China’s legislature is considering abolishing the death penalty for nine of the 55 crimes it is available for, state media said yesterday, including illegal fundraising, which has been at the center of several controversial cases.
The country executes more people than the rest of the world combined, rights groups say, but a draft amendment to reduce the scope of capital punishment has been submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubberstamp legislature, Xinhua news agency reported.
The move comes amid a raft of proposed changes to the legal system and follows a key Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meeting which pledged to ensure the “rule of law,” although analysts say the ruling party will remain firmly in charge of the courts.
Some of the nine non-violent crimes included in the draft legislative amendment are smuggling weapons, ammunition or nuclear materials; counterfeiting currency; and raising funds by means of fraud, Xinhua said.
Executions for financial offences have been particularly controversial in China, where much bank lending is controlled by the state and private businesses sometimes struggle to obtain funding.
Last year Zheng Chengjie (曾成傑), a self-made businessman, was executed by firing squad — with his family not notified beforehand — after he was convicted of illegal fundraising and defrauding investors of about US$460 million.
A court sentenced a 39-year-old businesswoman to death last year after she was convicted of defrauding her clients of about US$70 million.
China executed 2,400 people last year, down from 10,000 a decade ago, according to a report by the Dui Hua Foundation. The exact number is considered a state secret.
Despite the decline, the country still put more people to death than all other countries combined, according to campaign groups.
China has occasionally exonerated wrongfully executed convicts after others came forward to confess their crimes, or in some cases because the supposed murder victim was later found alive.
China’s top court examines all death sentences issued in the country and sent back 39 percent of those it reviewed last year to lower courts for additional evidence, the Dui Hua report said, citing a report by the Southern Weekly newspaper.
In one landmark case in June, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence for Li Yan (李彥), a woman who killed her abusive husband.
The Chinese legal system is tightly controlled by the CCP and courts have an almost 100 percent conviction rate in criminal cases.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in