Ahead of this year's World Consumer Rights Day on March 15, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) and the China Consumers Association jointly released a batch of typical public interest litigation cases concerning protection of consumer rights and interests.
In January 2025, the SPP launched a nationwide oversight campaign aimed at safeguarding food and drug safety through procuratorial public interest litigation. The initiative focuses on key and difficult issues across all stages from production, circulation to consumption, while breaking down inter-departmental and regional barriers to enhance collaborative governance.
Throughout 2025, procuratorates nationwide handled more than 26,700 consumer rights-related public interest litigation cases, including those involving food and drug safety. These efforts contributed significantly to the protection of consumers' legitimate rights and interests, the regulation of market order, and the promotion of law-based administration.
The released batch consists of 10 cases. Among them are two cases in which consumer rights protection organizations filed lawsuits with the support of procuratorates, three civil public interest litigation cases and two administrative public interest litigation cases initiated by procuratorates, as well as three cases involving pre-litigation procedures for administrative public interest litigation.
These cases reflect the coordinated efforts of procuratorates, consumers associations, and administrative regulators in protecting consumers' legitimate rights and interests, with particular attention to safeguarding the rights of key groups such as the elderly and mothers with infants. The emphasis is on improving the precision of judicial protection.
The cases highlight a full-chain regulatory approach and promote governance at the source. Based on the characteristics of different cases, procuratorial organs employed multiple measures, including announcements, consultations, procuratorial recommendations, initiation of litigation, and litigation support, to leverage the strengths of the procuratorial public interest litigation system.
According to Zhang Xueqiao, Deputy Prosecutor General of the SPP, procuratorates nationwide will continue efforts to address prominent issues in consumer rights and interests protection and bottleneck challenges to the consumption process, as part of efforts to implement the newly adopted outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for national economic and social development.
Zhang added that a new round of procuratorial public interest litigation oversight campaign on food and drug safety will be launched, with an increased focus on translating case outcomes into effective governance and advancing systemic, source-based governance through the rule of law. These efforts aim to further enhance the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security.
