Chart: Legislators’ Disapproval of Supreme Court Work Report Grows Slightly

At the closing of the annual “Two Sessions” in Beijing, delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC) — the country’s top legislature — voted to approve the annual work reports of the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

This year, more delegates voted against the Supreme Court’s report, with the approval rate dropping to 92.44%, down 2.29 percentage points from a record high last year. The prosecutor’s report was approved overwhelmingly with 96.44% of delegates voting in favor, an increase of 2.55 percentage points from 2018 and a new high. Approval for the prosecutor’s report was 4 percentage points higher than approval for the court’s report.

Of the NPC’s 2,948 delegates, 2,725 voted in favor of the Supreme People’s Court’s annual work report, 156 voted against and 67 abstained. For the Supreme People’s Procuratorate’s report, 2843 voted in favor, 71 voted against, and 31 abstained, with three members failing to cast a vote.

The changes in the disapproval rate for the top court and procuratorate’s reports have been widely watched.

In recent years, the disapproval rate reached a high in 2013, when more than 600 “no” votes were cast against the Supreme People’s Court’s report. The approval rate has been improving since then, as a wide-ranging campaign to crack down on corruption took off that year. The crackdown has seen a growing number of high-level officials being put under investigation for corruption.

The top court has also been seeking to correct wrongful convictions since then, though legal experts said more work needs to be done.