Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the People's Republic of China. It is applicable to offenses ranging from murder to drug trafficking. Executions are carried out by lethal injection or by shooting. A survey conducted by The New York Times in 2014 found the death penalty retained widespread support in Chinese society.
According to Amnesty International, China executes more people than all other countries combined. The exact numbers of executions and death sentences remain state secrets. According to the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, the estimated number of executions has declined steadily in the twenty-first century, from 12,000 each year to 2,400. However, in 2022, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty announced that since 2007 at least 8,000 people per year were executed in China. Since 2006, the Chinese government has taken measures to limit the use of the death penalty for certain crimes.
Capital punishment in China should not be confused with death sentence with reprieve, a form of lenient sentencing handed down by Chinese courts as frequently as, or more often than, actual death sentences. The death sentence with reprieve is used to emphasize the seriousness of the crime and the mercy of the court, and is sometimes inaccurately added to the number of actual death sentences.
Historical background
Capital punishment was one of the classical Five Punishments of China's dynastic period. In Chinese philosophy, capital punishment was supported by the Legalists, but its application was tempered by the Confucians, who preferred rehabilitation and mercy. Confucius did not oppose capital punishment absolutely, but did take the view that in a well-ordered society based on moral persuasion, capital punishment would become unnecessary.
During China's early dynasties, capital punishment and amputation were predominant among the five punishments. Later, amputation became less common, but capital punishment and corporal punishment remained. There was wide variability in the number of types of capital offenses over time. Under the Punishments of Lu (Lu Xing), written sometime in the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), there were 200 capital offenses. The Tang Code (653 CE) listed 233 capital offenses, and the Song dynasty (960–1279) retained these and added sixty more over time. Under the Yuan dynasty, the "number of separate capital provisions" precipitously dropped, reaching a low of 125 crimes. The number of capital offenses spiked again under the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), with 282 capital offenses, and the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), with more than 800 capital offenses.
Historically, poorer and lower-status Chinese were most often subject to capital punishment; however, officials and others of high rank were put to death as a means of social control in times of war, internal disarray, or strife. For example, King Wu of the Western Zhou ordered officials who violated royal regulations, failed to carry out their duties, or "promulgated innovations" to be put to death; 39 military officials were executed following a peasant uprising during the Tang dynasty; the six gentlemen of the Hundred Days' Reform, who advocated social reform in the late Qing dynasty were executed.
The first type of classical punishment was a system of torture used in the process of examining a criminal. Examining a criminal by torture began in the Qin dynasty when judges, after a preliminary hearing and investigation, used bambooing and bastinado to force the offender to admit to committing the crime. Second, there was a system of collective responsibility initiated by Duke Wen of the State of Qin; under that system, when a criminal was sentenced to death, other family members above a certain age were also sentenced to death. This included the wife's family or siblings' families. At some point, even the families of a man's concubines were also killed. Thirdly, there was a system of revenge based on the Confucian philosophy centered around filial piety. The right to seek retribution was codified in the Legal Code of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), which describes the legal proceedings and punishments for family members who seek revenge and kill the murderer of their relatives. The fourth type of punishment system was structured according to booty, loot, and spoil. Following conviction of these crimes, the punishment ranged from fifty strokes of the cane or death by hanging. Finally, the fifth classical punishment was a system advocating amnesty, probation, and parole. However, this system of punishment was not practiced often because the Chinese legal system asserted a retributive theory of punishment.
Rates of execution By both confirmed and estimated data, the number of executions from capital punishment in China is far higher than in any other country, while the number per capita is comparable to Vietnam and Singapore, and lower than several other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. The number of executions has dropped steadily in the 2000s, and significantly since 2007, when the Supreme People's Court regained the power to review all death sentences; for instance, the Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed 12,000 people in 2002, 6,500 people in 2007, and roughly 2,400 in 2013 and 2014. Given conservative and variable estimates of executions in China, executions in China account for more than 58% in 2009 and 65% in 2010 of those worldwide.
The exact number of people executed in China is classified as a state secret; occasionally, death penalty cases are posted publicly by the judiciary, as in certain high-profile cases. One such example was the execution of former State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu, which was confirmed by both state television and the official Xinhua News Agency. Other media, such as Internet message boards, have become outlets for confirming death penalty cases, usually after a sentence has been carried out.
