A Review of the Death Penalty in China: History, Theory, and Criticism
- World Scholars Review
- Sep 13
- 35 min read
Updated: Oct 18
Authors: Sahasra Palle & Meenakshi Sivanandam
Mentor: Filipa Paes. Filipa is currently a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford.
Abstract
The death penalty is one of the most controversial forms of criminal punishment worldwide, with debates over abolition entangling questions of its morality, effectiveness in deterring future crime, and violations of human rights. The majority of nations have formally abolished the death penalty or suspended executions. Amidst the global trend towards abolition, however, China stands out for its continued and extensive use of capital punishment. China carries out more state mandated executions than any other nation, yet the extent and nature of its death penalty use are shrouded in secrecy. This steadfast secrecy complicates efforts to understand how capital punishment functions within China’s legal system and conceals potential abuses. This article aims to shed light on capital punishment in China by reviewing its death penalty policy through historical, cultural, political, and critical lenses. In particular, it will trace the evolution of Chinese capital punishment across four major eras of recent leadership spanning from the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 to present time; examine cultural and political theories driving China’s death penalty policy and reform; and finally offer a brief overview of criticisms directed towards China’s capital punishment practices.
Introduction
With one of the highest criminal execution rates in the world,[1] China’s use of the death penalty can be categorized as one of the harshest forms of state sanctioned punishment in the world. In this article we provide an analysis of how China’s use of the death penalty can be seen as one of the most secretive and penalizing forms of modern governance in the world and evaluate the historical context and legal framework which underlie it. The review further discusses how despite a series of revisions and amendments to its death penalty policy, concerns over the use of the death penalty as a political tool for discrimination and to limit freedoms in China remain unaddressed. The paper offers a review of the theoretical, political, and cultural history of the death penalty in China as well as a summary of the criticisms levelled at China for its death penalty policy.
We begin by providing a summary of the recent history of the death penalty spanning across the last four eras of Chinese leadership, examining how capital punishment has been reformed and repurposed to best serve the priorities of the ruling regime (Section 1). First, we focus on the death penalty policy of Mao Zedong, which operated as a propagandic tool to consolidate power and eliminate political enemies. Then we turn to the Deng-Jiang era, during which the death penalty was deployed as an instrument to swiftly and severely punish criminals in an age of rising crime. It was in the Hu Jintao era, however, that executions became increasingly used as a tool to appease the public and maintain a “harmonious society” and when significant legal reform took place. Finally, we consider how the silence and secrecy surrounding the death penalty under Xi Jinping marks a strategic departure from the public justification so prominent in previous eras and how this reveals the increasing opacity of Chinese capital punishment.
The review then turns to the main criticisms of China’s death penalty policy and use: from the severe lack of transparency, the emphasis on using harsh punishments to achieve the ideal of a harmonious society, to the corrupt and discriminatory practice of capital punishment. The criticisms we discuss have been vocalised by not only academics, but also activists and leaders of international organisations and the global order. Indeed, in the last few decades, China’s disregard for human rights and principles of natural justice has gradually sparked concerns under international and global authorities. Yet, the nation’s attempts to respond to this new international pressure have been widely recognised by scholars and beyond as insufficient.
The Death Penalty in China: The Last Four Eras
In this section, we review the literature on the policies, rhetoric, and political functions of the death penalty under successive leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), from 1949 to present time: namely, during the Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping-Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping eras.
Mao Zedong (1949-1976)
In the years between the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the Great Leap Forward in 1958, the then young CCP sought to eliminate its political opposition in order to consolidate power during the unsteady beginning stages of state building.[2] During this period, the government launched the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, during which counterrevolutionaries were executed en masse through public sentencing rallies both as a means of executing enemies and as propaganda. As leading scholar Michelle Miao puts it, “death sentences were meted out ‘according to the strong demands of the masses’; convictions were ‘greeted with the thunder of applause’ and the spontaneous chanting of slogans such as ‘Long live Chairman Mao’”.[3]
Under Mao, the state orchestrated the public’s support for, and later, their direct participation in, punishment procedures. Instructions were handed down from top to bottom: when the CCP’s top officials instructed local authorities to “toughen up penal policies,” the local authorities in turn instructed the public to more actively seek out and denounce counterrevolutionaries.[4] The public would eventually, as Miao notes, “[progress] from co-operating with the legal authorities in collecting evidence to participating directly in trial procedures such as convictions and sentencing.”[5] This delegation of power to local authorities and the public masses has been dubbed the “regionalization” of capital punishment in China in academic circles.[6]
All in all, political scientist Julia C. Strauss identifies three main goals of the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries:
“(1) to consolidate the revolutionary state-building project through strengthening the state's coercive organizations while establishing normative control over the regional and local layers of the bureaucracy;
(2) to crush real or potential sources of political and social opposition to the revolutionary regime;
(3) to mobilize popular support.”[7]
The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) followed, during which Mao and the central authority frequently announced arrest and execution quotas for counterrevolutionaries.[8] At this time, in one directive, Mao ordered that the number of counterrevolutionaries must not be more than one thousandth of the population in rural areas and half that in urban areas, and that one or two out of every ten counterrevolutionaries arrested should be executed.[9] With tensions high due to pressure to meet these quotas, local authorities executed individuals at numbers that far exceeded the specified order: of the 2,630,000 who were arrested during the campaign, 712,000 were executed.[10]
Early in its history, the CCP (which was founded in 1921) had viewed the death penalty as an inhumane practice and even formally proposed abolishing it in 1922.[11] However, in later years, as CCP’s leader, Mao explicitly endorsed the death penalty as an effective way to suppress opponents of the Party, stating that while the government should reduce the number of arrests and executions, it could not declare an end to killing or the abolition of the death penalty.[12]
