SHI TING

Beijing's chief justice yesterday admitted that a modest degree of professionalism within the mainland's judiciary posed a major challenge to legal reforms.

Despite progress in initiatives to enhance the qualification of legal professionals through training, the average level of professionalism was less than satisfactory, Supreme People's Court President Xiao Yang said in Hong Kong.

Mr Xiao will tomorrow receive an honorary doctorate in law from the City University of Hong Kong.

"I will not be evasive about major problems [facing the mainland's legal system]," he said. "The professional level of China's judges is not high enough."

He said the virtual destruction of the mainland's legal system during the Cultural Revolution partly accounted for the country's lack of qualified judges.

Mr Xiao said about 80 per cent of the mainland's judicial officers held university-level or higher qualifications.

From the late 1970s to the 1990s, many judges and court officials attended law school only after being appointed to the bench.

Since 2002, the revised Judges Law has required any person wanting to work in the legal system to have passed a national exam and obtained professional certification.

But even under this legislation, a person who does not hold a law degree may still be legally qualified to become a judge if they graduate from a college-level programme and have "professional knowledge of the law", or have conducted legal work for two years.