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CHINA: China rejects criticism of execution rate

China has dismissed concerns about its use of the death penalty and promises to maintain it as a way of promoting social stability.

 China correspondent Tom O'Byrne reports China has come under fire in a human fire in a human rights report highlighting the death penalty statistics worldwide in 2001.

 China's foreign ministry has dismissed as baseless a complaint by the human rights group Amnesty International about what it called China's excessive and arbitrary use of the death penalty. Amnesty International claims close to 2,500 people were executed in China last year...part of them in one three-month period when the government was running an anti-crime campaign. The Chinese Authorities acknowledged that in last year's so-called strike hard campaign, police prosecutors and judges were encouraged to catch, try and convict more suspected criminals. But a spokeswoman for China's foriegn ministry says the authorities control the use of the death penalty and review the cases of all prisoners sentenced to death. Amnesty says China executed more people last year than the rest of the world did in the 3 years before.