The scope of state sanctioned violence increased even more during China’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, when members of the “Five Black Categories” (landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and Rightists) were targeted by the state.[13] CCP leaders and civilians alike with “old thought” could be punished without trial and have their property destroyed or taken away as part of his campaign to eliminate the Four Olds.[14] Another prominent feature of Mao’s death penalty policy was that political or otherwise fabricated reasons alone could justify a death sentence, even if no evidence existed of the accused having committed a crime severe enough to warrant it.[15] One extreme form of targeting during this time, for instance, drew on the imperial Chinese tradition of punishing entire families or clans for the crimes of one of its members.[16] The Cultural Revolution saw a revival of this practice; based on the belief that relatives of those who were executed might hold anti-government views, family members, too, were labelled as landlords or rich peasants.[17]
Mao frequently justified the death penalty as a practice required to “assuage the people’s anger,”[18] and declared that the sentencing of counterrevolutionaries to death was “absolutely necessary; it was the demand of the people; it was done to free the masses from long years of oppression by counterrevolutionaries and all kinds of local tyrants; in other words, to liberate the productive forces”.[19] However, it was the CCP that controlled exactly who these so-called “enemies of the people” were, by explicitly labelling and stirring public resentment against the CCP’s own selected targets. In reality, it seems that much of the “people’s anger” was manufactured by the state to serve this very purpose as a political tool: to provide a justification for excessive use of the death penalty in place of following legal due process.[20] Bakken concludes that “the Maoist argument about appeasing the people’s anger seems to have developed into a basic legal principle that still lingers on, legitimizing state violence and capital punishment.”[21]
Deng-Jiang Era: Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin (1978-2002)
Following Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the function of the death penalty changed. In the Deng-Jiang era, capital punishment became extensively used to combat rising crime during the Yanda (“Strike Hard”) anti-crime campaigns of 1983, 1996, and 2001; all three campaigns operated on the principle of delivering swift and severe punishments to criminals.[22]
The first “Strike Hard” campaign in 1983 was launched in response to the wave of rising crime in the early 1980s and broadly targeted “hooliganism,” encompassing offenses such as “gang fighting, harassment of women, rape, and other offensive behavior”.[23] By early 1984, not even a year after the campaign had begun, the number of executions reportedly already numbered between 5,000 and 10,000.[24] Deng Xiaoping was not shy about affirming the state’s right to kill. In his 1986 address to the Politburo Standing Committee, Deng Xiaoping argued that “some criminals must be sentenced to death” and that “execution is one of the indispensable means of education”.[25] This bluntness reflected a broader punitive turn in Chinese governance following the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. The 1983 “Strike Hard” campaign, one of Deng Xiaoping’s hallmark policies, made clear that executions were to be used not just as criminal sanctions but as performances of the state’s control over disorder.
Changes to the death sentencing procedure also reflected the state’s policy at the time. The requirement that all death sentences must be reviewed by the SPC, as stipulated by the 1979 Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law, was revoked by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in 1981, and review rights were delegated to lower courts.[26] The time allowed for appeals in death penalty cases was also drastically shortened, in some cases to just three days as part of the state-led 1983 anti-crime campaign.[27]
The 1996 “Strike Hard” campaign expanded its target to armed and violent crimes as well as crimes related to prostitution, with an estimated one thousand executions in the first month alone.[28] Even more ambitious was the 2001 campaign which aimed to create a “complete turnaround in social order within two years,” as articulated by Xiao Yang, President of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC).[29] It targeted organized crime and gangs, with over 12,000 gang members having been sentenced by the end of 2001.[30]
Hu Jintao (2002-2013)
In the Hu era, which focused on building a “harmonious society” during a time of rapid economic and social change, the death penalty was used as a tool to respond to public demands; in effect, this meant applying the death penalty in cases with high media coverage, involving criminals that particularly angered the Chinese public, instead of strictly using legal precedent in judicial rulings.[31]
An example of this is the case of Li Changkui, who was convicted for the rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl and the murder of her 3-year-old brother.[32] Article 50 of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China sets out two levels of severity for death sentences in China: immediate death sentence and suspended death sentence with a two year reprieve, the latter of which may be commuted to life imprisonment if the offender does not commit any more crimes during the reprieve period.[33] Initially, Li Changkui received an immediate death sentence, which he later appealed, resulting in his sentence being commuted to a reprieved death sentence the next year due to the mitigating factor of his voluntary surrender.[34] There were no procedural errors found, and at that point in time, reprieved death sentences were fairly common for cases “caused by civil disputes and conflicts between married couples, families, and neighbors,” as was Li Changkui’s.[35] However, after the case went viral on Chinese media and aroused strong backlash from the public, the prior ruling was reversed, and Li Changkui was sentenced to immediate death once again.[36] Notably, this reversal occurred despite the appeal process being compliant with the appropriate legal procedure, suggesting that the public’s demands swayed the court’s decision and outweighed legal precedent to determine the outcome of Li Changkui.[37]
This case reflects a wider trend during the Hu era, in which court decisions became increasingly shaped by the public, serving the broader political goal of reinforcing the public’s trust in the CCP. The maxim of “killing fewer, killing cautiously” was often overridden in favor of complying with popular opinion when the Party felt its legitimacy was endangered.[38]
Several reforms were passed during this time that reflected a shift away from previous punitive policies. However, these reforms coexisted with continued reliance on harsh punishment. Most notably, Hu launched the fourth “Strike Hard” campaign in 2010, which once again targeted organized crime.[39] This balancing act between the two is clearly demonstrated in the SPC’s Opinion on Implementing the Crime Policy of Balancing Leniency and Severity, also released in 2010, which categorized crimes into two groups: the first being crimes that were to be given strict penalties and the second being all those where leniency should be exercised.[40] Article 25 of the Opinion explicitly defined “balancing” as the flexible application of these groups, which allowed courts to adjust sentences based on the circumstances around individual cases, such as applying a harsher penalty in a less ‘serious’ crime or vice versa.[41]
In what follows, we outline some of the most important reforms made to China’s death penalty policy under Hu’s leadership.
