SPC and SPP work report 2025 – key takeaways
On Monday, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) and Supreme People’s Court (SPC) delivered their annual work reports to the National People’s Congress. The SPC disclosed that only 294 not‑guilty verdicts were issued out of more than one million criminal judgments — the lowest figure recorded since at least 1980. The SPP likewise reported a continued decline in the number of prosecutions dropped before trial, a category that had risen sharply during the COVID‑19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.
The data also shows that prosecutions and trials decreased compared with 2024, while the number of arrest requests denied by prosecutors continued to fall, reversing the temporary surge seen during the COVID era.
A further development is the ongoing reduction in transparency. As in recent years, the reports omit detailed explanations for denied arrests and dropped prosecutions. This year, the SPC went even further by not disclosing the total number of criminal judgments issued.
Arrests sought and denied
Arrests — both requested by police and approved by prosecutors — declined compared with 2024, reaching new lows aside from certain years during the extended COVID lockdown period. Prosecutors denied 32.93% of arrest requests. If the pattern mirrors 2023, roughly half of these denials were due to insufficient evidence, and the other half because arrest was deemed unnecessary.
Prosecutions dropped and carried forth
As with arrests, the number of prosecutions — both initiated and carried through to trial — continued its multi‑year decline. A total of 19.82% of initiated prosecutions were dropped before trial. Based on earlier years such as 2022 and 2023, most dropped prosecutions were likely deemed unnecessary, with only a smaller portion attributed to lack of evidence. Recent reports no longer provide this breakdown.
The decrease in dropped prosecutions was smaller than the overall decline in prosecutions.
Trials and outcomes
Trials and sentencing also decreased in 2025 compared with the previous year. Not‑guilty verdicts fell to an all‑time low of 294, placing the conviction rate at 99.9778%.
The number of not‑guilty sentences issued by criminal courts from 1980 to 2025 is shown below:
Other observations
Additional points highlighted in the SPP and SPC reports include (all compared with 2024 unless otherwise noted):
599 individuals were prosecuted for “infringing” the rights of heroes and martyrs, many likely under the Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law (2018), which has been used to target individuals posting critical content on social media also when outside China.
A notable increase in cases transferred from the National Commission of Supervision (NCS): a 10.8% rise in transferred cases (30,500) and a 20.5% increase in prosecutions launched (29,000).
54,000 people were prosecuted for serious violent crimes such as murder, kidnapping, and robbery. Trials for these crimes fell by 7.3%, to 46,000 cases involving 53,000 individuals. Prosecutors also launched 9,870 cases related to organized crime.
Corruption‑related trials increased by 22.4% to 36,000 cases involving 40,000 people, while bribery cases rose by 10.1%.
One likely factor behind the overall decline in trials appears to be a 28% drop in drunk‑driving cases, which fell from more than 320,000 in 2023 to just 231,000 in 2025.
Notes related to all tables.
- Dark green fields (arrests, prosecutions, trials tables): 2017 and 2022 data is not available per year, instead the reports provide a five-year total, and 2017 and 2022 data is extrapolated from that total. It is possible prior years data has been revised during the five-year period, but that such retroactive changes has not been published.
- Light green field (trials table): 2023 data for judgments and trials based on partial (Jan>Sept and Jan>Jun respectively) data provided, and here extrapolated to a full year.
Blue field (trials table): Number of persons sentenced for 2025 not provided, instead the average number of persons sentenced per trial during 2013-2024 has been applied (1.2523) as an estimate.
In general, the data in the SPP and SPC work reports is not highly reliable and should be treated as an estimate at best, as it often conflicts with more specialized statistics released by other bodies — and at times even by the same institutions in different contexts.
