BEIJING -- A new report of the Supreme People's Procuratorate has shown that China is making steady progress in the work on public interest litigations.

It said that procuratorates across China filed 92,410 public interest litigation cases from January to September, up around 69 percent year on year.

Procurator-general Zhang Jun delivered the report on public interest litigations Wednesday at the ongoing bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which started Monday.

A total of 214,740 public interest litigation cases were filed from July 2017 to September 2019, the report said.

Environmental and resources protection took up the bulk of the work since 2017, with 118,012 items on the issue, accounting for 54.96 percent of the total.

A total of 3.21 million mu (214,000 hectares) of polluted or damaged farmland, wetland, forests and grassland were dealt with as a result of the handling of the cases. Over 31 million tonnes of solid waste and household waste were cleared during the period.

The handling of the cases also saw 3.45 billion yuan (around 488 million U.S. dollars) of compensation for the restoration of ecology and environment be recovered, the report said.

As China's "mother river," the Yellow River is among the major beneficiaries of the efforts.

A total of 1,097 public interest litigation cases have been filed by procuratorates in nine provincial regions along the Yellow River since December 2018, when a cleanup campaign of the river was launched, according to the report.

The procuratorates have handled supervised the cleaning of 1,707 mu of polluted waters in the period. They have also facilitated the clearing of 1.39 million tonnes of household and construction waste, as well as the dismantling of 808,000 square meters of illegal buildings, the report said.

Meanwhile, Chinese procuratorates have also stepped up efforts in pre-litigation procedures of public interest litigations over the past two years or so, which has been a rather unsung sector of the work in this field.

The pre-litigation procedures of 187,565 such cases were handled since July 2017, the report showed.

Pre-litigation procedures are believed to have the advantage of coordinating, supervising and facilitating the comprehensive efforts of multiple functional bodies, which are exceptionally effective in protecting public interests, as the handling of illicit acts would not have to be resorted to courts.

For instance, upon receiving clues to cases on public interests, procuratorates would talk with senior officials with government sectors and take into account their views concerning the cases.

Procuratorates would then issue procuratorial suggestions, coordinate and push forward the implementation of the suggestions and help administrative organs with their rectification and law-based administration. Most problems would be solved in this phase, according to the report.

Since July 2017, procuratorates across the country have delivered 182,802 pre-litigation procuratorial suggestions to administrative organs, 97.37 percent of which were responded to and implemented, the report showed.