Annotation

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the experience of the People’s Republic of China in creating the “Smart Court” system — one of the largest digital transformations of justice projects in the world. The research focuses on identifying the institutional mechanisms and legal consequences of building a justice model in which technological efficiency becomes an instrument of centralized governance. The novelty of the work lies in examining the “Smart Court” not merely as a set of technologies, but as a purposeful institutional-technological symbiosis in which political strategies, legal norms, and algorithmic platforms mutually constitute each other to achieve the goals of procedural efficiency, controllability, and legitimacy. The methodological framework consisted of a set of scientific methods: a systems approach for analyzing the "Smart Court" as an integrated system; comparative legal and formal legal methods for studying the normative acts of the Supreme People’s Court of China; a historical method for reconstructing the stages of implementation; and an analysis of strategic planning documents. It is concluded that this model represents a technology project strictly regulated by the state, demonstrating both a significant increase in judicial efficiency (as exemplified by internet courts) and giving rise to a set of ethical and legal challenges.