In February 2011, China dropped the death penalty for 13 non-violent crimes

In February 2011, the National People’s Congress passed an amendment to the Criminal Law, reducing the number of crimes punishable by death from 68 to 55. The 13 crimes were economic-related non-violent offences, including: smuggling cultural relics, gold, silver, and other precious metals, rare animals and their products, and ordinary goods and materials out of the country; carrying out fraudulent activities with receipts, financial documents, and credit notes; false issuance of exclusive value-added tax invoices to defraud export tax refunds or to offset taxes; forging or selling of forged exclusive value-added tax invoices; theft; teaching of crime-committing methods; theft of ancient cultural relics; theft of fossils. The amendment also stipulates that the death penalty will not be imposed on people aged 75 or older at the time of trial, except if they commit a murder with exceptional cruelty. Previously, only juvenile offenders and women pregnant at the time of trial were exempted from capital punishment.
On 27 October 2014, a draft amendment to the Criminal Law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) for a first reading during the legislature’s bi-monthly session, removing the death penalty as punishment for nine crimes. According to the draft amendment, the nine crimes include smuggling weapons, ammunition, nuclear materials or counterfeit currency; counterfeiting currency; raising funds by means of fraud; arranging for or forcing another person to engage in prostitution; obstructing a commander or a person on duty from performing his duties; and fabricating rumours to mislead others during wartime. After removing the death penalty for these crimes, those convicted will face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, according to the draft. The draft amendment is another move by China to limit the use of the death penalty. Once the proposal is adopted, it will become the second time for the People’s Republic of China to reduce the number of crimes punishable by death since the Criminal Law took effect in 1979.
On 23-24 November 2014, a conference was held by China’s Academy of Social Sciences on the death penalty, which brought in the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and other government departments, as well as experts from Tsinghua University, China University of Political Sciences and Law, and others. Hu Yunteng, head of the Supreme Court’s Research Office said that death penalty reform needs to focus on how to use legislative and judicial measures to reform the death penalty, with further work needed on the following: reducing the number of crimes that carry the death penalty; reducing the judicial use of the death penalty. Judge Hu stated that the death penalty will be retained, but the goal is for the death penalty to be applied 100% correctly and to avoid mistaken cases.
Although the death penalty remains a State secret in China, some news in recent years, including declarations from official sources, suggest that the use of the death penalty may have diminished compared to preceding years.
A major turnabout came after the introduction of a legal reform on 1 January 2007, which required that every capital sentence handed down in China by an inferior court is reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC).
In 2006, State media quoted a Chinese legal expert, Liu Renwen, law professor and director of Criminal Law Department of the Institute of Law under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as saying that an estimate of about 8,000 executions annually was “realistic.”
Since the power of final review of death sentences was returned to the Supreme People’s Court in 2007, the number of executions nationwide may have dropped by more than a third with declines of nearly 50 percent in some regions, Southern Weekly reported in 2014 citing an expert familiar with the court system.
In 2013, 39 percent of all death penalty cases reviewed by the SPC were sent back to provincial high courts for additional evidence: Southern Weekly reported citing an SPC official speaking at a legal seminar. The SPC currently overturns fewer than 10 percent of death penalty verdicts, a former SPC senior judge told Southern Weekly. In the years immediately after 2007, the rate was about 15 percent.
Policy of “Justice Tempered with Mercy”
The US-based Dui Hua Foundation estimated that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and would execute roughly the same number in 2014. The number of executions in 2013 was a fall of 20 percent from 2012, when Dui Hua estimated that China executed 3,000 people, while the 2013 figure dropped by around 80 percent compared to the 12,000 in 2002.
According to the Dui Hua Foundation, the reduction was likely brought about by: greater use of sentence of death with two-year reprieve (which is nearly always commuted to life imprisonment or a fixed-term sentence), improvements in due process rights recently codified in revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL), continued review by the Supreme People’s Court, and the decision to move away from using executed prisoners as the country’s primary “organ donors.”
On 12 March 2015, in his report to the annual session of the National People’s Congress, the President of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), Zhou Qiang, in keeping with the Government’s customary secrecy, gave no figures for the number of death sentences or executions.
In 2014, local courts at various levels concluded about 1,020,000 criminal cases, convicting 1,180,000 people, representing increases of 7.2 percent and 2.2 percent respectively from the previous year. Chinese courts handled 248,000 cases of severe crimes, including homicide, kidnapping and robbery. A total of 304,000 people involved in these cases were convicted and punished. But again China’s chief justice did not say how many people were “sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or more than five years in prison,” the formulated phrase used in the past by the country’s Supreme Court to speak of “severe penalties” resulting from trials.
