The carefully-worded communique issued after the plenary session promised legal reforms that are aimed at giving judges more independence and limiting local officials' influence over courts and cases.

According to the document, they will develop a system in which officials will be given demerits or held accountable if they are found interfering in judicial cases.

Officials will be criticized in public notices if they influence judicial activities or meddle in a particular case, it said, adding that judicial injustice can inflict a "lethal damage" to social justice.

Wei Daxing, a 46-year old farmer and village Party chief in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in South China, also viewed the CPC Central Committee's communique in a plain perspective.

The rule of law, he said, is ultimately to meet the demands of the common people and safeguard their interests.

"Adhering to law is important to a village as well as to a nation. Only when law is enforced indiscriminately and fairly can the interests of the people be protected and the faith of the public in law be established," said Wei.

Prof. Ma Huaide, vice president of China University of Political Science and Law, noted that this is the first time that the Party has explicitly banned officials from meddling in judicial cases and vowed to hold violators accountable in a CPC document.

Echoing Wei, the farmer village party chief, Ma said, "Only by ensuring judicial organs' independent practice of justice, independent from influences such as administrative orders, personal relations or money, could the public feel the fairness and justice in the judicial process."

Another encouraging feature of the CPC's plan is the recurrent reference to the Constitution as the "core" of the country's socialist system of laws.

"To realize the rule of law, the country should be ruled in line with the Constitution," the document read.

Fan Ti, a senior lawyer in central China's Hubei Province, said this again shows CPC's resolve to put power into an institutional cage. The key point of governing the country in accordance with the law is to make everybody's interest to be fairly guarded by the law so that everyone will have genuine faith in law.

While buoyed up the CPC's decision to advance to the rule of law, many Chinese remain sober. They point out the realization of the blueprint will take time and efforts.

Yao Jianjun, a local court judge in Xi'an, said the there is still a long and arduous way to go before people can feel and acknowledge judicial equity and justice. He said judges like him are determined to defend judicial justice.