January 1st 2007: The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) Power to Review Death Applications
Scholars have considered one of the most fundamental instances of reform to be the restoration of review power of all death sentences to the centralized Supreme People’s Court (SPC), which took effect on January 1, 2007.[42] This amendment to China’s Criminal Law code stipulated that every death sentence pronounced by a lower court must be sent to the SPC to undergo a review process before the execution could actually be carried out.[43] It was “considered a major step towards securing procedural justice in death penalty cases and promoting human rights in China,” as well as “avoid[ing] inconsistent applications of the death penalty.”[44] Its passage is said to have reduced the number of executions to roughly half the previous rate.[45] This reform was not breaking entirely new ground, however, as it simply restored the review power that had already been established in the past but was removed during the “Strike Hard” campaigns, as discussed in the previous section.
January 22nd 2007: Clarification on the Kind of Death Penalty Applications the SPC Will Review
A related set of provisions was passed on January 22, 2007, in which the SPC outlined specific conditions describing where it would approve or reject death penalty cases submitted for review by lower courts.[46] If a case lacked abundant evidence, had unclear facts, or contained procedural errors, it would be rejected and sent back to the lower court, where it then had to be retried at a new court session with a new set of judges. Even if the case had abundant evidence, it could still be sent back if the SPC deemed an immediate death sentence too harsh of a punishment.[47] Since this clarificatory reform, the SPC has reportedly commuted many immediate death sentences with reprieved death sentences.[48]
Together, these changes in policy reduced the number of executions firstly by making it more difficult for immediate death sentences to be approved, and secondly by discouraging lower courts from delivering death sentences as readily, since they prompted lower courts to avoid submitting poorly substantiated or overly punitive cases that were more likely to be rejected by the SPC, to avoid a retrial procedure but also to avoid the shame for the lower court that would come from getting its decision rejected by the SPC.[49]
That same year, the SPC, Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and Ministry of Justice (MOJ) jointly released a set of guidelines “outlin[ing] the specific procedures for each of the four institutions in the SPC death sentence approval process” that restricted the use of “Strike Hard” policies to only offenders of the most serious crimes, in line with “harmonious society” and “kill fewer, kill cautiously” principles.[50]
February 25th 2011
In February 2011, the Eighth Amendment to the Criminal Law code, which limited the scope of death penalty use, was approved.[51] The new amendment decreased the number of capital offenses from 68 down to 55 by removing thirteen nonviolent crimes and placing restrictions on the circumstances in which the death sentence can be applied.[52] For instance, the amendment stipulated that “if the defendant standing trial is over seventy-five years old, a court may only give him a death sentence if he committed an especially cruel crime that caused the death of the victim”.[53] This amendment came after the SPC issued several opinions in February of the previous year outlining the circumstances in which courts should not apply the death penalty.[54]
The 2011 amendment received positive feedback from both academic circles and the general population, especially for “strengthen[ing] protection of civic rights,”[55] and is thought by some to be one of the most substantive changes to Chinese criminal law since the first Criminal Law code was promulgated in 1979.[56] Its coming into effect was followed by a proportional decrease in the number of death sentences by several thousands in the same year. China’s reforms during the past two decades, focused on the maintenance of an equilibrium between strictness and leniency, seem to indicate promising outcomes for the near future.
Xi Jinping (since 2013): The Death Penalty Now
All of the CCP leaders previously discussed were outspoken about their death penalty policies: Smith et al. write that “among all PRC [People’s Republic of China] leaders, Mao Zedong discussed capital punishment policy most openly and most often,” with his “collected works contain[ing] dozens of positive references to judicial and extrajudicial killing,”[57] and that Deng Xiaoping also spoke “directly about death penalty policy, stating, for example, in 1986 that ‘the death penalty cannot be abolished; some crimes must simply be punished with death,’”[58] and finally that it was during the Hu Jintao here that “the last major articulation of a death penalty platform occurred ... as part of his larger governance agenda”.[59]
In contrast with his predecessors, Xi Jinping has been much less outspoken about the death penalty. Smith et al. observe that neither Xi’s collected works nor a compendium of 680 of Xi’s speeches contain any direct references to the death penalty.[60] This has led scholars to believe that Xi has not “articulated a signature death penalty policy,” and consequentially removed state-sanctioned killing from his political agenda and discourse.[61] Still, China continues to have one of the highest criminal execution rates in the world,[62] even if much of the data on the use of the death penalty remains secret.[63]
From Mao to Xi, the specific function and implementation of the death penalty has adapted to each regime’s own priorities. It eliminated political opposition under Mao, furthered “Strike Hard” goals during the Deng-Jiang era, eased social tensions under Hu, and now functions discreetly under Xi.[64] Across all periods, the death penalty has endured as a political tool to protect the authority of the state. This has not been without its criticisms. Indeed, despite Xi Jinping’s silence, the international criticism of China’s death penalty policy has never been louder. We turn to these now.
