According to a May 4th news release published by Xinhua, a set of guidelines for resolving social conflicts in China was jointly issued by sixteen government agencies and released to the public this past Wednesday. The guidelines encourage the use of mediation to resolve social conflict and define the role of various government agencies in handling specific case types. For example, “the human resource and social security authorities are responsible for settling labor disputes, health authorities for medical disputes, land resource authorities for conflicts resulting from land appropriation and land ownership disputes.”
According to the report, “the public security authorities are asked to make offices available in their community branches for mediation work, and invite volunteers in” and “the Central Committee for Improvement of Public Order Through Comprehensive Measures will oversee the performance of all government agencies in carrying out their conflict-solving duties, according to the guidelines.”
ADR in Asia 
Dear Prof. Ali, according to the news, mediation was initiated by authorities, the administrative sectors. Would the justice be more easily at risk of being compromised for governmental interest, in case that administration power is abused to suppress either party of the potential litigation.
Hi John, this is a great question. Professor Fu Hualing at HKU has done excellent research on this. You might check out his article on Understanding People’s Mediaiton in Post-Mao China: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/asiaweb/v6n2fuhu.htm