In accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and the Organic Law of the People's Procuratorates, the people's procuratorates are State organs for legal supervision and the people's procuratorates exercise procuratorial power independently, in accordance with the provisions of the law, and are not subject to interference by any administrative organ, public organisation or individual.

The functions of legal supervision performed by the people's procuratorates mainly include: (1) to file cases and conduct investigations of crimes committed by taking advantage of duty, such as crimes of embezzlement and bribery, crimes of dereliction of duty committed by State functionaries, and crimes involving violations of a citizen's personal rights and crimes involving infringement of a citizen's democratic rights committed by State functionaries; (2) the arrest of any citizen, unless decided on by a people's court, must be subject to the approval of a people's procuratorate; (3) to make public prosecution on behalf of the State; and (4) to exercise supervision over criminal, civil and administrative proceedings to determine whether such activities conform to the law.

In accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, the Supreme People's Procuratorate is responsible to and reports on its work to the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee, and people's procuratorates at various local levels are responsible to the organs of State power which created them and to the people's procuratorates at higher levels. Different from the people's courts in which people's courts at higher levels supervise those at lower levels, the people's procuratorates at higher levels direct those at lower levels: the Supreme People's Procuratorate directs the work of the people's procuratorates at various local levels and of the special people's procuratorates; people's procuratorates at higher levels direct the work of those at lower levels.

The establishment of the procuratorial organs parallels that of the courts. That is, they are established on the basis of administrative divisions and divided into four levels: the Supreme People's Procuratorate; people's procuratorates of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government; branches of the people's procuratorates of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government, and people's procuratorates of autonomous prefectures and cities directly under the provincial governments; people's procuratorates of counties (cities), autonomous counties and municipal districts. The procuratorial organs at various levels respectively establish a bureau of anti-embezzlement-and-bribery, a procuratorial division against dereliction of duty and infringement of citizens' rights, procuratorial divisions in charge of investigation supervision, public prosecution, accusations, petitions, civil and administrative cases, prevention of crimes committed by State functionaries, prisons and detention houses and other professional divisions.

Public procurators are the procuratorial personnel who exercise the procuratorial power of the State according to law, including chief procurators, deputy chief procurators (the Procurator-General, Deputy Procurators-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate), members of procuratorial committees, procurators and assistant procurators of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, local people's procuratorates at various levels and special people's procuratorates such as military procuratorates. The system of ranks and grades for public procurators is classified into four ranks and 12 grades, the same as that for judges. The qualifications and procedures of appointment and removal for a public procurator are basically the same as those for a judge.