Criticisms of China’s Current Death Penalty Policy
The Death Penalty State Secret
Despite China’s numerous reforms and adjustments to its death penalty policy, there remain several areas in need of improvement. These include areas which China’s leaders must evaluate and reform so as to start complying with human rights. While exact data on the use of the death penalty in recent years has been classified as a state secret, several remarks of condemnation from witnesses and internal government officials have led to criticism of the Chinese government for its lack of morality, honesty, and efficiency on a legal plane.[65]
Secrecy when it comes to the death penalty is not unusual. Most states which still rely on the death penalty as a part of its punishment have opted for secrecy around their death penalty practices in attempts of avoiding public judgement and humiliation from larger global figures and the media.[66] Yet, despite China concealing its death penalty data, informal reports still indicate that the use of this kind of state-sanctioned punishment is pervasive, and though scholars and researchers are well aware that most of the data they have access to is incomplete,[67] they still estimate year on year that China is the country where the death penalty is most widely given. For instance, each year, while preparing its annual global report, Amnesty International contacts the Chinese government in hopes of procuring its figures on the use of the death penalty, stating in its 2017 publication: “For this report, we again wrote to the authorities to ask for information concerning the use of the death penalty in China. Like our other attempts to solicit this information from the government, this request also went unanswered.”[68]
Many legal procedures in death penalty cases are also “designed to disguise their pre-determined nature,” or what are often referred to as “sham trials”.[69] That is, trials which appear to provide a fair and impartial hearing to both the defendant and prosecution so as to convince the public of fair governance, when in reality, the resolution that the accused is to be sentenced to death has been determined by government officials before the proceedings had begun.[70] The use of these tactics to obscure the legal procedures in criminal cases does not only demonstrate the lack of procedural justice in China's legal system, but also sheds light on the values China’s legal system prioritizes, as they ultimately disregard their citizens’ natural rights, even in matters of life and death, to prioritize their preferred standards of societal order.
In a discussion on China’s death penalty and the secrecy surrounding it, the international advocacy and education NGO, Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM, translated from French, Together Against the Death Penalty) raised concerns about Xi Jinping’s sovereignty and his tight-knit control over the Republic. They argue that China repeatedly ignored NGO requests for transparency with regard to death penalty data, opting to publish limited data, the selection of which is “carefully controlled by the state and used to manipulate public opinion by instilling fear and claiming to deliver justice to crime victims.”[71] This is common practice in what are called ‘Closed or Partially-Closed Criminal Justice Systems’.[72] In these systems, information on death penalty cases and other criminal proceedings is largely confidential, shielding researchers and other officials from potentially determining if a criminal was justly convicted of a crime. [73] The details of the proceedings and their outcomes remain closed off to the general public too, maintaining complete secrecy, and negatively impacting general understandings and opinions of the death penalty as well as constraining scholarly attempts to make comparative analyses between criminal justice systems.
Miao makes a similar argument that the Chinese government opts to keep decisions on death penalty policy to the elites only. Further, she argues that this choice goes unopposed by civilians, given that they have minimal interest in the death penalty policy, except when it concerns matters of their interest such as “their own life experiences, moral sentiments, and individual concerns, such as poverty, corruption, urban management and personal safety”.[74] Naturally, without any democratic interference or information being disclosed to the public on the practice of capital punishment, China’s use of the death penalty and harsh punishment policies is more likely to be left undisturbed. This political move is one Miao dubs “the political construction of public opinion on the death penalty,” according to which by limiting information on the use of death penalty and magnifying the support for the death penalty in mediatic cases, China is able to claim wide-spread public acceptance or support for its death penalty policy and justify the status quo.[75]
Further, Miao describes three specific features of this concept of “political construction of public opinion on the death penalty”: the construction of these opinions being “predominantly populist,” “predominantly punitive,” and exclusionist.[76] With regard to the populist character of this political construction, Miao describes how the overall opinion of the public from the Mao era and “strike-hard” campaigns has turned the death penalty into a political issue, rather than a legal one. The government mistakes the support from the public on the use of the death penalty on a given case for their own opinion, and takes it to reflect public support for China’s death penalty policy as a whole.[77] The “predominantly punitive” character of the move, Miao argues, is that the government distinctively selects certain perspectives and specific moments of public support for the death penalty to justify their wider one-sided policy in the matter, without recognizing the diverse and varied views held by the people.[78] As a result of this selective attention to public opinion, policy tends to sway towards harsher penalties and punishments. Miao also emphasizes that the government is not swayed by public outbursts of emotions against the death penalty and more leniency, such as in the cases of Zhang Koukou, Xia Junfeng, and Jia Jinglong, which attempted to advocate for the abolishment of the death penalty. From this, it can be seen that the government does not recognise instances of system failure. Instead, they appeal to public fear and insecurity to justify the use of such harsh punishments.[79] Miao further describes the strategy as exclusionary and argues that China’s extreme efforts to describe their overall society as an “Us vs. Them” to symbolize a division of social classes that separates hierarchy from high-ranking officials to low-ranking officials. The “them” is made up of defendants, their families and friends, and importantly also the socially disadvantaged classes.[80] The government does this as a way of punishing mainly poor and vulnerable people and to control society through fear. Ultimately, one could argue that the lack of available data on the use of the death penalty makes the Chinese population more easily manipulable by these carefully designed political constructs and moves. Chinese citizens cannot criticize nor critically ponder over what they do not know.
