According to Yahoo:

China's chief justice has slammed "incompetent" judges for blindly following orders from superiors, and promised sweeping reforms to the way they are recruited and trained, state media said.

Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court, told a conference on Sunday that incompetent judges were "one of the most vital factors in judicial inequity" the Xinhua news agency reported.

"Courts have often been taken as branches of the government, and judges viewed as civil servants who have to follow orders from superiors, which prevents them from exercising mandated legal duties like other members of the judiciary," Xiao said.

The unusually stern criticism marks yet another attempt by China to improve the quality of its famously ill-qualified judges.

Seventy percent of them have no college degree, only a vocational training degree and not necessarily in law, according to earlier reports by China's state media.

Xiao told the conference that judges should be immune from local interference, be better paid and "revered for their integrity", Xinhua said.

Although China has trimmed the number of judges by 10 percent, of those remaining "many are incompetent to hold the position of judge", he said.

A new class of professional judge should be brought in, "a chosen group of elites who speak the same legal language, think in a unique legal formula, believe in and pursue social justice," Xiao said.

Reforms to speed this change along will include making new judges pass two exams, and forcing incumbent ones to take a law degree within a set time or face dismissal.

Additionally, to prevent outside influence, judges should not be fired or disciplined without due process.

China has pledged many times in the past to improve its legal system, especially the calibre of the 200,000-plus judges that administer it.

The system is heavily influenced by traditional legal values with a high premium placed on rulings that conform with and protect state policies, Western legal experts in Beijing say.

This also opens the way for rampant corruption in the areas of civil litigation where rulings are often awarded to the highest bidders, they say.

Apart from miscarriages of justice to its own citizens, the lack of legal consistency has prompted concern among foreign companies doing business there, some of which complain they have been the victims of arbitrary and biased rulings.

During a visit to Beijing in February, US President George W. Bush stressed to his hosts that as a new member of the World Trade Organisation, China must ensure "a consistent rule of law" to govern commerce.