In 2014, the Supreme People’s Court heard 11,210 cases of various types, up 1.8 percent over 2013, and concluded 9,882 cases, up 1.7 percent, according to Zhou’s report.
Given that the majority – at least 90 percent – of these cases are death penalty review cases; as the SPC doesn’t have jurisdiction over many other cases, an approximate but realistic estimate would put the number of capital cases in 2014, including the final ones and those suspended for two years, at around 8,900, a little more than the 8,700 estimated in 2013.
Considering further that, since February 2010, the Supreme People’s Court has recommended to use a policy of “justice tempered with mercy,” suggesting to the courts to “suspend the death sentence for two years for all cases that don’t require immediate execution,” it is realistic to conclude that the executions in 2014 were at least 2,400, more or less as in 2013.
Supreme Court’s Reforms
The reform, which took effect on 1 January 2007, is considered one of the most significant reforms concerning the death penalty in the last twenty years. It signals a turn-around from the “hit hard” approach taken on in the Eighties that brought the Supreme Court to delegate final decisions regarding capital punishment cases to the lower provincial courts.
According to the new provision, the review of each case should be carried out by three judges of the Supreme Court, who must re-examine all evidence, the laws applied, the appropriateness of the sentence, the arguments of the preceding trial and they must hear the accused in person or by letter before reaching a final decision. If the judges find the evidence insufficient, the sentencing inappropriate or the trial arguments illegal, they present the case to the Judicial Committee of the Supreme Court. The committee examines the case along with a prosecutor from the Office of the Attorney General Supreme of the People.
After the reform of 2007, China has continued to take new measures to limit the number of death sentences and prevent wrongful convictions in capital cases.
In May 2008, China’s Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice jointly issued regulations on the protection of defence lawyers’ roles in capital cases to ensure that defendants’ legal rights were upheld. Some provisions of the regulations include: legal aid institutions must designate lawyers with criminal defence experience in capital cases; lawyers shall not transfer such cases to assistants and must meet the defendant before trial; the Court must inform “interested parties,” lawyers and prosecutors of any date change for court hearings three days ahead of time; the Court must notify lawyers if prosecutors submit new evidence or re-evaluate the case before a re-trial.
In 2011, the Supreme Court recommended the courts to “suspend the death sentence for two years for all cases that don’t require immediate execution.” In normal law practice, a sentence of death with two years’ reprieve is ultimately commuted to lifetime imprisonment after two years. The court has also recommended to “applying the death penalty to a very small minority of criminals committing extremely serious crimes.”
In March 2012, the National People’s Congress, once again, amended the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law, highlighting human rights protection. The new clause requires judges from the Supreme Court to interrogate offenders sentenced to death and listen to defendants’ lawyers when a capital punishment case is under review. The amendment, for the first time, has also made clear that confessions extorted through illegal means, such as torture, and witness testimony and depositions of victims obtained illegally, such as by violence or threats, should be excluded during the trials. To institutionally prevent extortion of confession, the amendment has regulated that suspects be sent to a detention facility for custody after being detained or arrested and be interrogated there. The process of interrogation shall be audio or video-taped.
On 22 January 2015, the Supreme People’s Court reiterated the criteria for capital punishment should be strictly observed so as to ensure “the penalty is only used on an extremely few convicts whose crimes are extremely serious.”
Transparency of Court Proceedings
Acquittals in China’s Communist-controlled court system have been extremely rare in the past, given that almost all of defendants were ever found guilty, according to official statistics. China has occasionally exonerated wrongfully convicts after others came forward to confess their crimes, or in some cases because the supposed murder victim was later found alive.
In 2014, however, courts nationwide reheard 1,317 cases and corrected a number of wrongful ones, according to chief justice Zhou Qiang’s report to the 2015 session of the National People’s Congress. He spoke of “deep remorse” over these cases. “We deeply reproach ourselves for letting wrongful convictions happen. Courts of all levels should learn a serious lesson from these cases,” said Zhou. In 2014, the Supreme Court has continued to work on improving the transparency of court proceedings. Annual work reports of courts were published and judgment papers were put on line while parties could follow the proceeding of their cases through court websites. Supervision and transparency are essential to prevent wrongful convictions.
