The Chinese government is planning to implement judicial...

The Chinese government is planning to implement judicial reforms that could sharply reduce its use of the death penalty.
China will restrict the use of capital punishment by requiring its highest court, the Supreme People's Court, to review all death penalty cases before executions are carried out.
Currently, the high court reviews only a minority of such cases, allowing the provincial courts that hand down death sentences to review their own judgments.
"Criticism of the legal system in society is rising. The Chinese Communist Party, as a ruling party that attaches importance to stability, knows that if it doesn't reform the judicial system, it would be bad for stability," said Liu Renwen, a scholar of law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. China, which does not release statistics on death sentences or executions, has long been criticized for its high number of executions.