China plans to increase the use of lethal injections...

China plans to increase the use of lethal injections to execute criminals as a "civilised way of law enforcement", the official Xinhua news agency said.
"We began to introduce such a way of execution after successful experiments on animals," Xinhua quoted Liu Jiachen, Vice President of the Supreme People's Court as saying.
Some intermediate courts had already begun to order lethal injections while others needed help from the government to build execution facilities before the practice could be introduced nationwide, he said.
"We are strict in controlling the death penalty and the number of death sentences is limited," Liu said. "Execution by lethal injection is a full expression of civilised way of law enforcement we have always pursued."
Lethal injection had "received favourable response" from condemned criminals and their relatives, he said.
In recent years, China has executed more people than the rest of the world combined, mostly with a bullet to the back of the head, according to human rights groups.
Liu also said China had jailed more than 12,000 criminals involved in more than 300 cases of organised crime from April to December, 2001. Courts uncovered a number of "protective umbrellas" for criminal gangs in government organs, firms and institutions, he said.
Corruption and crime were among the public's top concerns, according to a survey in the People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper.