China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) on Tuesday started its one-year plan to train more than 3,500 middle-level and grassroots-level judges, including on how to deal with emergencies, public voices and the media.

The training, to be held in the National Judges College in Beijing, is divided into 15 sessions of 12 days each. It would cover international and domestic political and economic situations, guidance for court work "in the new era", judiciary reforms and judges' judiciary abilities.

Sun Jungong, spokesman of the SPC, said Tuesday that the training aims at improving the judges' ability to understand and handle the "general situation", social conflicts, public voices, principles of law and the "new situations".

Sun said the ability of middle-level and grassroots-level courts in handling emergencies and "mass incidents" decides if the problems can finally be properly solved.

"It is therefore decisive in maintaining national security and social stability," Sun said.

Hostile forces both at home and abroad are rampant, he said. "And the risk of domestic inharmony is rising because of the global financial crisis."

The SPC would also train the judges to deal with the media "in a sensible way," Sun said. "It is a major issue facing the courts at the current time of developed media, including the Internet."

The SPC held similar trainings for grassroots-level judges from 2005 to 2007.

(Xinhua News Agency September 1, 2009)