The Ideal Concepts Of The Perfect Harmonious Society
Along with the secretiveness of death penalty data, China also values the idea of maintaining a “harmonious society”, as Hu Jintao emphasized during his leadership.[81] According to Kim and LeBlang, acceptance of Chinese standards of behavior and morals is understood to be capable as of preventing acts of crime and violations to social order. That is why, in China, it is believed that severe capital punishment can serve to correct wider wrongdoings and achieve social harmony.[82] Understanding this emphasis on civility and harmony, helps explain China’s broad list of actions punishable by the death penalty. Moreover, since antiquity until the present century, the notion of wu-hsing (“the five punishments”) has been used to refer to China’s primary legal penalties.[83] As Kim and LeBlang put it, “the number [five] indicates a correlation with the many sequences of five (the five senses, five notes, five colors, five tastes, five directions, and many more) constituting the Chinese politico-cosmic system dominated by the Five Elements.”[84]
As discussed above, in China, there are a large range of actions still punishable by death. Some of these actions are non-violent, but rather of the kind that is understood as disrupting society. According to Amnesty International, recently, non-violent offenses, including robbery and the trafficking and usage of drugs, have led to almost immediate death sentences. Along with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, China has been identified as one of the countries which continues on executing “people for drug-related offences in violation of international human rights law which prohibits the use of the death penalty for crimes that do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes.”[85] This example not only demonstrates the limited freedom China gives its people, which we discuss in the next section, but also the way in which it perceives crimes that go against societal harmony as worth the harshest and most absolute of punishments. It could be argued China’s death penalty policy is not based on the notion of blameworthiness of an individual nor of the seriousness of the crime they committed towards some other individual, but rather on the harm some conduct can cause to society as whole, or how much the conduct can disrupt the harmony the PCR wants to protect.
Despite the fact that the United States also maintains the death penalty, the practices and justification in the U.S. and China are radically different. As Florio argues, the U.S. “recognizes and protects [the] fundamental freedoms” of its citizens, whilst China is concerned with “collective societal welfare over individual rights”.[86] Compared to the use of the death penalty in the U.S., China differs in particular when it comes to the way individuals are perceived along with the kinds of offenses that are deemed worthy of the death penalty. Florio implies that China lacks considerations towards individualism and social equality in their legal actions, not only showing how China’s legal endeavors are corrupted by the government, but to also show that China’s greed for power spreads throughout the voice of the public in order shapes their wanted ideals of a proper and civilized communist government. The scholar argues for these distinctions through the example of Xiao, a Chinese government official, who when asked about the future of the death penalty in China responded that it is simply “too early and unrealistic” to abolish the death penalty because of its long-lasting cultural history and deeply rooted Chinese utilitarian principles, and notion of collective retributivism.[87] The official further emphasized that the death penalty serves to deter criminals and that even non-violent criminals “deserve death if their actions are extremely harmful to society”.[88] From this anecdote one can see that the emphasis on societal harm is clear.
A further distinction between the two nations’ use of the death penalty, can be found in the use of preferential policies which in China, in contrast with the U.S., extend far beyond education and employment, touching upon almost every aspect of life.[89] Leibold compares China and U.S. approaches to criminal punishment, to highlight the distinctive specificity and inclusiveness found in the penal code of China, where penalties and harsh punishments focus on more personal aspects of an individual’s life rather than circumstances they could potentially have more control of and would seem more reasonable to be punished for.[90] In this way, China’s government places less value on the privacy of individuals or the idea all are equal in the eyes of the law. This comparison summarizes the discrepancies between the approach of the U.S. and Chinese governments. When compared to the U.S., China’s degree of respect paid to human rights is greatly impaired by their emphasis on maintaining prosperity through order and deterring disruptive conduct through harsh punishments. As Florio, puts it, China “discounts the value of individual liberties in favor of government stability and societal interests.”[91] With this in mind, the review now turns to the way in which China’s death penalty policy has been understood as a tool to discriminate and limit individual freedoms.
A Tool to Discriminate and Limit Freedoms
The debate on China’s death penalty policy should not be taken out of its wider political context. In the 2025 Freedom in The World report,[92] which assesses the political and civil liberties of geographically targeted territories, China received a score of 9 out of 100 points for overall civilian freedom granted in the country. With an individual score of -2 out of 40 for their political freedom and another individual score of 11/60 for their civil liberty.[93] The report also addresses China’s death penalty practice, giving it a score of 0 out of 4 in answer to the question, ‘Is there protection from the illegitimate use of physical force and freedom from war and insurgencies?’. In discussing illegitimate use of physical force in China, Freedom House recognizes that though the number of crimes carrying the death penalty has reduced, the number of state executions in 2023 was still reported as being in the thousands, with some of these executions being for nonviolent crimes such as corruption.[94] Unsurprisingly, Freedom House classifies China as “not free”.[95]
As a result of China being ruled by the Chinese Communist Party in a one-party system, only a few selected members of the polis run the entire party, and ultimately, the entire country. As Freedom House recognizes most who have attempted to establish a political opposition of a democratic kind, have been imprisoned, put in house arrest or led to exile. “The authorities continue to hold prodemocracy activists and lawyers in various forms of detention and imprisonment.”[96] Naturally, reforms and protests against the death penalty, especially those held on the grounds of human rights, are a constant struggle for the civilians involved and activists fighting for human rights on this issue.
