China convicts 5 million criminals in five years

BEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese courts convicted and punished 5.24 million criminals from 2008 to 2012, up 25.5 percent over the period from 2003 to 2007, said the country's top judge here Sunday.

Among them, 1.86 million were convicted of felony charges, including murder, robbery, kidnap, planting bombs, human trafficking and organizational crimes, said Wang Shengjun, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), when delivering the work report of the SPC at the first session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC).

About 20,000 criminals were convicted of crimes related to the production and distribution of unsafe foods and substandard commodities, Wang told nearly 3,000 national lawmakers, who will deliberate the report.

The courts have been cautious about delivering the death penalty and the supreme court strictly reviewed these sentences, he said.

"We have ensured the capital punishment to be imposed on a very small number of people convicted of extremely serious crimes," he said.

Over the past five years, the SPC closed 49,863 cases and local courts closed 55.26 million cases.

The number of closed cases by courts of all levels increased from 9.84 million in 2008 to 12.4 million in 2012, an increase of 26 percent, according to Wang's report.