Thousands in China Watch as 10 People Sentenced to Death in Sport StadiumThousands in China Watch as 10 People Sentenced to Death in Sport Stadium

Benjamin Haas
Guardian
A court in China has sentenced 10 people to death, mostly for drug-related crimes, in front of thousands of onlookers before taking them away for execution.

China Sentences Man to Death for Espionage, Saying He Sold Secrets

Javier Hernandez
New York Times
A former computer technician, was convicted of selling 150,000 classified documents to foreign spies.

China Suspends Death Sentence for Wife of Disgraced Official

Rishi Iyengar
Time
The murder of British businessman Neil Heywood sparked one of China's biggest political scandals.

China Executes ‘Mafia-style’ Mining Tycoon Liu Han

BBC
 Liu is believed to have had links to former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who is currently being investigated. 

Reporter Honored for Clearing Dead Man’s Name

Ma Chi
China Daily
Hugjiltu, a man of Mongolian ethnicity, was sentenced to death for rape and murder in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia autonomous region, in 1996. The 18-year-old was executed 62 days after being charged, despite doubts about the evidence...

China Sentences 8 to Death for Attacks in Xinjiang

Didi Tang
ABC
The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court in the capital of Xinjiang also handed out suspended death sentences to five others, China Central Television said, without mentioning when the trials were held.

China Considers Abolishing Death Penalty for Nine Crimes

Reuters
China is considering trimming nine crimes from the list of offenses punishable by death, state media said, as the ruling Communist Party considers broader reforms to the country's legal system.

China Sentences 55 in Xinjiang Mass Trial

Michael Martina and Li Hui
Reuters
The public sentencing, reminiscent of China's revolutionary era rallies, attracted a crowd of 7,000 at a sports stadium in Yining city in the northern prefecture of Yili.

China Sentences ‘Deeply Evil’ Billionaire Liu Han to Death

Terrence McCoy
Washington Post
Billionaire Liu Han was a man with two lives. There was the philanthropist and political adviser, and then there was the warlord and murderer.

Conversation

09.27.13

Can China’s Leading Indie Film Director Cross Over in America?

Jonathan Landreth, Michael Berry & more
Jonathan Landreth:Chinese writer and director Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin won the prize for the best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Though the dialogue and its fine translation and English subtitles by Tony Rayns are exemplary, I...

Media

09.26.13

Execution or Murder? Chinese Look for Justice in Street Vendor’s Death

This morning, a Chinese street vendor named Xia Junfeng was executed. Xia had been found guilty of murdering two urban enforcers, known colloquially as chengguan, in 2009. Xia’s lawyers argued he acted in self-defense, presenting six eyewitness...

Why China Executes So Many People

Zi Heng Lim
Atlantic
While anti-death penalty activists say public education is needed to get the message out, they believe change ultimately needs to come from the top -- something that they're not optimistic about at all. 

Public Opinion Split On Live Airing Of Executions On T.V.

Andrew Jacobs
New York Times
Although the live program ended shortly before the men were executed by lethal injection, it became an instantly polarizing sensation. 

Top Prosecution Body To Add Second Review Of Death Penalty Sentences

John Kennedy
South China Morning Post
Six years after the Supreme People’s Court regained the power to review death penalty sentences the Supreme People’s Procuratorate has now been formally tasked with providing external review of Supreme Court decisions to apply the...

China’s Death-Row Reality Show

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
Until it was taken off the air last December, one of the most popular television programs in China’s Henan province, which has a population of 100 million, was “Interviews Before Execution.” The presenter was Ding Yu, a pretty young woman, always...

Sinica Podcast

09.17.10

Capital Punishment in China

Kaiser Kuo, Gady Epstein & more from Sinica Podcast
Crimes that merit capital punishment in China include treason, murder, corruption, drug-traffiking, and occasionally even wildlife poaching. Yet despite the broad reach of the law here, the true extent of the death penalty in China remains one of...