On 22 August 2014, the High Court of Fujian province declared innocent and freed a man sentenced to death, six years before for a double killing. Nian Bin was convicted of poisoning two children and condemned to die in 2008, and had been held in custody ever since. “None of the evidence presented in the case can be properly verified,” the Fujian court said in a micro blog post announcing Nian’s innocence. On 17 February 2015, a Chinese court awarded him 1.14 million Yuan (189,000 USD) for loss of personal freedom and mental suffering, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
On 9 September 2014, a man was pronounced innocent by the Zhuhai Intermediate People’s Court after being sentenced to death by the Zhuhai Court in 2001 for raping and killing a 19-year-old girl. Xu repeatedly protested his innocence but all the appeals were rejected by local courts until the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) found the suspect’s confession contradicted by evidence provided in 2007.
On 20 November 2014, the Higher People’s Court of Inner Mongolia opened a new trial and in December acquitted a teenager executed 18 years before for rape and murder. The 18-year-old, named, Hugjiltu also known as Qoysiletu, was found guilty and put to death in 1996, but doubt was cast on the verdict when another man confessed to the crime in 2005.

The War on Drugs
According to China’s Criminal Law, a drug dealer can be sentenced to death for producing, transporting or trafficking more than 50 grams of heroin or one kilogram of opium. Traffickers caught with 150 kilograms of marijuana can also face the death penalty. The most lenient sentence for such a crime is 15 years.
Between January and October 2014, more than 84,000 drug convicts were put behind bars, revealed the Supreme People’s Court (SPC). About 27 percent received penalties ranging from five years in jail to the death sentence, according to the Fifth Criminal Court of the SPC, Xinhua reported. In June, on the eve of the International Day Against Drug Abuse, China’s President Xi Jinping declared a crackdown on drug trafficking. On the same day, the SPC said that there had been an increase in drug trafficking in the country, noting that 39,762 had been convicted for drug crimes between December 2013 and April 2014 alone, indicating a 27.8 percent increase year-on-year. Four people were executed for different drug offenses during the same period.
The actual number of executions for drug-related crimes is unknown, although it has decreased in 2013-2014 compared to previous years. It is probable that this change is a reflection of the reform passed on 1 January 2007 that passed judicial review of death penalty cases back to China’s Supreme People’s Court, as well as the directive of the same court holding that the death penalty should be imposed on an “extremely reduced number of hardened criminals.”
Regardless, as has long been the case in China, death sentences and executions increased markedly around National holidays and dates of symbolic international importance such as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on 26 June.
The “Human” lethal injection

In China, executions are mostly carried out with a shot to the back of the head or the heart from close range.
An amendment to China’s Criminal Procedure Law in 1996 allowed for executions by lethal injection, using the same three-drug cocktail pioneered by the United States. “Lethal injection is considered more humane, because it reduces the fear and suffering,” Chinese authorities said. “It is more acceptable for convicts and their family members.” Hu Yunteng, head of the Supreme People’s Court’s Research Bureau, said that lethal injection was considered cleaner, safer and more convenient than gunshot executions.
Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, was the country’s first city to adopt lethal injection on 28 March 1997.
It is impossible to know how many people have died by this method so far, as execution figures are a State secret in China.
Between 6 and 7 August 2014, China executed three Korean nationals by lethal injection for drug offenses, in the first death sentences for Korean citizens carried out in the country in a decade.
China has also 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 their veins. Executions in death vans are recorded on video and audio that is played live to local law enforcement authorities – a measure intended to ensure they are carried out legally.
Human rights observers believe that the transition from firing squads to injections in death vans would facilitate an illegal trade in prisoners’ organs. Injections leave the whole body intact and require participation of doctors. Organs can be extracted in a speedier and more effective way than if the prisoner is shot.
In the past, human rights’ organisations have denounced the link between the high number of executions in China and the growing demand for organ transplants, accusing the Chinese authorities of forcing those condemned to death to sign authorisations to remove their organs for transplant. The regime admitted in 2005 that it had been harvesting the organs of prisoners on death row, a practice that started in the mid-1980s, and in July 2006 China passed a law banning the sale of organs without the consent of the donor. However, illegal organ harvesting seems to have not decreased. A revision to China’s Criminal Law, which the top legislature adopted in February 2011, marked the first time for authorities to single out criminal activity related to transactions involving human organs. Criminals convicted of “forced organ removal, forced organ donation or organ removal from juveniles” could face homicide charges as a result of the revision. However, in March 2012, then Vice-Health Minister Huang Jiefu confirmed that executed prisoners were still the main source of organs used in transplant operations in China due to the lack of voluntary donations.
