Add yet another thing to the list of things China has changed for the sake of an uncontroversial Olympics this summer: the way it executes people.
According to the Los Angeles Times, more people in China will still probably receive the death penalty than in all other countries combined, most executed soon after their sentence with a bullet to the head. China considers the number a state secret, but Amnesty International estimates that in 2006 1,051 people were executed — two-thirds of the 1,591 put to death worldwide that year.
That represented a 40% drop from the year before. Interviews with human-rights advocates, lawyers and defendants suggest the pace of executions decelerated last year as well as part of reforms instigated ahead of the Olympics. Officials have come to sum up the essence of the death-penalty reforms as “kill fewer, kill carefully.” Especially notable is that higher courts, which used to rubber stamp death-penalty verdicts, have reviewed a few cases and even reversed a few death sentences, according to David Johnson, a University of Hawaii sociology professor, who taught China’s first course on capital punishment to Peking University Law School students.– Robin Moroney