Mobile death vans, firing squads, lethal injections: These are all methods used by China to carry out more state-sanctioned executions than all other nations combined.
While the communist state does not release its official figures, rights groups believe many thousands of people are executed each year - more than the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US, even when tallied together.
Criminal law in the country is as severe as it is obfuscated, with many crimes punishable by death under Beijing's draconian legislation.
Death sentences are frequently handed down for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to murder, but also white collar crimes such as corruption.
According to a report published in 2021, China's Penal Code of 1997 - which is still in force today - has 46 crimes punishable by death, including 24 violent crimes and 22 non-violent crimes.
While the number of such crimes has slowly reduced (in 1979 it was 74, according to the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty), executions remain widespread, creating what Amnesty International calls a 'conveyor belt of executions'.
In 2022, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty said that at least 8,000 people per year were executed in China from 2007.
The death penalty in China made headlines this week, when on Wednesday the country executed a couple for killing two young children, as well as a son who was executed for bludgeoning his mother to death with a dumbbell.
The case of the couple in particular, who threw the children out of a window of an apartment building, caused nationwide outrage.
Zhang Bo and Ye Chengchen were found responsible for the fatal falls of the two-year-old girl and one-year-old boy from the 15th floor of a residential tower in southwest China's Chongqing.
Zhang, who was the father of the two children, had begun an affair with Ye, who was initially unaware he was married and had children.
She then urged Zhang to kill his two children, which she 'regarded as obstacles' to their getting married and a 'burden on their future life together', the Chongqing No. 5 Intermediate People's Court said in a statement.
In November 2020, Zhang threw his children out of the window of the apartment in the absence of their mother, with whom he had agreed to divorce.
Both were found guilty of conspiring 'to kill his daughter and younger son by staging an accidental fall from the 15th floor of his apartment building', state-backed China Daily reported last year, and sentenced to death in December 2021.
They were executed on Wednesday, the court said.
The news came the same day as another high-profile execution - of Wu Xieyu, found guilty of killing his mother by repeatedly striking her with a dumbbell in 2015, a statement by a court in eastern Fujian province said.
Their executions quickly rose to the top of a list of trending topics on Chinese social media site Weibo on Wednesday, receiving nearly 200 million views.
'Today is truly a good day,' read one widely liked comment under a related post by state news agency Xinhua. 'The punishment fits the crime', wrote another.
While these cases were made public, China keeps data on its use of the death penalty secret. Nevertheless, details have emerged from the country.
Despite the number crimes punishable by death being reduced, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty says the number of executions has largely remained stable.
It puts this down to the fact that some of the crimes punishable by death include imparting criminal methods, or stealing ancient relics or ancient vertebrates - crimes that are not common.
While Beijing has removed the death penalty attached to some of these crimes, more common criminal practices that carry the penalty remain prevalent.
But Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty says that only a small number of death sentences and executions are ever made public.
It does note, however, that 2007 saw a significant reduction in the number of executions when the Supreme People's Court took over the power to review sentences. For 27 years before 2007, it had delegated the responsibility.
There have been glimpses into China's 'conveyor belt of executions' over the years, with videos and pictures emerging of public 'execution rallies' and summary killings.
Perhaps one of the most shocking revelations was that Beijing deploys 'execution vans,' also known as a mobile execution unit.
From what we do know about the vans, they tend to be converted 24-seat buses.
On the outside, they appear as normal police vehicles, with no external markings to indicate what it is used for. On the inside, however, is an execution chamber.
According to reports, the rear of the vehicle houses a windowless chamber where the execution itself takes place.
Several CCTV cameras are also present in the van, meaning the execution can be recorded or watched if officials desire to monitor it.
A bed slides out from the wall of the van, to which the convicted criminal is strapped. A syringe is then put into their arm by a technician, before a police official administers the lethal injection by pressing a button.
The concept of the vans, which reports suggest were first used in the late 1990s, have drawn comparisons to larger models developed by the Nazis in the Second World War to gas Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust.
China has previously insisted their death vans are 'progress', being cheaper to run than execution facilities and removes the need to transport prisoners.
China is also reported to use firing squads as a means of executing prisoners.
While the practice was meant to have been discontinued in 2010 in favour of the use of lethal injections, the use of firing squads have been recorded since.
In one case, a man who stabbed nine school children - Zhao Zewei - was shot dead by a firing squad in 2018, in front of a crowd of villagers.
There have also been examples of summary executions in China - where a person accused of a crime is executed immediately upon being deemed guilty, although often without the benefit of a fair and free trial.
The country's justice system is notorious for favouring prosecutors, with Chinese courts having a 99.9 percent conviction rate.
In 2017, China sentenced 10 people to death, mostly for drugs related crimes.
In scenes reminiscent of the early days of the People's Republic, when capitalists and landlords were rounded up and publicly denounced, the 10 people were tried outdoors in front of a large public crowd.
They were executed immediately after their sentencing in Guangdong.
In another case in 2014, 55 people were sentenced in a stadium in front of 7,000 spectators, before many were carted off by police to be executed.
In 2012, a spectator appeared to capture an execution on camera.
Footage showed police officers leading a man out into a clearing near a village, as a crowd of people watched from a nearby overpass.
The man is seen being taken into the middle of the clearing, where he is photographed, made to kneel, before a gun is aimed at the back of his head.
He is then shown being shot dead by a police officer.
It is not just violent or drug crimes that carry the death penalty in China.
In January 2021, Chinese tycoon and senior government official Lai Xiaomi was sentenced to death for receiving bribes and committing bigamy.
The 58-year-old was accused of soliciting $300 million in bribes from 2008 to 2018, and of starting a secret family while married to his wife.
He was executed January 29, 2021 - 24 days after his sentencing.
Another shocking factor in China's use of the death penalty is the practice of organ harvesting, which benefits from the country's high numbers of executions.
The vans in particular are said to be a key part of China's organ trade, with a 2012 estimate suggesting 65 percent of donated organs came from executed people.
So many prisoners are executed in the vans, reports suggest, to meet the high demand for organs.
Activists say bodies are quickly cremated - making it impossible for the families of those executed to determine if their organs have been removed.
According to the figures released by Amnesty International last year, China was far and away the most prolific executing country.
Excluding China, the group said it had recorded 883 executions in 2022 - a huge jump from 579 in 2021. After China, it said Iran had executed around 570 people, followed by Saudi Arabia, which executed 196.
Like China, other countries do not release their death sentence figures, such as Vietnam and North Korea, but even then are not estimated to kill as many people as Beijing does - which likely executed well over 1,000 people in 2022.
Source: Mail Online, Chris Jewers, February 1, 2024
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