On 4 December 2014, Huang Jiefu, now head of the Health Ministry’s organ transplant office, said that by 1 January 2015, only voluntarily donated organs from civilians can be used in transplants. As of December 2014, 38 organ transplant centres around the country, including those in Beijing, Guangdong and Zhejiang, had already stopped using prisoners’ organs, according to reports. “The ban is aimed at addressing the problem of organ shortage,” Huang said on 11 March 2015. “The more respect we pay to death-row prisoners, the more voluntarily donated organs from citizens we will have.” Voluntary donation from Chinese citizens has become the major source of organs for transplantation, accounting for 80 percent of the total donated organs in 2014, Huang added.

The War on Terror
Since the attacks of 11 September against the U.S.A., the Chinese Government has used the war on terrorism as a pretext to harden its iron fist against all forms of political or religious dissent in the country. Suspected separatists or religious extremists have, for years, risked arbitrary imprisonment, isolation, torture and, at the end of the polluted process, jail or execution. In particular, China passes off repression against Tibetans and the Uyghurs as part of the war on terrorism and exercises pressure on its neighbours such as Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Nepal and Pakistan to force them to repatriate exiled members of Xinjiang’s Muslim Turkic-speaking Uyghur population. Many of the repatriated Uyghurs have suffered serious violations of their human rights including torture, unfair trials and, also, execution.
According to the Supreme People’s Court’s annual report delivered to the National People’s Congress on 12 March 2015, Chinese courts handled 558 cases related to terrorism cases, including separatism and terrorist attacks, an increase of 14.8% compared to 2013. A total of 712 criminals involved in these cases were convicted and punished, a rise of 13.3% year-on-year.
The war against terrorism is particularly heavy in East Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), the autonomous north-western region where eight million Uyghurs (46 percent of Xinjiang’s population) live. In particular, China has intensified its crackdown on Uyghurs after the worst ethnic violence to hit China in decades that broke out in July 2009 in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang, in which at least 197 people were killed and 1,721 injured.
In 2014, Beijing announced a year-long nation-wide crackdown on separatist militants, following the 23 May suicide bombing attack in the regional capital Urumqi that killed 43 people and wounded more than 90. Following the Urumqi attack, China said it broke up 23 terrorist gangs and arrested more than 200 people in three areas of southern Xinjiang. In the resource-rich far western Xinjiang, at least 200 have died in attacks and clashes between locals and security forces over 2014.
In 2014, China executed at least 21 Uyghurs for “terrorist attack”.

Death penalty for non-violent crimes, and for political motives and dissent
The restitution in 2007 to the Supreme People’s Court of China of exclusive power in approving death sentences has caused the country’s courts to handle capital cases with greater prudence, in particular, those relative to non-violent crimes. In February 2010, China’s highest court has also issued new guidelines on the death penalty that instruct lower courts to limit its use to a small number of “extremely serious” cases.
Under the current law, 55 crimes are subject to the death penalty, among which one-third are economic crimes such as corruption and bribery.
Government officials continued to deny holding any political prisoners, asserting that authorities detained persons not for their political or religious views but because they violated the law. However, tens of thousands of political prisoners remained incarcerated, some in prisons and others in Re-education Through Labour (RTL) camps or administrative detention. On 28 December 2013, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee abolished the RTL system (effective 1 January 2014).
Authorities continued to implement repressive policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and targeted the region’s ethnic Uyghur population. Officials in the XUAR continued to implement a pledge to crack down on the government-designated “three forces” of “religious extremism”, “splittism,” and “terrorism”. Possession of publications or audiovisual materials discussing independence, autonomy, or other sensitive subjects was not permitted.
According to Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights advocacy group based in the United States, its own estimates and Xinjiang’s high court annual report on court cases showed that while the number of cases of endangering state security in Xinjiang stayed flat at about 300 in 2014, the number of criminal trials concluded in the region soared more than 40 percent to 29,511 trials, including those of first and second instance. The group said the anti-terrorism campaign launched by President Xi Jinping in May 2014 “likely played a significant role in the increased law enforcement.”
In a statement released on 10 March 2015, the Dui Hua also said that the significant increase in criminal trials indicates that even without an increase in terrorism and separatism trials, the figures highlight how authorities “heightened suppression of human rights activism and dissent in Xinjiang.” Trials for infringing upon citizens’ personal and democratic rights almost doubled nearly reaching 7,500. This category of crimes includes the offense of “inciting racial hatred and discrimination,” which may be applied to people who disseminate information that “tarnishes” China’s ethnic harmony by, for example, challenging government bans on beards, veils, and religious observance.

