国内英语新闻:Top legislature hears economic, law enforcement, procuratorial reports

BEIJING, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, held a plenary meeting on Wednesday to hear or review multiple reports.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, attended the meeting held during the bi-monthly session that runs from Monday to Saturday.

The meeting was presided over by Wang Dongming, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and attended by 165 members of the committee.

Entrusted by the State Council, China's cabinet, Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan delivered a work report on the transformation and upgrade of foreign trade and the high-quality development of trade.

The report showed the leapfrog development the country's foreign trade underwent since reform and opening up, introduced the progress and existing difficulties in pushing forward the high-quality development of trade, and pointed out the key areas for the work in the future.

Lawmakers reviewed a general report of the State Council on the management of state-owned assets (SOAs), according to which total SOAs in non-financial enterprises had reached 210.4 trillion yuan (29.7 trillion U.S. dollars) by the end of 2018, while those in financial enterprises hit 264.3 trillion yuan.

A special report on SOAs of administrative and public institutions was delivered by Finance Minister Liu Kun.

The report showed that by the end of 2018, total SOAs of administrative and public institutions amounted to 33.5 trillion yuan, with net assets hitting 23.6 trillion yuan.

Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court, said when delivering a report on criminal trials that Chinese courts concluded more than 6.28 million criminal cases in their first instances. They punished some 7.1 million criminals from 2014 to June 2019.

A total of 214,740 public interest litigation cases were filed by Chinese procuratorates from July 2017 to September 2019, according to a report of the Supreme People's Procuratorate on public interest litigations delivered by Procurator-general Zhang Jun.