The Supreme People’s Court Monitor published 35 posts in 2019, 26 posts in 2020, and 26 in 2021, with about 34,000  page views each year,  primarily from:

• United States;
• (Mainland) China;
• Hong Kong SAR;
• United Kingdom.

Germany, Australia and Singapore trailed the others by a significant margin. Mainland China was in second place in 2019.  In 2020 and 2021, the Monitor had almost the same number of views from mainland China and Hong Kong.  I wish I knew the distribution of my readers in mainland China–whether they are working in the System (体制), or are academics, students, or lawyers. I was very pleased to meet some readers when I spoke in November 2019 at the Fourth Qianhai Legal Intelligence Forum, (a conference held annually in Shenzhen, supported by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC)).

Why did I do less blogging in 2020  and 2021 as compared to 2019? Perhaps it can be attributed to competing professional obligations–including writing several academic-style articles and one academic blogpost.  Fortunately, 2021 saw the academic blogpost and three long articles emerge from the academic publishing machine.  I have yet to see the third long article (book chapter), which has been published. I presume that one is stuck in a warehouse, awaiting the resumption of flights from the rest of the world to Hong Kong.

One draft academic article, in which I have invested too much time,  is back on the back burner after two perceptive readers pointed out what I was feeling, that it had gone down too many research rabbit holes (掉进无底洞).   I now know that an SPC document will be issued soon that I presume will change some of the article’s content, so it is just as well that the draft is back on a slow simmer. I’m instead following the advice of one reader to spin off parts of the draft into separate articles. One will soon be ready for the editorial sausage machine.  A second one, on a topic separate from the “rabbit hole” article,  is affected by documents issued to implement the recent reforms to the four levels of the Chinese courts as well as the Civil Procedure Law amendments.  When I return to that “rabbit hole” article, it will benefit from what I have learned in researching the one that I expect can enter the editorial sausage machine soon.

In the New Era (and the Covid-19 Era), it is an even greater challenge to decode for readers outside of mainland China SPC developments insightfully in under 1500 words.  I hope I have gone some way to meeting that target.  I sometimes have my doubts.

Since the blog was founded almost nine years ago:

Page views: 233, 109
Jurisdictions: 200? (per WordPress)
Posts: 323

Most followers use Twitter to follow the Monitor. Although Twitter is not accessible in mainland China without a VPN, 16% of the Monitor’s Twitter followers are based there.

A special thank you to my anonymous “peer reviewers”, who have given forthright (in one case very blunt), insightful and helpful comments on draft blogposts.