People's courts form the judicial organs in China. The state sets up the Supreme People's Court, local people's courts at all levels, and military and other special courts.

The Supreme People's Court is the highest judicial organ of the country. It is responsible to the NPC and its Standing Committee, and reports its work to them. The Supreme People's Court independently exercises the highest judicial 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 Court has three responsibilities:

--Handling cases that have the greatest influence, cases of appeals against judgments and rulings of higher courts and cases it deems it should deal with;

--Supervising the administration of justice by local people's courts and military and other special courts at all levels, overruling wrong judgments they have made, and deciding to review the cases itself or to direct the lower-level courts to conduct a retrial; and

--Giving judicial interpretation of questions concerning special applications of laws in judicial proceedings, which must be carried out throughout the country.

Work of the Supreme People's Court in 2005

On March 11, 2006, President Xiao Yang reported on the work of the Supreme People's Court to the Fourth Session of the 10th NPC.

In 2005, the Supreme People's Court concluded 3,196 cases, up 9.34 percent over the previous year. Of the total, 445 cases involved crimes of endangering state security, smuggling, financial fraud, issuance of false value-added tax invoices to help others dodge taxes, drug trafficking, embezzlement of public funds and bribery--all up 11.25 percent. It also ruled on 568 civil cases, involving 10.44 billion yuan, settled 77 cases concerning intellectual property rights and closed 62 administrative cases and cases of state compensation. The court also strengthened its role in coordinating efforts to handle major trans-regional civil cases, concluding 210 of them.

Under the supervision and direction of the Supreme People's Court, local courts at all levels settled 7,940,549 cases in 2005, up 0.85 percent year on year, that involved nearly 1.059796 trillion yuan. Of this, 683,997 cases were criminal cases of first instance, up 6.17 percent, and 844,717 people, or 10 percent more, were sentenced to prison; major criminal cases arising from dereliction of duty, work safety incidents and engineering safety incidents totaled 1,050, with 1,296 people put in jail; cases of embezzlement, bribery and dereliction of duty added up to 24,277, with 1,932 officials at and above county magistrate-rank, including six provincial and 178 prefectural officials, were sentenced to prison; the number of civil cases of first instance stood at 4,360,184, up 1.31 percent, and involved 653 billion yuan; criminal and civil cases involving intellectual property rights violations stood at 3,529 and 13,393, up 28.28 percent and 38.04 percent, respectively, over the previous year; administrative cases of first instance accounted for 95,707 cases, up 3.81 percent; and cases of state compensation numbered 2,991, involving 37.51 million yuan. The courts also accepted 2,052,835 appeals for implementing rulings and settled 2,036,717 cases involving 312 billion yuan.

In the year, the Supreme People's Court issued its Second Five-Year Reform Plan (2006-10), formulated the Regulations on the Management of People's Jurors and 15 legal interpretations, and released 28 directives on legal affairs. It also received 147,449 letters and visits, including 19,695 litigation-related ones.

Through the year, courts across the country handled 10,107, or 18.15 percent less, protests against wrong judgments and rulings, lodged by procuratorates at all levels according to judicial supervision procedures, and settled 9,949 cases. They also offered legal aid to 266,732 litigants in economic difficulties and suspended, reduced or exempted 1.265 billion yuan in litigation fees, up 16.24 percent over the previous year.