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China’s Great Hall of the People in Beijing played host to the Chinese Communist Party plenum.KIM KYUNG-HOON/Reuters

When a local government seized Feng Jun's grain fields, he filed a lawsuit to get them back, or at least win fair compensation. He failed. When his 50-year contract to use a fish pond was cancelled, after testing found arsenic that he blamed on a local steel factory, he launched another lawsuit. It failed. When his two daughters were diagnosed with leukemia, and one of them died, he brought a pair of lawsuits seeking compensation, blaming pollution from the steelworks. Both failed.

In the 13 years Mr. Feng has begged courts to intervene on his behalf, he has been given a long list of reasons why they can't. His complaints belonged with the government, he was told, and he should take up his case with political leaders. If a judge were to side with him, officials explained, the courts might be flooded with others demanding the same – a result too onerous, and too expensive, for local Communist Party leadership to support.

"The party rules everything," Mr. Feng said in an interview. The courts offer "not much hope. Whatever the law is, it's based on the words from the top."

But China has embarked on a broad reform exercise that offers a glimmer of possibility that people like Mr. Feng may one day find fair ways to seek redress for wrongs. Beijing offered a blueprint for change following a four-day plenum last week where the Communist Party Central Committee pledged to limit the interference of local officials in courts by threatening them with demerit points, discussed the need for a greater deference to the Chinese constitution, and suggested ways to professionalize the judiciary. There is a recognition that "judicial injustice can inflict a 'lethal damage' to social justice," state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

Courts could play a critical role in mediating the disputes that regularly explode into violence and protest in China – if the government can provide the mandate to act.

Change has been a long time coming, with the first calls for a more modern judicial system from then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978. "This is an attempt to, after 36 years, pull up their socks," said Jerome Cohen, an expert on Chinese law who is a professor at New York University of Law "There are significant things under way. There's definitely an attempt to create a more attractive, reliable legal system for the purposes of promoting economic development," he said.

Moves to create space between courts and local government "will make quite a difference," added Jianwei Fang, a former Chinese judge who now practises corporate law in Hong Kong with the international law firm Davis Polk. Noting the power amassed by President Xi Jinping, he suggested "these reforms will be much better implemented" than previous efforts and will build on advances already under way.

Though foreign companies remain largely leery of the Chinese system – most corporate contracts still demand arbitration in places like Hong Kong or Singapore – Western firms increasingly use Chinese tribunals for specialized cases such as intellectual property disputes. Tougher entrance exams are creating a more qualified corps of judges, a change from a decade ago when "a lot of judges were retired military members who had no legal education," Mr. Fang said.

Still, judicial reforms will do little to resolve some of the worst injustices in China, often the result of the leadership disregarding the law altogether. The detention of dozens of Chinese human-rights lawyers, many of whom sought only to have courts enforce laws already in existence, is "lawlessness," Prof. Cohen said.

The proposed approach also does nothing to rectify one of the primary contradictions in the Chinese legal system – the fact that many courts are funded by local governments, giving local officials massive sway over how judges decide.

Decades of unfulfilled Chinese reform promises have also created skepticism. "One has to see whether it's just window dressing, or whether they're serious," said Michael Vidler, a Hong Kong lawyer.

Can China create what it is calling the "socialist rule of law," and provide a measure of legal credibility while still keeping its courts under the Communist Party thumb?

Mr. Feng's fruitless campaign for justice underscores the labyrinthine issues facing China as it seeks a more trustworthy court system. Chief among them is that many of the issues courts are called to mediate lie between people and government, and China remains insistent that the Communist Party continue to hold the courts tightly in its grasp.

Judges "have no guts to challenge the government," Mr. Feng said. "There's no humanity. Don't even mention justice."

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