Execution in China works through a written legal process with 46 death-eligible offenses, a mandatory Supreme People’s Court review of every sentence, and two authorized methods of carrying it out: shooting and lethal injection. The system operates under near-total state secrecy, and the government has never published annual figures. Credible estimates place the number of executions each year in the thousands, more than the rest of the world combined.
What Crimes Can Trigger a Death Sentence
Article 48 of the Criminal Law limits capital punishment to offenders who commit “extremely serious crimes.”1Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China. Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China – Section 5 The Death Penalty That phrase is deliberately broad, and courts have wide discretion. In practice, capital charges cluster in a few categories.
Violent offenses form the core. Intentional homicide, robbery causing serious injury or death, rape with aggravating circumstances, kidnapping, and arson or explosion causing mass casualties all carry potential death sentences. Robbery alone can trigger execution under eight different circumstances, including robbing a bank, using a firearm, or killing someone during the crime.2Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China. Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China
Drug offenses account for a significant share of death sentences. Under Article 347, smuggling, trafficking, transporting, or manufacturing 50 grams or more of heroin or methamphetamine exposes the offender to a possible death sentence.3Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China. Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China – Article 347 For opium, the threshold is 1,000 grams. The government treats drug trafficking as a national security threat rather than a public health issue.
National security crimes round out the list. Espionage, treason, and armed rebellion can carry the death penalty if the harm to the state is “particularly serious” or the circumstances “especially vile.”4China Law Translate. Criminal Law 2021 Edition – Article 113 Corruption and bribery involving extremely large sums can also result in a death sentence, though mitigating factors such as cooperating with authorities often produce a suspended sentence instead. The current total of 46 death-eligible offenses reflects two rounds of legislative cuts, in 2011 and 2015, that removed non-violent economic crimes from the list.
Who Cannot Be Sentenced to Death
Three categories of people are absolutely exempt. Article 49 bars the death penalty for anyone under 18 at the time of the crime, any woman who is pregnant at the time of trial, and anyone aged 75 or older at the time of trial.5Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China. Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China – Article 49 The elderly exemption has one exception: a person over 75 who caused a death through “extremely cruel means” can still face execution.
Age is measured at the time of the offense, not the trial. A 17-year-old who commits murder cannot be sentenced to death even if the trial occurs years later. The pregnancy exemption, by contrast, is measured at the trial date. International monitoring groups have documented cases where these protections were not properly applied, but on paper they are absolute.
The Suspended Death Sentence
One of the most distinctive features of the system is the “death sentence with a two-year reprieve.” When a court determines that the crime warrants death but “immediate execution is not deemed necessary,” it can impose the death penalty while suspending its enforcement for two years.1Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China. Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China – Section 5 The Death Penalty This is not clemency. It is a conditional sentence, and the defendant’s behavior during the two years determines the outcome.
The rules are straightforward. If the defendant commits no intentional crime during the reprieve, the sentence is automatically commuted to life imprisonment. If the defendant demonstrates “major meritorious performance,” it drops to a fixed term of 25 years. If the defendant commits an intentional crime with grave circumstances during the reprieve, the Supreme People’s Court can authorize execution.6Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China. Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China – Article 50
Courts can also attach “restricted commutation” for certain serious offenders, including recidivists and those convicted of intentional homicide, kidnapping, rape, arson, or organized violent crime. That means even after commutation to life, the defendant will serve a significantly longer minimum term before any further sentence reduction is possible. In practice, the suspended death sentence is used heavily and functions as a pressure valve that lets courts impose the harshest label while avoiding irreversible execution in borderline cases.
Mandatory Review by the Supreme People’s Court
Every death sentence must be approved by the Supreme People’s Court before it can be carried out.7Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China. Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China – Article 199 This has been the law on paper for decades, but from the 1980s through 2006 the power was delegated to provincial-level High People’s Courts. That delegation produced wildly inconsistent standards, with the same conduct drawing execution in one province and a lesser sentence in another.
On January 1, 2007, the Supreme People’s Court took the authority back. Every death sentence passed by a lower court now goes to Beijing for review by a judge in the Supreme People’s Court’s Criminal Division. The reviewing judge examines the full case file, interviews the defendant, and evaluates whether the evidence is sufficient and the law correctly applied. If either is lacking, the court can overturn the sentence or order a retrial.8China Law Translate. Criminal Procedure Law 2018 – Article 262 The court can also commute a death sentence to death with a two-year reprieve if mitigating factors surface during review.
