China Reconsiders Broad Use of Death Penalty

The Chinese government is planning to implement judicial reforms that could sharply reduce its use of the death penalty. China will restrict the use of capital punishment by requiring its highest court, the Supreme People's Court, to review all death penalty cases before executions are carried out. Currently, the high court reviews only a minority of such cases, allowing the provincial courts that hand down death sentences to review their own judgments. "Criticism of the legal system in society is rising. The Chinese Communist Party, as a ruling party that attaches importance to stability, knows that if it doesn't reform the judicial system, it would be bad for stability," said Liu Renwen, a scholar of law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. China, which does not release statistics on death sentences or executions, has long been criticized for its high number of executions. Based on state-run media reports, Amnesty International estimated that China conducted 1,060 executions in 2002 and 2,468 executions in 2001. A recent book about the Chinese leadership cited internal party documents when it reported that about 15,000 executions took place every year between 1998 and 2001. Occasional cases of innocent people who have been exonerated from China's death row have shaken the general public's confidence in China's death penalty system. 

Chinese Move to Relax Severe Judicial Penalties

  By Philip P. Pan

  BEIJING, - The Chinese government is planning to implement judicial reforms that could sharply reduce its use of the death penalty and is debating new legislation to abolish the power of police to send people to labor camps without trial, according to Chinese legal scholars who have participated in the deliberations.

  The moves would weaken two of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's most notorious instruments of state power and begin to address longstanding international criticism of China's justice system. More people are executed in China than in the rest of the world combined, and police order tens of thousands every year to undergo what the party calls "reeducation through labor."

  The government has not announced a final decision on the measures, and the scholars said many conservative police and provincial officials were resisting the changes. But they said that key bureaucracies, including the courts, the Justice Ministry and the legislature, had backed the measures. For the first time in years, they said, the momentum appears to be with advocates of judicial reform.

  An official party newspaper, the Legal Daily, published a front-page item last week saying that China's legislature had placed a bill to overhaul the labor camp system on its priority agenda, a rare admission by the party that the system should be changed. And an official told a Western diplomat during recent human rights talks that the government had decided to go ahead with the plan to improve its death penalty review process.

  The legal reforms could signal a willingness by the new generation of party leaders who took office last year, including President Hu Jintao, to consider significant changes to China's political system as long as they do not threaten the party's monopoly on power. Even if the measures are implemented, the party would retain full control of the weak courts, and it could continue to use them to send dissidents, labor organizers, religious leaders, ethnic activists and others who challenge its authority to prisons where forced labor is common.

  Liu Renwen, a scholar of law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who has discussed the measures with government officials, said the party had concluded that judicial reform was necessary to fight corruption and other problems that undermine public confidence in its rule. He added that changes to the judicial system presented fewer risks for the party and "can proceed faster than more sensitive and difficult types of political reform," such as the expansion of elections. 

  But the leadership has not been willing to establish a truly independent judiciary that can serve as a check on the power of party officials; most judges are party members, appointed by party leaders and required to carry out party decisions. Whether piecemeal reform of such a system can produce results and satisfy public demands for rule of law is an open question. 

  "Criticism of the legal system in society is rising," Liu said. "The Chinese Communist Party, as a ruling party that attaches importance to stability, knows that if it doesn't reform the judicial system, it would be bad for stability."

  In a sign of the party's interest in legal reform, the legislature is preparing to add a phrase about protecting human rights to the constitution. In addition, the Foreign Ministry recently asked a group of legal scholars to study a U.N.-sponsored human rights treaty that China signed in 1998 and determine what reforms the government should adopt to ratify it and which provisions it can avoid by attaching "reservations."

  The leadership has already decided to restrict the use of capital punishment by requiring China's highest court, the Supreme People's Court, to review all death-penalty cases before executions are carried out, according to scholars who have advocated the change and participated in discussions with government officials about it. Currently, the high court reviews only a minority of such cases, allowing the provincial courts that hand down the sentences to review their own judgments.

  The government is still discussing how to implement and finance the change, which could require hiring as many as 100 to 200 new judges in Beijing, but a plan might be worked out and put into effect this year, the scholars said.

  Shao Wenhong, a senior judge on the Supreme People's Court, said the government was still researching the issue. But she added that "the dominant opinion among legal experts and theoreticians" is in support of the reform, and that "this view has already attracted the attention of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress," the country's top lawmaking body.

  An overhaul of the "reeducation-through-labor" system is less certain, though a legislative subcommittee recently resumed work on the issue. The subcommittee had all but suspended debate on it after the campaign against the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement began in 1999, according to a legal expert who has participated in the discussions.

  The system allows police to send people to labor camps for up to four years on a variety of vaguely defined offenses without having to present a case to prosecutors or judges. The wide police discretion has made "reeducation through labor" a key weapon in the crackdown on Falun Gong as well as on Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province in the west.