Inside China's execution conveyor belt: How 'mobile injection vans and firing squads are used to put thousands to death a year' - outstripping capital punishment figures for the rest of the world combined
Mobile death vans, firing squads, lethal injections: These are all methods used by China to carry out more state-sanctioned executions than all other nations combined.
While the communist state does not release its official figures, rights groups believe many thousands of people are executed each year - more than the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US, even when tallied together.
Criminal law in the country is as severe as it is obfuscated, with many crimes punishable by death under Beijing's draconian legislation.
Death sentences are frequently handed down for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to murder, but also white collar crimes such as corruption.
According to a report published in 2021, China's Penal Code of 1997 - which is still in force today - has 46 crimes punishable by death, including 24 violent crimes and 22 non-violent crimes.
While the number of such crimes has slowly reduced (in 1979 it was 74, according to the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty), executions remain widespread, creating what Amnesty International calls a 'conveyor belt of executions'.
In 2022, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty said that at least 8,000 people per year were executed in China from 2007.
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