World’s Top Executioner: Unmasking the Truth About China’s Death Row
.png "China")
China's death row is one of the most elusive in the world. The government classifies death penalty cases as state secrets and actively works to minimize press coverage in an effort to control public narratives. As a result, prominent advocacy organizations like The Rights Practice and China Against the Death Penalty struggle to accurately assess the number of death penalty sentences the Supreme People's Court (SPC) approves every year—estimated to be in the thousands.[1] Although authorities purport to have made efforts to decrease this number in recent years, Chinese criminal law still authorizes the death penalty as punishment for crimes that international human rights standards do not consider to be "the most serious," particularly drug-related offenses.[2] Imposing the death penalty for these offenses is arbitrary and disproportionate. It can also disregard the economic and gendered factors that often underlie drug-related activity and other crimes. When the criminal legal system ignores the effects of gender and poverty on defendants, it places women and other disadvantaged groups at greater risk of receiving a death sentence.
Broad security laws governing the Chinese judiciary make understanding the full breadth of China's death penalty practices nearly impossible. The national database of criminal cases, which the SPC created in 2013 in an effort to increase transparency, includes only a small fraction of the country's total death penalty cases.[3] Thus, it is difficult to discern whether China's criminal legal system truly respects international human rights standards. Despite these challenges, members of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty—a global network of over 160 NGOs, including The Advocates for Human Rights—continue to monitor, document, and defend the rights of individuals on death row in China and in other retentionist countries around the world.
The Rights of Women in China's Criminal Legal System
In 2021, The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide published a groundbreaking report, "No One Believed Me": A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty, examining the circumstances of women on death row globally, including in China. Although 46 crimes are eligible for the death penalty, Chinese courts typically hand down death sentences only for murder and drug-related crimes. State-run Chinese media reported 160-200 drug-related executions annually between 2018 and 2019, with these figures likely understating the true scope.[4]
Women constitute a small minority of people China has executed for drug-related crimes, though this proportion may be increasing.[5] China is a state party to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), but its courts routinely fail to consider gender-specific mitigating factors—such as domestic violence or gender-related economic circumstances—when determining sentences for women charged with drug-related crimes.[6] The Cornell Center found that most Chinese women who received a death sentence for drug offenses were young, poorly educated, unemployed, or from rural areas. Almost all reported having left school at the end of junior high.[7]
Because China's criminal legal system fails to consider the gendered realities and economic vulnerabilities that women experience, it puts women at heightened risk of being put to death. In addition, the Cornell Center found that women, ethnic minorities, and people without significant financial resources may receive inadequate legal support, exacerbating the risk of arbitrary execution.[8] The Cornell Center also found that because women often occupy primary caregiver roles, these shortcomings unduly harm their minor children.[9] When courts fail to consider defendants' minor children, the criminal legal system contributes to adverse outcomes and poverty cycles among youth.
Urging China to Abolish the Death Penalty
Crackdowns on human rights defenders in the past decade have heightened the urgency of examining China's death penalty policies and practices.[10] Chinese authorities have stifled civil society efforts to monitor and document human rights violations, thereby allowing the unchecked secrecy surrounding China's criminal legal system to further insulate the state from criticism, allowing abuses to persist. Yet even in the face of challenges, civil society has rallied against abuse and continues to call for transparency.
As a member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, The Advocates for Human Rights has campaigned extensively for the abolition of the death penalty, consulting with UN bodies and experts and submitting reports to international mechanisms. In the past few years, The Advocates has also worked to shine a brighter spotlight on the link between the death penalty and gender bias. The Advocates has already achieved some success within the UN system, with mechanisms like the CEDAW Committee making recommendations targeting the gender dimension of the death penalty.[11] The Advocates continues to urge nations to track death penalty cases by gender, enabling advocates to better understand the complexities of the gender dimension of the death penalty.
China, like all nations, has a legal obligation to align its criminal legal system with international human rights standards. The state must ensure that all defendants receive equal treatment and access to adequate legal counsel, in addition to providing people in detention with humane living conditions. The Advocates joins the call for China to commit itself to greater transparency regarding its criminal legal system and to abolish the death penalty. As long as secrecy and inequality define China's criminal legal system, that system will continue to deploy the death penalty as a tool of repression.
By Libby Nemitz
