China’s justice system 2024 grows more opaque
As the annual Two Congress meetings in Beijing conclude, both the Supreme Procuratorate (SPP) and the Supreme Court (SPC) have released their annual work reports, shedding light on China's judiciary in 2024.
As usual, Safeguard Defenders has reviewed data related to arrests, prosecutions, trials, and sentencing, comparing them with previous reports since Xi Jinping came to power. In general, this year's reports show no significant new trends. For the most part, the situation remains stable or is gradually returning to pre-COVID lockdown levels. The only significant ongoing trend is the reduction in information provided in the reports, contributing to the PRC’s attempts to render China an informational black hole for outside observers.
Transparency in China's criminal justice system continues to decline as SPP and SPC reports remove key data (see below under each section) from their submissions to Congress.
To make matters worse, the China Judgments Online/Wenshu database—significantly flawed at its best—has effectively been discontinued as of 2024. Prior to this, an analysis covering 2013 to 2020 showed that 35-45% of verdicts announced by the SPC were missing from the database annually. Earlier analyses provide further details and context.
Since Xi came to power, China has seen approximately 18.5 million prosecutions, with its courts issuing 17 million verdicts (at the first instance) and with approximately 10.5 million arrests (not detentions).
No data of any kind exists on the number of people detained within the regular criminal justice system, only on those that police later seeks to have arrested.
Arrests are gradually approaching pre-COVID levels, but the number of approved arrests remains below pre-COVID levels. The fall in arrests during COVID was likely due to the widespread lockdowns.
Denied arrest requests have consistently remained high since the onset of COVID, when they spiked significantly. It seems likely many arrests were denied during the COVID lockdown period to ease the burden on the criminal justice system, but has since started being reduced again.
Since 2021, data on the reasons for denied arrest requests—whether due to insufficient evidence or deemed unnecessary—has largely ceased being published, limiting its usefulness.
Arrest requests denied due to insufficient evidence have averaged 12% since Xi took office, but little data exists for the most of the recent years.
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In both 2023 and 2024, the number of requested prosecutions reached record levels since Xi took office, and unlike for arrests, the number of requested and approved prosecutions has not altered much due to COVID lockdowns and restrictions.
Similar to arrests, data on the reasons for denied prosecution requests (insufficient evidence versus deemed unnecessary) has been greatly reduced since 2021. Nonetheless, the total number of denied prosecutions rose significantly during COVID and remains high post-COVID.
Most denied prosecutions are not due to insufficient evidence but are deemed unnecessary—a trend that began in 2020 during the onset of COVID lockdowns and has persisted.
Prosecutions denied due to insufficient evidence remain low, averaging 1.95% since Xi assumed office, and most prosecutions denied are due to being deemed unnecessary, especially during the COVID lockdown period.
The number of denied prosecution data for 2016 and 2017 is very incomplete, as it does not include those denied due to being unnecessary.
The number of trials (at the first instance) in 2024 remains consistent with the previous five years, with a dismal rate of not-guilty verdicts and a conviction rate exceeding 99.96%, reaching a record high of 99.7552% in 2022.
In 2024, 598 people were deemed not guilty out of 1.6 million verdicts, marking the highest number since 2021.
Over the past 12 years, only 6,681 people were found not guilty out of a total of 17 million verdicts.
This data is sourced from SPC and SPP work reports, complemented by information published in state and party media based on SPC/SPP data.
Values for 2017 and 2022 are extrapolated, as those years' reports only provide five-year totals, necessitating the calculation of annual data from prior years.
For prosecutions denied due to insufficient evidence, there is no 2021 and 2022 data, but the five-year total for 2018-2022 indicates the total for both years as 94,193, or roughly 47,000 per year if evenly broken down.
Denied prosecution data for 2016 and 2017 is very incomplete.
Please note that the number of judgments is given in thousands, hence the # of judgments and the number of guilty + not guilty does not entirely match.
