People's procuratorates are organs for legal supervision in China. The state sets up the Supreme People's Procuratorate, local people's procuratorates at all levels, and military and other special procuratorates.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate is the highest procuratorial organ in China. It is responsible to the NPC and its Standing Committee, and reports its work to them. The Supreme People's Procuratorate independently exercises the highest procuratorial power according to law and is not subject to interference by any administrative organ, social organization or individual.

According to the Constitution and statutes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate exercises the following functions and duties:

--Leading the work of local people's procuratorates and special people's procuratorates at all levels;

--Directly accepting and handling, according to law, criminal cases involving corruption, bribery, tort to citizens' democratic rights and misconduct in office, placing them on file for investigation, and deciding whether to initiate prosecution or not;

--Performing legal supervision over the judicial proceeding of courts and the investigation of criminal cases;

--Deciding on arrests and prosecution of major criminal cases according to law;

--Performing legal supervision over judicial activities in criminal cases;

--Lodging protests according to law against effective but wrong judgments and rulings made by people's courts at various levels to the Supreme People's Court;

--Exercising legal supervision over activities conducted in prisons and criminal reform institutions;

--Providing judicial interpretations of questions concerning special applications of laws in procuratorial work;

--Sponsoring negotiations with foreign procuratorial departments and conducting judicial assistance.

Work of the Supreme People's Procuratorate in 2005

On March 11, 2006, Procurator General Jia Chunwang reported on the work of the Supreme People's Procuratorate to the Fourth Session of the 10th NPC.

In 2005, procuratorates at various levels approved the arrest of 860,372 criminal suspects and prosecuted 950,804 people, up 6.1 percent and 9.6 percent over the previous year, respectively. With the intensified crackdown on grave crimes that threatened the market order, such as smuggling, financial fraud and illegal financing, 21,193 suspects were arrested and 24,950 people were brought to court for economic crimes, 3.8 percent and 12.5 percent higher than a year earlier, respectively. In all, 12,686 arrest warrants were issued and 8,646 prosecutions were instituted against criminal suspects who had earlier escaped the legal dragnet. The procuratorates also, according to law, approved an application of bail or other control measures in the case of 29,334 people criminal suspects who were in conditions unnecessary for arrest, and decided not to prosecute 14,939 people who committed minor crimes and transferred the cases to the relevant departments.

Prosecutors probed 41,447 government employees in 2005 for embezzlement of public funds, bribe taking, dereliction of duty and power abuse, of which 30,205 were brought to court. Of them, 8,490 people were suspected of taking bribes topping 100,000 yuan or embezzling public funds of more than 1 million yuan. Investigated officials at and above county magistrate-rank totaled 2,799, including 196 prefectural and eight provincial officials. A total of 703 government officials who were suspected of job-related crimes were arrested and 7.4 billion yuan in illicit money was confiscated.

Efforts were made to strengthen supervision over litigation proceedings in 2005, providing a strong guarantee of justice. In accordance with the law, procuratorates throughout the country prodded the investigating agencies to file 17,940 cases that met the requirements of registration but were not registered. They also repealed 3,737 wrongly registered cases.

With respect to supervision over judicial activities in criminal cases, the procuratorates lodged protests against 2,978 wrong judgments and rulings and made 1,865 suggestions on rectifying breaches of law. They also appealed against 12,757 judgments and rulings for civil and administrative cases, which were deemed wrong, and proposed the re-trial of 5,192 cases. Cases of illegally prolonged custody were also looked into. Thanks to joint efforts made by procuratorates and other judicial organs, the number of unlawfully extended custody cases dropped to 271 in 2005 from 4,947 in 2004.

To improve the system of prosecuting and relevant working mechanisms, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the Three-Year Implementation Plan for Deepening Procuratorial Reform in 2005. It also launched a system of taping the interrogation of suspects, implemented a registration and approval system for investigating job-related crimes, standardized the management of medico-legal institutions affiliated with procuratorial organs and their staff, improved the procedures for confirming criminal compensation and expanded the experiment with the people's supervisor system.