China
last updated July 25, 2007
General Information
- Country Name: People’s Republic of China
- Type of Government: Communist party-led State
- United Nations Membership: Since Oct. 24, 1945
- Population: 1,321,851,888 (July 2007 estimate)
The World Factbook: China, CIA, last updated July 19, 2007
Applicable International Human Rights Instruments
History
The Ancient Laws of China were among the first to establish the death penalty as a type of punishment for crimes. In 1996, China revised the Criminal Law to permit imposition of the death penalty for 68 crimes ranging from tax evasion, embezzlement, habitual theft, drug trafficking and corruption to robbery, rape and murder. Death sentences can either be immediate or they may be commuted according to law if the person commits no intentional offense during a two-year suspension of execution.
On January 1, 1997, a law went into effect permitting lethal injections as a method of execution. Previously, all executions were carried out by firing squad with a single shot to the back of the head. Changes to the Criminal Procedure Code that took effect in October 1997 outlawed the execution of pregnant women and juvenile offenders. According to human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, however, China has continued to execute juveniles – including the execution of a man in January 2003 for a crime he committed when he was 16 – due to a lack of nationwide compliance with the law.
On January 1, 2007, a law went into effect granting the Supreme People’s Court the sole power to review and ratify death sentences. The Supreme People’s Court had the same authority prior to 1981, but Chinese leaders shifted appellate authority to local provincial high courts during a massive crackdown on crime at the outset of economic reform. As a result, a province’s high court handled both the appeal and the final review, reducing the likelihood of reversing a death sentence. Numerous miscarriages of justice, including the execution of many innocent people, took place during the period of time that lower courts had authority to approve death sentences.
According to a Supreme People’s Court spokesperson, the number of death sentences dropped 10 percent during the first five months of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006. The official told the China Daily newspaper that lower courts were forced to be more prudent as a result of Supreme Court review. Legal experts expect a continued decrease in the number of death sentences meted out over the next several years as the change takes full effect.
To combat crime, China routinely uses “strike-hard” campaigns. These campaigns either target crime in general or a specific crime the public is concerned about. “Mass arrests, swift and harsh sentencing, mass rallies, extensive propaganda work, and widespread use of the death penalty” characterize these campaigns. Legal procedures are accelerated, thereby putting legal safeguards at risk and increasing the risk of error – particularly when the death penalty is employed. The most notorious strike-hard campaigns took place during 1983, 1996, and 2001. A dramatic increase in the number of death sentences and executions coincided with these campaigns. In 1996, Amnesty International recorded a total of 6,100 death sentences and 424 death sentences with a two-year reprieve – the highest number recorded since 1983.
Death Penalty Eligible Crimes
In China, the death penalty is applied to a wide-range of crimes, including small-scale drug offenses, crimes against symbols of the state, and petty economic crimes, such as tax fraud. A total of 68 crimes may be eligible for the death penalty under Chinese criminal law.
Methods of Execution
The majority of executions in China are carried out by firing squad, but lethal injection has increasingly been used. China’s use of mobile execution vans, designed to help cut costs associated with putting inmates to death, has contributed to the increase in the use of lethal injection. See: China makes ultimate punishment mobile, Calum MacLeod, USA Today, June 15, 2007.
Relevant Statistics
According to one estimate based on internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents, 60,000 people were executed in the four years from 1997-2001, an average of 15,000 people per year (figure includes extra-judicial killings). In 2001, China carried out approximately 2,500 executions. Eighty nine people were killed in one day in 2001, to start a national strike-hard campaign on crime.
In 2005, China carried out an estimated 1,770 executions and sentenced nearly 4,000 people to death. At least 1010 people were executed in 2006, although the actual number may be as high as 8,000. See: Number of Executions Worldwide Falls by More than 25 Percent, Reports Amnesty International, Amnesty International USA, April 27, 2007.
Current Concerns
China recently introduced a fleet of mobile execution vehicles to administer the death penalty by lethal injection. The Government is touting this as the latest advancement in China’s judicial system. The Yunnan Province alone has 18 death vans. This is a departure from the past practice of publicly held execution rallies where executions were carried out by firing squads.
International human rights groups are worried that the implementation of mobile execution vans may signify that China intends to harvest the organs of executed prisoners to supply the country’s growing market for organ transplants.
Although torture is prohibited under Chinese law, human rights groups report that it is still widely used to extract “confessions” from suspects who are then sentenced to death based on that “evidence.” In addition, limited access to lawyers and political interference in the justice process continues to have a disproportionate impact upon certain groups. Evidence suggests that people convicted of white-collar crimes such as corruption and fraud more frequently receive two-year suspended death sentence compared to other death penalty-eligible crimes. Some have also alleged that offenders with political connections are more frequently executed by lethal injection – widely thought to be a more “desirable” form of execution in China – than other offenders in the region.
Compiled from:
Amnesty Int’l, Report, People's Republic of China: Executed "According to Law"? – The Death Penalty in China, available at http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/document.do?id=806E474AFD57DC5980256E5C00688E40
Amnesty Int’l, Report, Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty in China: Fact Sheet, available at http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/world/china/fact_sheet.html
Antoaneta Bezlova, Death Penalty – China: Rapid Death by Roaming Vans, Inter Press Service News Agency, July 19, 2006, available at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34023
China: Death Penalty for Stealing Transmission Wires, LCG Consulting, Aug. 6, 2001, available at http://www.energyonline.com/Industry/News.aspx?NewsID=5011&China%3A_Death_Penalty_for_Stealing_Transmission_Wires
China Questions Death Penalty¸ China Daily, Jan. 27, 2005, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-01/27/content_412758.htm
China Tightens Death Penalty Law, BBC News, Oct. 31, 2006, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6101380.stm
China to Review Death Sentences, BBC News, Sept. 27, 2005, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4285674.stm
Susan Jakes, China’s Message on Executions, Time, Nov. 3, 2006, available at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1554379,00.html
History of the Death Penalty, Michael Reggio, Frontline, 1997.
Number of executions falling sharply in China, Jim Yardley, International Herald Tribune, June 8, 2007.
China death penalty verdicts drop, BBC News, June 8, 2007.
State Coercion, Deterrence, and the Death Penalty in the PRC, Marina Svensson, March 2001.
Number of Executions in China Seems to Decline, Rights Group Says, Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, September 4, 1998.
A revised Criminal Procedure Law came into force in January 1997, Hands Off Cain, January 1, 2007.
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