It is difficult to enforce court judgments (as well as arbitral awards) in China.  In each year, a considerable number of court judgments or orders are not enforced.  The Supreme People’s Court (as well as other courts) is under tremendous pressure to resolve this problem.   

Many factors attribute to the difficulty in enforcement of court judgments, one of which is that a debtor does not have too much to fear.  It seems that the Supreme People’s Court (the “SPC”) is doing something to make it look more fearsome, so is the People’s Bank of China (the “PBOC”).  On November 14, 2013, the PBOC and SPC reached the Cooperative Consensus on Incorporating Name List Information of Breach-of-Trust Persons Subject to Execution into Credit Reporting System (the “Consensus”). 

The Credit Reporting System as provided in the Consensus is called Credit Reference Centre of the PBOC.  The Credit Reference Centre began to run in 2006 to archive the credibility information of enterprises and individuals that deal with each bank.  For example, if an individual does not repay what he or she owes to a bank, the bank will then report the default information to the Credit Reference Centre.  According to the Consensus, the court will report the “mistrust & distrust” information of a person subject to the execution of a court judgment to the Credit Reference Centre.  Apparently, the breach-of-trust data will cause great inconvenience to the life and/or business of the persons that breached the trust with the court.  Hopefully, the judgment debts would be repaid by the debtors sooner than before in fear of the bad reputation that is archived in the Credit Reference Centre.

You may follow the link to read more about the Consensus in Chinese, and the link about the Credit Reference Centre.