Defendants are entitled to be informed of their right to retain a lawyer when the death penalty judgment is served, and those who cannot afford counsel may apply for a legal aid appointment.9China Law Translate. Provisions on Providing Defendants with Legal Aid During Review of Death Penalty Cases International observers report that meaningful defense participation at the review stage remains limited.
How the Execution Is Carried Out
The Criminal Procedure Law authorizes two methods: shooting and lethal injection.10China Law Translate. Criminal Procedure Law 2018 – Article 263 Nothing in the law requires one over the other, and the choice depends on jurisdiction, available facilities, and local practice.
Shooting is the older method and remains in use across much of the country. The condemned prisoner kneels, and a single bullet is fired into the back of the head at close range. This is not the multi-shooter firing squad familiar from Western depictions. It is a single executioner with a single round. Executions may take place at designated grounds or inside detention facilities.
Lethal injection has been expanding as an alternative since the late 1990s. The procedure uses a sequence of drugs designed to cause unconsciousness, then respiratory and cardiac arrest. Officials have promoted it as more standardized and less visually violent. To bring lethal injection to areas that lack fixed facilities, authorities developed mobile execution vehicles: purpose-built vans equipped with a medical stretcher, drug-delivery systems, and audio-video recording. The procedure is recorded and broadcast live to supervising officials. The vans allow executions to be carried out near the court that issued the sentence, eliminating the cost and logistics of transporting prisoners to centralized sites.
What Happens After the Order Is Issued
Once the Supreme People’s Court issues an execution order, the lower court that handled the case must carry it out within seven days. The procuratorate sends someone to supervise on-site. Before the sentence is carried out, court personnel must verify the prisoner’s identity and ask whether they have any final words. If a potential error is discovered at any point before the execution, enforcement must be halted immediately and reported to the Supreme People’s Court.11China Law Translate. Criminal Procedure Law 2018 – Articles 262 and 263
The law states that executions “shall be publicly announced, but not publicly displayed.” Afterward, the enforcing court must notify the prisoner’s family. The law does not specify how much advance notice families receive before the execution takes place, and UN reporting has flagged a persistent “lack of information provided to families” about both timing and the treatment of remains.12Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Imposition of the Death Penalty and its Impact in China
For decades, organs from executed prisoners were a primary source for China’s transplant system. On January 1, 2015, the government officially banned the practice, making voluntary citizen donation the sole legal source for deceased-donor transplants, with the National Health Commission and the Red Cross Society of China overseeing the framework.13Transplantation. Legal Framework on Organ Donation and Transplantation in China The same secrecy that obscures execution numbers makes independent verification of compliance difficult.
Why the Numbers Are Unknown
China classifies all statistics on the death penalty as state secrets. This covers the number of death sentences handed down, the number of executions carried out, and the identities of those involved in the process. No official annual figures have ever been published.
International monitors work from fragmentary public records, media reports, and limited judicial disclosures. Amnesty International’s most recent global report lists China’s annual executions simply as “thousands” and excludes the country from its global count because a specific figure would distort the totals for everywhere else. Although the government publishes many court verdicts online, death penalty cases are routinely omitted. A 2022 submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions confirmed that there is no publicly available mechanism for independently verifying execution numbers.12Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Imposition of the Death Penalty and its Impact in China The government defends the secrecy as necessary to protect social stability and state interests.
Foreign Nationals Are Not Exempt
China applies its death penalty laws to foreign citizens without exception. Over a dozen foreign nationals have been executed since 2000, the vast majority for drug trafficking. Citizens of Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Colombia, France, and the Philippines are among those put to death. In 2026, China executed a French national who had been sentenced in 2010 for involvement in synthetic drug production. Earlier that year, four Canadian prisoners were executed in cases that had not been publicly disclosed.
The Criminal Procedure Law contains provisions for handling cases involving foreign nationals, including consideration of diplomatic interests and oversight by senior court officials. In practice these are difficult to enforce. China’s conviction rate exceeds 99 percent across all criminal cases, defense lawyers face severe constraints on the evidence they can access, and consular access is sometimes denied or delayed. Dual nationality is a recurring friction point: under Article 9 of the Nationality Law, Chinese citizens who acquire foreign citizenship automatically lose their Chinese nationality, but authorities have in some cases treated naturalized foreign citizens of Chinese origin as Chinese nationals and denied them consular protections.