5 million criminals convicted in China in 5 years: Report

Courts in China convicted and punished 5.24 million criminals in past five years, which in an increase of 25.5 per cent from 2003 to 2007, the country's top judge said in Beijing on Sunday.

Among them, 1.86 million criminals were convicted of felony charges, including murder, robbery, kidnapping, planting bombs, human trafficking and organisational crimes, said Wang Shengjun, president of the Supreme People's Court.

Wang was delivering work report at the first session of 12th National People's Congress.

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 on delivering the death penalty to the criminals and the supreme court strictly reviewed these sentences, he added.

"We have ensured the capital punishment to be imposed on a very small number of people convicted of extremely serious crimes," he was quoted as saying to state-run Xinhua news agency.

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, which is an increase of 26 per cent, according to the report.