China
Foreign Nationals and the Death Penalty
Death Penalty Overview
access to effective legal counsel, to arbitrary
convictions and death sentences.
China is amongst the world’s most proli c
executing states. Although statistics on the
use of the death penalty are considered a
classi ed in China, all estimates suggest that
China executes thousands of people every
year.
Amnesty International estimate that the
number of executions in China may be
more than in all other retentionist countries
combined. This state secrecy also means
China’s death penalty is characterised by a
lack of regulation and in all likelihood falls
far short of international human rights
standards.
The death penalty can be imposed for many
offences, including treason, arson,
murder and manslaughter, rape, kidnapping
and human traf cking, as well as for robbery,
smuggling and drug traf cking.
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Frequent and signi cant fair trial violations
permeate the Chinese legal system, from a
high probability of torture used as a means
to elicit confessions, an inability to gain
While some argue that the Chinese
government has taken some steps towards
limiting the use of the death penalty by both
reducing executions and reducing the
number of capital offences, this has not had a
meaningful impact on the number of death
sentences and executions that have been
enforced. Public opinion is said to be largely
in favour of the death penalty.
While some data may reveal that death
sentences are declining, the proportion of
capital sentences meted out for drug-related
offences are on the increase. In fact, China
executes more women for drug offences than
any other country in the world.
Foreign Nationals
Foreign nationals, especially those from
Western countries, are often used in hostage
diplomacy in China and death sentences may
be issued in order to use death row prisoners
as political pawns to further China’s aims
abroad.