China retains the death penalty because the public...

China retains the death penalty because the public still supports the ultimate punishment, but Beijing has taken steps to restrict its use and turn to more humane ways of executing criminals, said Law professor He Jiahong of the People's University in Beijing. "The traditional thinking among Chinese people is that the death penalty is justifiable so long as the executed is the right guy, the real criminal," he said. He said that the majority of people believed in a life for a life in that a murderer should pay with his life for his crime, and cited a survey conducted in 1995 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Of 5,000 respondents, more than 95 per cent supported the death penalty. Prof He said that education to get people to accept abolition would take time. "It cannot take place overnight. The people will not agree to abolition." This was despite the fact that experience in other countries showed that the death penalty itself had no impact on the crime rate. Deterrence, Prof He said, rested on high rates of arrest and conviction rather than the severity of punishment. People would tend to commit a crime if they saw little chance of their being detained and convicted, he said.