Judicial Cases in China in 2013

Abstract

As statistically analysed in the Annual Report1 on China’s judicial work, there were 11,016 cases heard by the Supreme People’s Court of China in the year of 2013; 9716 of those cases were completed. At the local judicial level, 14,217,000 cases were heard by local People’s Courts at various levels of which 90 per cent have been decided and enforced. The total number of criminal cases tried and completed in the first instance by various local courts was 954,000, which led to the conviction of about 115,8000 criminals. Cases involving property infringement crimes make the largest proportion of the total number, followed by cases involving the crime of endangering the State or public security and the crime of endangering security of people’s life and property, which sum up to 303,000 and 250,000, respectively. There were 50,000 completed economic criminal cases which involved mostly pyramid schemes, smuggling, money laundering, illegal fundraising, financial fraud, insider dealing, and commercial bribery. Especially, it reflects strengthened regulations over embezzlement and bribery in 2013 when the courts decided 29,000 cases involving the crimes of embezzlements, briberies, and dereliction of duty by state functionaries and convicted about 31,000 criminals. In addition, there were 2082 decided cases relating to crimes of endangering food security and undermining the protection of environmental resource.