On 9 June, the Supreme People’s Court’s Party Committee held a meeting to transmit the latest Party policy on secrecy in the courts, as reported here.  It is intended to implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s policy statement on secrecy and security, within the court system.  It appears to be linked to policy issued earlier this spring at the meeting of the National Security Commission (official report here and analyzed here).

President Zhou Qiang stressed the following issues:

• maintaining state secrecy and advancing judicial openness, to implement “justice under sunshine” and promote justice and fairness for the people;
• dealing with the relationship between secret and non-classified materials, so that secrecy standards are applied properly;
• secrecy education and punishment, putting preventative training in place and strict punishment;
• the relationship between software and hardware, stressing preventative measures as well as hardware controls.

It does not appear that new secrecy regulations are in the works.  Judicial personnel have secrecy obligations under secrecy regulations applicable to the courts (which apparently have not been made public) (but an English translation is found here), as well as set forth in the Judges Law and other sources.  Judging by the large number of articles on court websites on this topic, in the age of smartphones (whether iPhones or Xiaomis), it appears increasing difficult for those restrictions to be effectively implemented.