The death penalty is at odds with the right to life, but beyond this fact, the actual practice of the death penalty in China and the treatment of detainees has led to further criticism from human rights activists. For one, the charity The Rights Practice submitted to the United Nations that there is evidence that prisoners on death row face cruelty whilst detained. For example, detainees are kept in cells with other detainees and are shackled through an extensive period of time, in violation of international human rights policies.[97] There are also reports that prisoners of lower economic backgrounds are discriminated against on the basis of their economic status and less likely to be given adequate legal assistance.[98] Given the lack of “reliable information on the treatment of bodies of executed individuals there are valid concerns that the practice of organ harvesting without consent is ongoing,”[99] which goes against the right to human dignity. The charity also outlined how the living conditions in Chinese prisons were substandard and lacked accommodation for those “with physical, learning and mental disabilities, healthcare and religious observance.”[100]
Beyond infringing human rights, China’s death penalty policy also discriminates amongst individuals. As Shen argues, China creates a contradiction in its criminal justice system by giving mercy and less harsh punishments to those ranked higher in the social hierarchy, whereas people who may have committed less severe crimes would receive the same and if not, harsher punishments.[101] Between the years of 2012 and 2013, several high-ranking Chinese officials have been accused and penalized for “graft and wasteful spending.”[102] While these penalties could be punishable by death, several individuals, one being Liu Zhijun who was China’s former Railways Minister, were issued a suspended death sentence. This meant that they were subjected to life imprisonment, when it is likely that a member of the general population would have been executed had they committed such extreme levels of corruption.[103] Shen further notes that this elitist deployment of mercy is at odds with “the balance of humanness and severity utilized in imperial China, [or] the egalitarianism sought by those who founded modern China”.[104] It is a practice that departs from Chinese criminal legal history, which has long emphasized that law should be applied equally to all members of society, as per Article 4 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China.[105]
Through this practice, China further entrenches a division in social classes by restricting the rights of some people compared to the rights of others. A crime of the same character could be orchestrated by two individuals separately, yet the consequences of each crime could vary depending entirely on the social rank of that individual. Furthermore, research has found that China’s criminal legal system discriminates not just based on social class but based on race as well. Some ethnic minorities which are considered to be “problematic” in China are more likely to receive severe sentences, including the death penalty and harsher death sentences, than other ethnicities.[106] Hou and Treux observed this trend by studying Yunnan, one of the centers of drug trade in China, concluding: “Our analysis of the roughly 10,000 drug cases in the data from Yunnan (2014-2018) reveals a degree of ethnic discrimination. Minority defendants, on average, have sentences that are about 1.5 to 7.5 months longer than Han (the majority group) defendants that have committed similar crimes.”[107] Thus, it can be argued that racial stereotypes influence the outcome of criminal justice proceedings in certain cases.
Legal officials and procedures in earlier Confucianist eras were more tolerant and merciful, and although the exact hierarchical societies of imperial China did not cross over into the modern era, this Confucianism-influenced notion of mercy did, but not fully.[108] As Shen argues, “[g]iven … the deep-rooted influence of Confucian legal mercy, it would better serve both Chinese cultural traditions and the goal of deterrence to apply benevolence to everyone, not just corrupt government officials”.[109] Modern China separates people not only based on the crimes they commit, but the type of people that commit them. This is obviously distinct from imperial China's legal practice, which was grounded on egalitarianist principles and claims to honor.
Conclusion
While some rulers used the death penalty as a form of punishment and to solidify their power, others used it to maintain a harmonious social and economic regime. Others, such as Xi Jinping, opted to be quieter about the policy behind their use of death penalty. Throughout these eras, the cultural and theoretical application of the death penalty in China evolved. Yet, to this day, China’s use of the death penalty, despite kept secret, has proven to be a powerful tool of totalitarianism. From a critical standpoint, the refusal of transparency in legal data, and the restrictive and discriminatory use of legal punishment have prompted criticism from not only scholars but also activists and several global authorities. Whether or not China’s will cease to use the death penalty so widely, these crucial factors serve as a reminder of the pervasiveness of such a severe penalty and of its ability to dehumanize whole parts of the population.
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Endnotes
[1] Motazedi, N. (2025, May 09). Amnesty International Global Report (2024): Lowest Number of Countries Carried Out Highest Number of Recorded Executions in a Decade. Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved August 10, 2025, from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/amnesty-international-global-report-2024-lowest-number-of-countries-carried-out-highest-number-of-recorded-executions-in-a-decade
[2] Lehmann, E. (2012). The Death Penalty in a Changing Socialist State: Reflections of 'Modernity' from the Mao Era to Contemporary China, Honors Theses, 844. https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/844
[3] Miao, M. (2013). Capital Punishment in China: A Populist Instrument of Social Governance. Theoretical Criminology, 17(2): 233-250, 235.
[4] ibid, 236.
[5] ibid, 236.
[6] Johnson, D. T., & Zimring, F. E. (2009). The Political Origins of China’s Death Penalty Exceptionalism’. The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia, 225-286, 256.
