China's top court is set to bring in three new regulations aimed at ensuring judges are not swayed by family ties or other types of relationships when making legal decisions.

The move is the latest salvo in its attempts to deal with judicial corruption and began last year with the Supreme People's Court (SPC) starting to draft the three regulations.

The first regulation refers to avoiding possible conflicts of interest among judges, technically called recusal, because of the involvement in cases of family members who are lawyers.

The second tackles the pleading or interceding of the relatives of judges, their friends or other people.

And the third targets lax management and poor working practices on the part of some local courts and urges court staff members, especially judicial police officers, to perform their duties in accordance with the law.

The SPC said it has undertaken both open and secret investigations in some local courts to counter such activities. It added that the drafting of the three provisions is almost complete and that they will become active during the first half of the year.

The move follows a proposal during the 2010 session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from the Jiu San Society, a political party, that calls for the "deepening of the reform of the judicial system and prevention of judicial corruption". The committee then put forward six suggestions to target judicial corruption.

The Jiu San Society said judicial corruption largely comes as a result of offers of power and money, the abuse of judicial discretion, the involvement of senior officials and money in cases, and during cases that involve Mafia-like organizations.