Capital Punishment in The People's Republic of China

Capital punishment in the People's Republic of China is usually administered to offenders of serious and violent crimes, such as aggravated murder, but China retains in law a number of nonviolent capital offenses such as drug trafficking. The People's Republic of China executes the highest number of people annually, though other countries (such as Iran or Singapore) have higher per capita execution rates. Watchdog groups believe that actual execution numbers greatly exceed officially recorded executions; in 2009, the Dui Hua Foundation estimated that 5,000 people were executed in China — far more than all other nations combined. The precise number of executions is regarded as a state secret.

Chinese government have recently been pursuing measures to reduce the number of capital offenses and limit the use of the death penalty. In 2011, the National People's Congress Standing Committee adopted an amendment to reduce the number of capital crimes from 68 to 55. Later the same year, the Supreme People's Court ordered lower courts to suspend death sentences for two years and to "ensure that it only applies to a very small minority of criminals committing extremely serious crimes.”

Read more about Capital Punishment In The People's Republic Of China:  Chinese Cultural Context, Legal Procedure, Executions Procedure, Rates of Execution, Criticism

Famous quotes containing the words capital, punishment, people, republic and/or china:

    Had I made capital on my prettiness, I should have closed the doors of public employment to women for many a year, by the very means which now makes them weak, underpaid competitors in the great workshop of the world.
    Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)

    What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)

    Jean Jacques Rousseau ... is nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.
    Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)

    Riot in Algeria, in Cyprus, in Alabama;
    Aged in wrong, the empires are declining,
    And China gathers, soundlessly, like evidence.
    What shall I say to the young on such a morning?—
    Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?—
    No; my little ones lean not toward revolt.
    William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)