Capital Punishment in The People's Republic of China - Chinese Cultural Context

Chinese Cultural Context

Capital punishment is one of the classical Five Punishments of China's dynastic period. In Chinese philosophy, capital punishment was favored by the Legalists but its application was tempered by the Confucianists, who emphasized rehabilitation over punishment. In Communist philosophy, Vladimir Lenin favored retention of the death penalty, while Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels criticized the practice as "feudal" and "capitalist oppression". Mao Zedong's government emphasized the death penalty's transient place in the legal system, while advocating that it be used for a limited number of counterrevolutionaries. The market reformer Deng Xiaoping after him stressed that the practice must not be abolished, and advocated its wider use against recidivists and corrupt officials. Leaders of China's minor, non-communist parties have also advocated for a wider use of the death penalty. Both Deng and Mao viewed the death penalty as having tremendous popular support, and portrayed the practice as a means "to assuage the people's anger".

Capital punishment has widespread support in China, especially for violent crimes, and no group in government or civil society vocally advocates for its abolition. Surveys conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1995, for instance, found that 95 percent of the Chinese population supported the death penalty, and these results were mirrored in other studies. Polling conducted in 2007 in Beijing, Hunan and Guangdong found a more moderate 58 percent in favor of the death penalty, and further found that a majority (63.8 percent) believed that the government should release execution statistics to the public.