Due to the inaccessibility of official statistics, academic researchers must use data compiled by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International, the most cited source of reports regarding execution statistics. In 2009, Amnesty International counted 1718 executions as having taken place during 2008 (which equates to 0.0001%, or 1 in 1,000,000 of the Chinese population). Amnesty International believed that the total figure was likely to be much higher. According to "The Death Penalty in China: Reforms and Its Future", "it also represents the most conservative estimate of death sentences and executions in China due to the following accounting rules: 1) when there is doubt of accuracy, figures were excluded; 2) where two conflicting reports existed, the lower figure was used; 3) when a combined figure of death sentences and prison sentences was given, only one death sentence was recorded; and 4) when a group was sentenced to death, only one sentence was entered."
Legal procedure
After a first trial conducted by an intermediate people's court concludes with a death sentence, a double appeals process must follow. The first appeal is conducted by a high people's court if the condemned appealed to it, and since 2007, another appeal is conducted automatically (even if the condemned waived the first appeal) by the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China (SPC) in Beijing, to prevent incidents where a defendant is proven innocent after their execution.
When a case involving the death penalty is sent to the SPC for mandatory review, the case is delivered to one of the court's five divisions according to the geographic origin of the case or, in some cases, the type of crime involved. The SPC's second criminal division is dedicated to handling reviews of some of the most sensitive cases. Each case is then assigned to a panel of three judges, one of whom is designated as the principal case manager. Since 2012, judges have also been required to interview defendants before deciding whether or not to approve a death sentence. The judges write reports summarizing the case, discuss the case, and then report the decision to the division head, SPC vice president, and finally the SPC president.
If the lower court death sentence is upheld, the execution is carried out shortly thereafter. As a result of its reforms, the PRC government claims, the Supreme People's Court overturned about 15 percent of the death sentences handed down by high courts in the first half of 2008. In a brief report in May 2008, Xinhua quoted anonymous sources as saying Chinese courts handed down 30 percent fewer death sentences in 2007 than in 2006.
The cases of Li Yan (2014) and Wu Ying (2012) are two examples in which the Supreme People's Court reversed a death sentence pronounced by lower courts.
Chinese courts hand down the sentence of "death sentence with two years' probation" () as frequently as, or more often than, they do actual death sentences. This unique sentence is used to emphasize the seriousness of the crime and the mercy of the court, and has a centuries-old history in Chinese jurisprudence. It is almost always reduced to life or 10 to 15 years imprisonment if no new crime is intentionally committed during the two-year probationary period.
Article 49 in the Chinese criminal code explicitly forbids the death penalty for offenders below the age of 18 at the time of the crime. The SPC also issued a policy in 2007 which required lower courts to arrange for the visitation of condemned criminals by relatives, forbade local authorities from parading prisoners on death row, and required that executions be publicly announced.
However, capital punishment in China can be subject to political or social influence. In 2003, a local court sentenced the leader of a triad society to a death sentence with two years of probation. However, the public opinion was that the sentence was too light. Under public pressure, the Supreme People's Court took the case and retried the leader, resulting in a death sentence which was carried out immediately.
Since 1980, the state's security apparatus has initiated various "strike hard" () campaigns against specific types of crime. Critics have noted that the campaigns lead to the streamlining of capital cases, where cases are investigated, appeals heard, and sentences carried out at rates much more rapid than normal. Since 2006, Chinese Supreme Court justice Xiao Yang has worked to blunt the "strike hard" policy with his own policy of "balancing leniency and severity" (), which is supposedly influenced by Hu Jintao's harmonious society concept. Xiao's policy includes improving the quality of appeals by mandating that the SPC, rather than simply the high people's court, review capital crime cases; increasing use of the "death sentence with two years' probation"; and requiring "clear facts" and "abundant evidence" for capital cases.
The abolition of the death penalty in Hong Kong since 1993 is a major reason why China does not have a rendition agreement with that city. , a proposed extradition bill has sparked massive protests.
The list of capital crimes includes crimes endangering national security, such as organizing an "armed mass rebellion"; endangerment of public security, such as committing arson; and crimes against the person, such as the rape of a person under the age of 14. During the 1980s, "economic crimes" such as bribery, drug trafficking, and embezzlement were added to the legal code. Capital punishment in China can be imposed on crimes against national symbols and treasures, such as theft of cultural relics and (before 1997) the killing of giant pandas. Executions under the pretense of political crimes are extremely rare and confined to persons involved in violence or the threat of violence.