A revised Criminal Procedure Law came into force in January 1997

A revised Criminal Procedure Law came into force in January 1997. This law reduced the number of capital offences to sixty-nine. However, in March 1997 new amendments added to the number of crimes punishable by death. There are two types of death sentence in China: immediate execution and a death sentence with suspension that allows for the commutation of the sentence when the condemned prisoner does not deliberately commit further crimes during a 2-year suspension period. Offences that attract the death penalty include such non-violent crimes as tax evasion, drug-trafficking, embezzlement, forgery, fraud, gambling, bigamy, running a brothel, habitual theft, corruption, disturbing the peace, cigarette smuggling, organizing pornographic clubs, car smuggling, exploitation of prostitutes, speculation, publication of pornographic material, stealing or trafficking in national treasures, financial fraud, sale of false invoices, sale of the pelts of two giant pandas, stealing cows, camels or horses, sale of false birth certificates, sale of false sterility certificates, sale of counterfeit money, and killing giant pandas and golden monkeys. Hacking and other cyber crimes are also punishable by death. Anyone convicted of trafficking 50 grams or more of heroin is condemned to death. China usually marks June 26, the international day against drug abuse, with a wave of public executions. Death sentences are often pronounced in public and the condemned prisoner is presented to the crowd and forced to bow his head and wear a sign with the name of his crime written on it around his neck. Defendants are often denied legal assistance, and when it is granted the lawyers have only a day or two to prepare their defence. Moreover, death sentences are often decided before the trial by a judging committee. After confirmation of a death sentence, the defendant has from 3 to 10 days to appeal. If no appeal is presented, the sentence is automatically referred to the Supreme People's Court which makes a decision within 6 weeks. Appeals are rarely successful. Executions are carried out with a shot to the back of the head or the heart from close quarters. The condemned are made to kneel, with their legs in shackles and their hands tied behind their backs. In 1997, China introduced the lethal injection, applied first in Yunnan province, and has recently introduced mobile execution units. The units consist of specially-modified vans manned by execution teams and equipped with facilities to put people to death with lethal injections close to the venue of the trials. This removes the need to transfer prisoners to execution grounds, a procedure that requires considerable security measures. Convicts are strapped to gurneys a few minutes after their death sentences become final, the needle is inserted into their arm, a member of the execution team presses a button, and the fatal chemicals are injected into the veins. The whole procedure can be viewed on a monitor next to the driving seat and recorded. Since the September 11 attacks on the USA, the Chinese government has been using the war on terror to justify its crackdown on all forms of political or religious dissent in the region. Suspected 'separatists, terrorists or religious extremists' have for years faced imprisonment or execution after unfair trials, as well as torture and long-term detention without charge or trial or access to lawyers or family. In particular, China has repackaged its repression of Uighurs in the Islamic northwest of the country as a fight against 'terrorism’ and pressured neighbouring countries like Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Nepal and Pakistan to forcibly return Uighur asylum-seekers. Activists working for the enhanced autonomy of Tibet have also been accused of terrorism by China. Members of religious or spiritual movements unauthorised by the State are often subject to persecution, interrogation, incarceration and physical abuse. In 2004, hundreds of places of worship – clandestine mosques, Tibetan temples, Catholic churches, indigenous Protestant churches - were shut down by the police and in some cases, demolished. Thousands of suspected practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement branded an “evil cult” by the Communist authorities, remain imprisoned in jails, labour camps and psychiatric facilities. Since they were first persecuted in 1999, hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners died in labour camps, many as a result of torture. According to 2003 government statistics, more than 250,000 persons were serving sentences in "reeducation-through-labor" camps and other forms of administrative detention not subject to judicial review. Other experts reported that more than 310,000 persons were serving sentences in these camps in 2003. Though China amended its penal code in October 1997 to prohibit the execution of people who committed crimes when they were less than 18 years of age, it continues to put juvenile offenders to death as courts neglect to ascertain the real age of defendants. China has no plans to abolish its death penalty but is carrying out reforms to ensure that it is used prudently, Premier Wen Jiabao said on March 14, 2005. "Given our national conditions, we cannot abolish the death penalty,'' Wen said at a news conference. "More than half the countries in the world still have the death penalty,'' Wen said at the news conference, held on the last day of the annual meeting of China's ceremonial legislature. "What we are doing is instituting an effective system in China to ensure prudence and justice in giving death penalties.'' The Chinese government is implementing judicial reforms that could sharply reduce its use of the death penalty. In January 1, 2007, a law will come into force requiring China’s highest court, the Supreme People's Court, to resume reviewing, as it had done up to 1983, all death penalty cases before executions are carried out. However, this reform, and a suggestion that in some cases longer prison sentences should be passed instead of the death penalty, does still not address 'confessions' extorted through torture, limited access to lawyers, and political interference in the judicial process. On July 1 2006 China's high courts began open hearings for death penalty cases in a long-awaited move aimed at raising the quality of justice. 
The ‘strike-hard’ campaign launched in April 2001 and still underway, has led to the execution of thousands of people. The number of executions traditionally rises ahead of holidays and this is popular with the Chinese public. People accused of violent and non-violent crimes alike have been fed to the shredder that is China’s capital punishment system - terrorists and separatist militants, murderers and robbers, kidnappers and rapists, drug-traffickers and small time peddlers, smugglers of weapons and cigarettes, counterfeiters of banknotes and invoices, pimps and tomb-raiders, corrupters and corrupted - were put on trial in mass public rallies, forced to wear placards announcing their name and crime, and then taken to a field and shot. Of particular concern is the fairly common practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners without their permission. Reportedly, death sentences have been carried out because organs were requested for transplants. The number of death sentences passed, as the number of executions carried out, are classed as state secrets in China, nevertheless one fact emerges clearly: China is the world’s top executioner. Information on the real extent of the judicial massacre that takes place in China is beginning to filter through sources within the ruling Communist regime. The number of people put to death in the PRC is much higher than the highest estimates by western media or abolitionist organisations. In Disidai, or The Fourth Generation a Communist Party member writing under the pseudonym Zong Hairen said 15,000 people had been sent to their death in China between 1998 and 2001. The book was published in 2002. In 2003, according to a judicial source, 5,000 people were executed in China. Chen Zhonglin, a member of the People’s National Congress (Parliament) in Beijing, said that China carries out 10,000 executions every year. His declaration was published on the China Youth Daily in March 2004. This was the first time that a similar declaration was published by a state-controlled newspaper. Hands Off Cain estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 executions took place in the country in 2004. Based on public reports available, Amnesty International estimated that at least 1,770 people were executed and at least 3,900 people sentenced to death in China in 2005, but the true figures were believed to be much higher. In March 2005, Liu Renwen, a well-known legal expert, said that "as many as 8,000" people are executed per year in China.