China has 1.6 lawyers per 10,000 people

BEIJING - There are 1.6 lawyers on average for every 10,000 Chinese, with Beijing having the most lawyers per capita and Tibet the least, according to an industry report.

The ratio of lawyers per 10,000 people is an important indicator of development in the legal industry, said the report released by the All China Lawyers Association on Tuesday.

As of 2012, China had a total of 232,384 lawyers, with an average annual growth of 9.1 percent, and 26.6 percent of lawyers were women, it said.

According to the report, six provincial-level regions have less than one lawyer per 10,000 people, including Anhui, Qinghai, Gansu, Guizhou, Jiangxi and Tibet.

China has 19,361 law firms, up six percent annually on average, according to the report.