing a ranking of various Asian countries' judicial system, conducted by Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) (h/t to Silk Road International Blog):

1,537 corporate executives working in Asia rated the judicial systems in the countries where they reside, using such variables as the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) and corruption. Transparency, enforcement of laws, freedom from political interference and the experience and educational standards of lawyers and judges were also considered. "Year after year our perception surveys show a close correlation between how expatriates rate judicial systems and how they rate the openness of a particular economy," PERC said. "Better judicial systems are associated with better IPR protection, lower corruption and wealthier economies."

The ratings are on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being the best: 1. Hong Kong, 1.45 2. Singapore, 1.92 3. Japan, 3.50 4. South Korea, 4.62 5. Taiwan, 4.93 6. Philippines, 6.10 7. Malaysia, 6.47, 8. India, 6.50 9. Thailand, 7.00 10. China, 7.25. 11. Vietnam, 8.10 12. Indonesia, 8.26 My firm has had some involvement with the judicial system of all of these countries, with the exception of India, and my sense is that these rankings are pretty accurate. In fact, if I were to rank the systems by tiers, I would put Hong Kong and Singapore in the first tier, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in the second tier, and the rest in the third tier.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on September 21, 2008 (boomark / email).