[7] Strauss, J. C. (2002). Paternalist Terror: The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Regime Consolidation in the People’s Republic of China, 1950-1953. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44(1), 80–105, 99.
[8] Su, Y. (2011). Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 180.
[9] ibid 180.
[10] ibid180.
[11] Bakken, B. (2011). China, a Punitive Society?. Asian Journal of Criminology, 6(1), 33-50, 39.
[12] Su, Y. (2011). Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 179.
[13] Jian, G., Song, Y., & Zhou, Y. (2015). Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield, 25.
[14] Yang, X. (2015). The Confucianization of Law and the Lenient Punishments in China. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 10(1), 42.
[15] Su, Y. (2011). Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 180.
[16] ibid 181.
[17] ibid 181.
[18] Bakken, B. (2010). The Norms of Death: On Capital Punishment in China. Australian Center on China in the World, 1-21, 3.
[19] Zedong, M. (1957). On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People, 1-70, 29-30.
[20] Miao, M. (2014). The Politics of Change: Explaining Capital Punishment Reform in China (Doctoral dissertation, Oxford University, UK), 173.
[21] Bakken, B. (2010). The Norms of Death: On Capital Punishment in China. Australian Center on China in the World, 1-21, 3.
[22] Trevaskes, S. (2002). Courts on the Campaign Path in China: Criminal Court Work in the “Yanda 2001” Anti-Crime Campaign. Asian Survey, 42(5), 673–693, 675.
[23] Liang, B. (2005). Severe Strike Campaign in Transitional China. Journal of Criminal Justice, 33(4), 387-399, 391.
[24] ibid 391.
[25] Political Bureau of the Central Committee (January 17 1986). Speech at the Standing Committee of the Politburo. In Deng Xiaoping Collected Works Vol. 3. People’s Press.
[26] Liang, B. (2005). Severe Strike Campaign in Transitional China. Journal of Criminal Justice, 33(4), 387-399, 392.
[27] ibid 393.
[28] Ibid 391.
[29] Trevaskes, S. (2002). Courts on the Campaign Path in China: Criminal Court Work in the “Yanda 2001” Anti-Crime Campaign. Asian Survey, 42(5), 673–693, 678.
[30] ibid 391.
[31] Miao, M. (2013). Capital Punishment in China: A Populist Instrument of Social Governance. Theoretical Criminology, 17(2), 233-250, 240.
[32] ibid 243.
[33] Seet, M. (2017). China's Suspended Death Sentence with a Two-Year Reprieve: Humanitarian Reprieve or Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Punishment? NUS Law Working Paper, (2017/006), 1-21, 3.
[34] Dui Hua Foundation. (2011, September 1). Moving the Mountain: China’s Struggle for Death Penalty Reform. Dui Hua Human Rights Journal. https://www.duihuahrjournal.org/2011/08/moving-mountain-chinas-struggle-for.html
[35] ibid
[36] Miao, M. (2013). Capital Punishment in China: A Populist Instrument of Social Governance. Theoretical Criminology, 17(2), 233-250, 243.
[37] ibid 243.
[38] ibid 244.
[39] Ministry of Public Security Launches Seven-Month Nationwide “Strike Hard” Campaign. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC). (2024, July 1).
[40] Xia, Y. (2024). “Balancing Leniency and Severity” in China: The Historical, Substantive and Methodological Reflections. Association of Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice in the United States (ACCCJ).
[41] ibid
[42] Bi, Y. (2012). On the Death Penalty for Drug-Related Crime in China. Human Rights and Drugs, 2:1, 29-44, 32-33.
[43] Xiong, M., Liu, S., & Liang, B. (2022). Death Sentence Review by the Supreme People’s Court in China: Decision Patterns and Variations. China Review, 22(3), 137-166, 138.
[44] Bi, Y. (2012). On the Death Penalty for Drug-Related Crime in China. Human Rights and Drugs, 2:1, 29-44, 33.
[45] Hoode, R,. Hoyle, C. (2014) The Death Penalty in China – The Road to Reform. University of Oxford Law Faculty Series. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/migrated/a5-hoodhoyle-death-penalty_fs.pdf
[46] Minas, S. (2009). 'Kill Fewer, Kill Carefully': An Analysis of the 2006 to 2007 Death Penalty Reforms in China. UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal, 27(1), 37-70, 43.
[47] Trevaskes, S. (2008). The Death Penalty in China Today: Kill Fewer, Kill Cautiously. Asian Survey, 48 (3): 393-413, 407.
[48] Lewis, M. K. (2011). Leniency and Severity in China’s Death Penalty Debate. Columbia Journal of Asian Law, 24(2), 304–332, 313.
[49] BBC News (2007, June 8). China Death Penalty Verdicts Drop. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6733279.stm
[50] Trevaskes, S. (2008). The Death Penalty in China Today: Kill Fewer, Kill Cautiously. Asian Survey, 48 (3): 393-413, 408.
[51] Yang, J. (2013). The Development of China's Death Penalty Representation Guidelines: A Learning Model Based on the ABA Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases. Hofstra Law Review 42(2), 589-608, 591-592.
[52] ibid.
[53] ibid, 592.
[54] ibid, 591.
[55] Zhou, Z. (2012). The Death Penalty in China: Reforms and Its Future (Doctoral dissertation, Waseda University) 31.
[56] ibid.
[57] Smith, T., Roberston, M., & Trevaskes, S. (2022). (Not) Talking about Capital Punishment in the Xi Jinping Era. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 11(3), 79-91, 81.