Persecution of adherents to religious and spiritual movements
The Chinese authorities recognise, in concept, freedom of religion as a fundamental human right in the country’s Constitution and as established by principle international treaties. Regardless, religious freedom is sharply curtailed.
In 2014, religious and ethnic minorities remained a key target of repression, in particular religious or spiritual movements not authorised by the State: Protestants and Catholics, Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists. The Government has also continued its persecution of so-called “cult” movements, in particular, the Falun Gong.
On 1 January 2007, a new law went into effect “to regulate these religions.” Approved in September 2006 by the Permanent Government Commission for Tibet, rather than guaranteeing religious freedom, the law actually reinforces the power of Chinese officials in restriction, control and repression of religious beliefs.
The level of liberty of worship depends on the region. For instance, in Xinjiang, there is a rigid control exercised over Muslims, whereas, in the rest of the country they enjoy relative freedom. The same is for Buddhists of Inner Mongolia and Tibet as compared to other regions. In Henan, Protestants undergo heavy prosecution, while in Hebei it is the Catholics linked to the Vatican.
According to norms governing religious activity, places of worship must be authorised by the State and it is not uncommon for the police to raid private homes where the faithful have gathered to disrupt the meeting with the excuse that the neighbours were disturbed or that the gathering was otherwise socially disruptive, sometimes arresting participants and forbidding them to meet in the same place again. Saying Mass was once met with harsh punishment such as detention or actual arrest followed by re-education or prison.
In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, an increased security presence that followed ethnic clashes in 2009 remained in place, and authorities intensified curbs on Islam in the region.
According to figures released in the annual Xinjiang court report cited by the Dui Hua Foundation, the number of cases for obstructing social administrative order doubled to more than 4,500 in 2014. This is a category of crime that can be used to “target unauthorized Islamic and Christian groups or ‘cults’, Dui Hua said. The crime includes activities such as distributing religious materials and demonstrations. Trials related to citizens personal and democratic rights nearly doubled to 7,500, including cases of challenges to government bans on beard, veils and religious observance.
On 11 March 2015, Heiner Bieledfeldt, special rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief, criticized China’s crackdown in Xinjiang, highlighting concerns about what he called “disturbing” stories of harassment and intimidation, “for instance, intimidation during Ramadan – children in schools were expected to break their fasting on Ramadan.” He also said that his office has seen no progress in their request to conduct an official visit to China. The last time that was agreed to was in 2004.
Beijing permits the practice only within the framework of the Movement of the Three Autonomies (MTA), born in 1950 after Mao came to power and expelled both foreign and Chinese church leaders from the country. Official records indicate that there are 10 million official Protestants in China, all united by the MTA.
In the past 30 years, however, Protestant house churches have become a major phenomenon, with 50 to 80 million members who meet in homes or otherwise private places to pray, carry out ceremonies and hold assemblies. Their love for free worship has led them to reject official Protestant Churches, guilty in their eyes of “worshipping the party” rather than God. During the same period, Chinese authorities tried to suppress this uncontrolled movement by jailing pastors, torturing believers and destroying homes and places of worship. In 2012, China has launched an all-out campaign against house churches, ministers and believers that should be completed in ten years with the complete annihilation of house churches, the China Aid Association said based on Communist Party sources and documents.
The Government continued its repression of so-called “cults,” in particular, of practitioners of the Falun Gong. Members of the Falun Gong continue to be arrested, detained and there is evidence that points to some dying from torture and other abuses. Members that refuse to abjure their beliefs often suffer cruel punishments in prison or in re-education work camps and extra-judiciary detention centres.
The documentation on abuses is difficult to confirm within the country, particularly for a group that has no public profile. Practitioners living abroad confirm the situation that is the result of State-run persecution that began in 1999. Hundreds of thousands – if not millions – remain unlawfully imprisoned in Chinese labour camps and prisons, the largest single population of prisoners of conscience in the country. Tens of thousands have suffered torture at the hands of police and security agents.
In total, as of 30 June 2015, the official Falun Gong website, en.minghui.org, has recorded 3,858 confirmed deaths of practitioners as a result of various forms of persecution since 1999. Given the difficulty of obtaining information from China, the actual death toll is likely significantly higher.
The United Nations
In October 2013, China was reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council. On 19 March 2014, in its response to the recommendations received, the Government rejected the following recommendations: continue reform towards eventual abolition of the death penalty, including greater transparency in its use; publish or make available precise information on the identity and number of the individuals currently awaiting execution and of those who were executed; establish a moratorium on the application of the death penalty as a first step to its definitive abolition.
On 18 December 2014, China voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.