COUNTER-TERRORISM

The chief justice noted ever-growing threats from terrorism and separatism and vowed severe punishments for offenders.

According to Zhou, Chinese courts convicted 712 people for instigating secessionist activities or participating in violent terrorist attacks in 2014, representing a year-on-year increase of 13.3 percent.

Overall, courts in China concluded some 1.02 million first trials in criminal cases last year and convicted 1.18 million people.

"We will actively participate in the fight against terrorism and secessionism, severely punish violent terrorist crimes according to the law, and severely punish all types of crimes that gravely endanger the safety of the people," Zhou said.

Violence and terrorism have been on the rise in China over recent years. Three people were killed and 39 others injured when a sports utility vehicle plowed into crowds near the Tian'anmen Square in the heart of Beijing on Oct. 28, 2013.

On March 1 last year, knife-wielding assailants killed 31 people and injured 141 others at a train station in Yunnan' s provincial capital Kunming.

"We will resolutely safeguard national security, ethnic unity and social stability," Zhou said, adding that the courts have meted out harsh punishments to the suspects of the Tian'anmen and Kunming attacks according to the law.

NO "SAFE HAVEN" ABROAD

The country is also working with international counterparts to block "the last route of retreat" for corrupt officials.

Procurator-General Cao said Chinese prosecutors seized 749 fleeing corrupt suspects from both home and abroad last year.

Among them, 49 suspects were captured or were persuaded to turn themselves in from 17 countries and regions including the United Statesand Canada, Cao said.

"We will actively advance efforts to have fugitive suspects repatriated and recover their illegal proceeds of corruption," the top prosecutor said. "The corrupt shall never be allowed to get away with the law."

This has followed the success of a Fox Hunt 2014 operation launched in July to bring back crooked officials still at large.

According to Cao, the SPP would explore ways to confiscate illegal gains of corrupt officials so that they could "never profit economically from their illegitimate deeds."

REFLECTING ON WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS

The chief justice expressed self-reproach for wrongful convictions and urged fellow judges to draw lessons from them.

In 2014, courts nationwide reheard 1,317 cases and corrected a number of wrongful ones, including a high-profile rape-murder case in 1996, in which an 18-year-old man named Huugjilt was wrongfully convicted, Zhou said.

Cao Jianming also stressed in his report that preventing wrongful convictions was a bottom line that prosecutors must always hold.

Prosecutors should work to stop a case "tainted" by unclear facts, lack of evidence or unlawful procedure, from going to the court, Cao said.

They were asked to pay special attention to murder cases and others that are mainly established on confession and witness statement.

TOUGHER ON POLLUTERS

China's judicial departments played more harshly against polluters in 2014.

The number of pollution-related criminal cases increased by 8.5 times in 2014, according to the work report of the SPC.

Civil cases about damage of pollution increased by 51 percent year on year.

About 25,800 people were charged with crimes such as damaging the environment, illegal logging and illegal farming on grassland in 2014, up 23 percent over the previous year.

Cao said the SPP would engage prosecutors more in environment litigation for public interest this year.

Experts believe the participation of prosecutors in environment litigation for public interest was not only a deterrence to polluters but also a judicial supervision on abuse of power or malfeasance.