A work report of China's Supreme People's Court on Thursday said the country saw a 40.7-percent rise in the number of criminal cases that involved instigation of secessionist activities in 2014.

The report did not provide an exact number of such cases, only saying that Chinese courts concluded some 1.02 million first trials in criminal cases last year and convicted 1.18 million people, up 7.2 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively.