The Supreme People's Procuratorate is the highest procuratorial organ of China and the legal supervisory organ of the State. It is mainly responsible for leading local people's procuratorates and special people's procuratorates at various levels to perform legal supervision according to law and ensuring the enforcement of State laws in a unified and proper manner. The Supreme People's Procuratorate is responsible to the NPC and its Standing Committee, and reports its work to and accepts supervision from the NPC and its Standing Committee.

According to the Constitution and statutes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate exercises the following functions and duties:

Leading the work of local people's procuratorates and special people's procuratorates at all levels;

Directly accepting and handling according to law the cases involving corruption, bribery, tort to citizens' democratic rights and misconduct in office, placing them on file for investigation, and deciding whether to initiate prosecution;

Performing legal supervision over the judicial proceedings of courts and investigation of criminal cases;
Deciding on arrest and prosecution of major criminal cases according to law; performing legal supervision over the judicial activities in criminal cases;

Lodging protests against effective, but wrong judgments and rulings made by people's courts at various levels to the Supreme People's Court according to law;

Exercising legal supervision over activities conducted in prisons and reform-through-labor institutions;

Providing judicial interpretations of questions concerning specific applications of laws in procuratorial work;

Formulating regulations and by-laws concerning procuratorial work;

Leading and administering the work of public procurators according to law;

Organizing and guiding the education and training of officials with the procuratorial departments; and
Sponsoring negotiations with foreign procuratorial departments for judicial assistance.