About Procuratorial Daily

Procuratorial Daily

Procuratorial Daily (检察日报, Jiǎnchá Rìbào) is the official newspaper — the organ — of the Supreme People's Procuratorate of the People's Republic of China, the country's highest procuratorial and legal-supervision authority. Published in Chinese in Beijing, it reports procuratorial work nationwide: criminal prosecution, legal supervision, public-interest litigation, duty-crime investigation and the building of the procuratorial system itself. As the daily voice of China's prosecution service, it occupies a distinctive place among the country's legal newspapers, combining official announcements and policy interpretation with case reporting and legal journalism for procurators, lawyers and the wider public.

Origins: the decision to found a procuratorial newspaper

The newspaper's creation was a deliberate institutional project of the Supreme People's Procuratorate. On 11 January 1991 the Party group of the Supreme People's Procuratorate decided to establish a preparatory group for founding a China Procuratorial News. On 2 February 1991 the Press and Publication Administration formally approved the new paper, to be supervised and published by the Supreme People's Procuratorate. At a preparatory work conference held by telephone on 12 April 1991, the paper's guiding principle was fixed as "based on the procuratorate, facing society" (立足检察、面向社会) — rooted in procuratorial work but addressed to the public. In April 1991 Deng Xiaoping personally inscribed the newspaper's name, 中国检察报 (China Procuratorial News), for its masthead.

Launch in 1991 and the move to a daily

A trial issue of China Procuratorial News appeared on 25 May 1991, and the newspaper was formally launched on 4 July 1991. It initially appeared four times a week. On 1 January 1996 it converted from a four-times-weekly paper into a daily and was renamed Procuratorial Daily, the title it has carried ever since. The paper's unified domestic publication number is CN 11-0187; a representative 2022 issue ran to eight pages and carried issue number 9787, reflecting more than three decades of continuous publication. Its postal distribution code is 1-154.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate and its newspaper

The Supreme People's Procuratorate is China's highest agency for prosecution and legal supervision, leading the people's procuratorates at provincial, prefectural and county levels across the country. Institutional listings of the Procuratorate name the Procuratorate Daily among its directly subordinate institutions, alongside the Procuratorate's service centre and the China Procuratorate Publishing House. The newspaper therefore functions as part of the procuratorial system's own infrastructure: the channel through which the Supreme People's Procuratorate announces major decisions, publishes interpretations and campaigns, and presents the work of the roughly nationwide network of procuratorates to officials and citizens.

What Procuratorial Daily covers

The paper's reporting follows the constitutional functions of the procuratorate. Its pages carry news of criminal prosecution and major case handling, the supervision of litigation activities, public-interest litigation — an area in which Chinese procuratorates have become the principal plaintiffs, bringing cases on environmental protection, food and drug safety and the protection of state assets — and procuratorial investigation of duty-related crimes by judicial personnel. It also publishes legal theory and practice discussion: articles by senior procurators and scholars in its pages are routinely cited in Chinese legal scholarship, and long-form policy reviews by the Supreme People's Procuratorate's leadership, such as its five-year review of implementing the Central Committee's 2021 Opinions on strengthening legal supervision by procuratorial organs, appear in the paper as authoritative statements of direction.

Zhengyi Net and digital media

The Procuratorial Daily Press operates Zhengyi Net (正义网, Justice Net), described as the first legal web media outlet in China directly managed by the State Council Information Office. Through Zhengyi Net and the newspaper's own digital platforms, including its app and its presence alongside the Supreme People's Procuratorate's WeChat account, the press extends its print reporting into online legal news, case databases and multimedia coverage. The digital operation makes the Procuratorial Daily Press one of the central nodes of China's official legal-information system online, serving an audience well beyond the procuratorial corps itself.

Sister publications and the press group

The Procuratorial Daily Press also carries other publications of the procuratorial system. They include People's Procuratorate (人民检察), the monthly organ journal of the Supreme People's Procuratorate first published in June 1956, which is subordinate to the Procuratorial Daily Press, and historically the editorial office for the Gazette of the Supreme People's Procuratorate was housed within the press from 1991 to 2001. The Supreme People's Procuratorate Film and Television Centre, which produces procuratorate-themed films, dramas and documentaries, is likewise administered under the Procuratorial Daily Press, giving the press a print, online and audiovisual portfolio unusual for a single-organ newspaper office.

Role within China's legal press

China's legal newspapers are closely tied to the institutions they serve, and Procuratorial Daily is the prosecution service's counterpart to the courts' People's Court Daily. Legal-information guides for researchers have long listed the Procuratorial Daily's website, jcrb.com.cn, as a primary source for procuratorate activities and legal news, alongside the Supreme People's Procuratorate's own site. For prosecutors it is a professional newspaper of record; for legal scholars and journalists it is a primary documentary source on how China's procuratorial system understands and presents its own work.

Procuratorial Daily today

More than thirty years after its founding, Procuratorial Daily remains the daily organ of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, publishing from Beijing in print and online. Its trajectory — created by decision of the Procuratorate's Party group in 1991, named by Deng Xiaoping, converted to a daily in 1996, and expanded into Zhengyi Net and film and television production — tracks the growth of the modern Chinese procuratorate itself, from an institution rebuilt after 1978 into one whose expanded public-interest and legal-supervision roles the newspaper now documents daily.

The institution behind the paper

The procuratorial system the newspaper serves was itself rebuilt within living memory. The Supreme People's Procuratorate traces its origin to the Supreme People's Procuratorate of the Central People's Government established on 22 October 1949; the first National People's Congress created the present Supreme People's Procuratorate under the 1954 Constitution. During the Cultural Revolution the procuratorates were abolished — in 1968 the Supreme People's Procuratorate's establishment was revoked and procuratorial functions passed to the public security organs — before the institution was restored in 1978. Procuratorial Daily, founded thirteen years after that restoration, belongs to the rebuilt system's second generation: an institution conscious of its interrupted history, whose newspaper documents its expanding functions, including the special procuratorate that prosecuted the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing cases in 1980 and the internal reforms of 2000 that strengthened its duty-crime prevention and petition-handling departments.

The paper in current procuratorial work

The newspaper remains the first publication channel for the Procuratorate's public output. When the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court jointly released five typical cases of private-fund crimes in December 2023, and when the Procuratorate issued its Guidelines on Handling Intellectual Property Cases for People's Procuratorates in April 2023, the announcements formed part of the flow of authoritative material that Procuratorial Daily exists to publish and interpret. In January 2024 the Procuratorate also launched an official English website to improve its external communication — a step reported within the same official information system of which the newspaper is the print core. For the nationwide corps of procurators, the daily paper, its website at jcrb.com.cn and Zhengyi Net together form the professional information environment in which procuratorial policy is received.