On 20 June, the Supreme People’s Court  issued a report on the past 5 years of judicial assistance with Taiwan, featuring three bar charts, a table and 15 model cases, linked here.  Judicial assistance between the mainland and Taiwan in 2013 was the subject of a blogpost earlier this year.  The execution of two brothers in Taiwan, on the basis of testimony from witnesses on the mainland who were not made available for cross-examination, illustrate vividly some of the Issues related to judicial assistance, as further described here.

Most of the judicial assistance has been in the form of requests for delivery on the mainland of judicial documents from Taiwan (almost 30,000 in the past 5 years), but has also included recognition and enforcement of Taiwan court judgments (270 in the past 5 years), requests for obtaining evidence on the mainland (610).

The model cases summarize the requests made and the assistance provided, rather than the original judgments or rulings in these cases.  (Prior blogposts on the topic of model cases are linked here and Mark Cohen’s analysis is found here).

The statistics reflect the closer interactions between the two sides of the Taiwan straits, including the flood of Taiwan investment into the mainland, and cross-straits personal interactions (including cross-straits marriages and crimes committed by Taiwanese on the mainland). I look forward to comments and further analysis from Taiwan lawyers, scholars and others on the significance of these statistics and other related issues.