"One thing the United States and China agree on is...

"One thing the United States and China agree on is the death penalty," said Jerome A. Cohen of the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States during a discussion at Hong Kong University. "Even chairman Mao reminded us that once you cut off a man's head, it can't grow back," Cohen said, noting that many legal experts in China were suggesting ways to limit executions. "Chinese scholars are suggesting reducing the number of offences for which the death penalty can be applied," he said. Better representation for criminals could also reduce executions, he said, noting criminals do not always receive legal representation. Defence lawyers are also vulnerable to punishment because the Chinese Communist Party has a stranglehold on the police and judiciary, exercising control over both investigation and trial. Professor Fu Hualing of the Hong Kong University's Faculty of Law said that while "in the United States race is the issue, in China, 80 percent of death penalty recipients are migrants from the countryside." "That's why lawyers (who are city dwellers) don't talk about it," Fu said. "It's a huge cultural gap." While there is no public discussion on the ethics of the death penalty in China, Cohen said judges were profoundly concerned about public opinion. Chinese public opinion as gauged through independent Internet websites favoured the death penalty but anger often flared over false convictions, the scholars pointed out.