[58] ibid, 81. See also, Deng, X. (1993). Speech at the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee (January 17, 1986). [在中央政治局 常委会上的讲话 (一九八六年一月十七日)]. In Deng Xiaoping Collected Works (vol 3). People’s Press.
[59] ibid, 80.
[60] ibid, 81.
[61] ibid, 79.
[62] Motazedi, N. (2025, May 09). Amnesty International Global Report (2024): Lowest Number of Countries Carried Out Highest Number of Recorded Executions in a Decade Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved August 10, 2025, from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/amnesty-international-global-report-2024-lowest-number-of-countries-carried-out-highest-number-of-recorded-executions-in-a-decade.
[63] Amnesty International. (2025, April). Death Sentences and Executions in 2024 (Index Number: ACT 50/8976/2025). 6. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act50/8976/2025/en/
[64] Miao, M. (2013). Capital Punishment in China: A Populist Instrument of Social Governance. Theoretical Criminology, 17(2), 233-250, 244.
[65] Amnesty International. (2025, April). Death Sentences and Executions in 2024 (Index Number: ACT 50/8976/2025). 6. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act50/8976/2025/en/
[66] Pascoe, D., Bosworth, M., Hoyle, C., & Zedner, L. (2016). Researching the Death Penalty in Closed or Partially-Closed Criminal Justice Systems. Changing Contours of Criminal Justice, 197-212, 197.
[67] ibid 206.
[68] Amnesty International. (2017, April 10). China’s Deadly Secrets (Index No. ASA 17/5849/2017). https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/5849/2017/en/
[69] Pascoe, D., Bosworth, M., Hoyle, C., & Zedner, L. (2016). Researching the Death Penalty in Closed or Partially-closed Criminal Justice Systems. Changing Contours of Criminal Justice, 197-212, 203.
[70] ibid, 203.
[71] ECPM. (2024, May). China and the Death Penalty: A Well-Kept Secret [Advocacy article]. ECPM. Retrieved from https://www.ecpm.org/en/2024/05/14/china-and-the-death-penalty-a-well-kept-secret/
[72] Pascoe, D., Bosworth, M., Hoyle, C., & Zedner, L. (2016). Researching the Death Penalty in Closed or Partially-Closed Criminal Justice Systems. Changing Contours of Criminal Justice, 197-212.
[73] ibid, 197-212.
[74] Miao, M. (2023). Why Public Opinion on the Death Penalty Doesn't Matter in China. Austl. J. Asian L., 24, 131.
[75] ibid.
[76] ibid, 132-3.
[77] ibid, 132.
[78] ibid.
[79] ibid.
[80] ibid, 132-3.
[81] Miao, M. (2013). Capital punishment in China: A Populist Instrument of Social Governance. Theoretical Criminology, 17(2), 233-250, 235.
[82] Kim, C., & LeBlang, T. R. (1975). The Death Penalty in Traditional China. Ga. J. Int'l & Comp. L., 5, 77, 78.
[83] ibid, 85.
[84] ibid, 85.
[85] Amnesty International. (2023). Death Sentences and Executions 2022: Global Report (Index No. ACT 50/6548/2023). Amnesty International. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Amnesty-International-Death-Sentences-and-Executions-2022-Report.pdf, 8.
[86] Florio, Ryan. (2008). The [Capital] Punishment Fits the Crime: Comparative Analysis of the Death Penalty and Proportionality in the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review, 16(1), 43-90, 43.
[87] ibid, 85-6.
[88] ibid, 85-6.
[89] Leibold, J. (2016). Preferential Policies for Ethnic Minorities in China. In Handbook on ethnic minorities in China. Edward Elgar Publishing, 165-188, 168 and Peng, Y., & Cheng, J. (2022). Ethnic Disparity in Chinese Theft Sentencing. China Review, 22(3), 47-71, 48.
[90] Leibold, J. (2016). Preferential Policies for Ethnic Minorities in China. In Handbook on Ethnic Minorities in China. Edward Elgar Publishing, 165-188, 168.
[91] Florio, R. (2008). The [Capital] Punishment Fits the Crime: A Comparative Analysis of the Death Penalty and Proportionality in the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. U. Miami Int'l & Comp. L., 16, 43, 62.
[92] Freedom House. (2025). Freedom in the World - China. https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2025.
[93] ibid.
[94] ibid, see section ‘F. Rule of Law’.
[95] ibid.
[96] ibid.
[97] The Rights Practice. (2022, April). Imposition of the Death Penalty and its Impact in China [Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions]. The Rights Practice. https://www.rights-practice.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=3e78ad63-8a9e-428f-a1bc-0b3dddfbe442%20, 2.
[98] ibid, 2.
[99] ibid, 2.
[100] ibid, 3.
[101] Shen, J. J. (2014). Killing a Chicken to Scare the Monkey: The Unequal Administration of Death in China. Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J., 23, 869.
[102] ibid, 870.
[103] ibid, 870.
[104] ibid, 900.
[105] ibid, 899.
[106] Hou, Y., & Truex, R. (2020). Ethnic Discrimination and Authoritarian Rule: An Analysis of Criminal Sentencing in China. Available at SSRN 3481448.
[107] ibid, 4.
[108] Shen, J. J. (2014). Killing a Chicken to Scare the Monkey: The Unequal Administration of Death in China. Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J., 23, 869, 872.
[109] ibid, 873.
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