On October 15 and 16, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate held expanded meetings of the Procuratorial Committee and the Party Group. During these sessions, they reported on the cases that did not meet quality standards in national procuratorial operations since 2019 and discussed measures to strengthen and improve prosecutorial management while reducing the burden on grassroots agencies.
Chief Procurator Ying Yong, who presided over the meetings, emphasized the importance of adhering strictly to the law, being pragmatic, and following established practices. He called for a shift from merely managing data to a more comprehensive emphasis on business operations, case management, and quality control. He noted the need to integrate macro-level case quality analysis with micro-level case quality assessments and to further implement and refine the judicial accountability system.
According to reports, in the first three quarters of this year, the national prosecutorial agencies experienced continuous and coordinated growth in their four major functions. The strength of legal supervision has increased significantly, overall case handling quality has been good, and special campaigns like “Prosecutorial Support for Enterprises” and “Protecting People’s Livelihoods” have shown clear results. Additionally, high-efficiency case-handling mechanisms are being improved as various prosecutorial activities progress steadily. However, challenges remain, such as ensuring proper standards for criminal case review and arrest, making better use of civil retrial prosecutorial recommendations, providing stronger administrative judgment supervision, and improving the quality of public interest litigation cases.
The meetings acknowledged that while the overall operational status of prosecutorial agencies is good and there is a growing awareness among prosecutors about high-quality case handling, some agencies and personnel remain overly focused on data indicators and performance rankings. This focus diverts attention from achieving substantive case quality and efficiency, with improper assessments playing a significant role in this issue.
It was determined that the Supreme People’s Procuratorate must take the lead in tackling problematic assessments and pressures in management practices. This includes alleviating the burden of data-driven focuses that detract from effective case handling.
The meetings decided to eliminate all unnecessary, inappropriate, and unreasonable assessments of procuratorial agencies, especially at the grassroots level. They will no longer enforce the prosecutorial business evaluation indicator system, nor will they rank and report on business data across different regions. Instead, they aim to shift the focus of prosecutorial management to emphasize business, case, and quality management, and to analyze key types of cases, key areas of handling, and important operational trends. This approach aims to integrate macro-level quality analysis with micro-level assessments, guiding procuratorial agencies and personnel to adopt a correct view of performance.
Moreover, the emphasis on not executing the business evaluation system and not ranking data does not mean ignoring data or management altogether. Instead, the goal is to ensure that data is accurate, objective, and truthful, while using this information to analyze case handling quality, efficiency, and effectiveness comprehensively. This will help identify the core issues affecting prosecutorial efficacy and provide a more scientific basis for high-quality case handling.
