CHINA: Chinese legal experts have called for the immediate abolition of the death penalty, at the first discussion held in a country which executes thousands of criminals each year.
Abolition may be a long way off but the suggestion may be a hint that the new generation of leaders who came to power last month are preparing to experiment with various political reforms.
The southern city of Shenzhen has just been chosen to test a division of powers to replace the Communist Party's monopolistic system of administration, based on studies made of Hong Kong's government structure.
So far it is not clear what the experiment will mean but abolition would quickly send a clear signal that China intends to brings its legal system in line with standards common to the majority of the world.
In a report of the conference held last month in Xiangtan, Hunan province, the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend paper said most of the 30 Chinese and foreign scholars spoke against the death penalty.
"There is no longer a 200-year- old battle between pro and anti, now the debate it is on how to limit its use and to gradually phase it out. This is now the mainstream view," the newspaper said.
From 1990 to the end of 2000, Amnesty International documented more than 29,500 death sentences in China and 19,500-plus executions, figures believed to be far below the actual numbers.
The meeting however, did not make public any figures of the number of people executed in China in past years.
Secret Communist Party documents published in a new book, "China's New Rulers", report that between 1998 and 2001, some 60,000 Chinese, mostly young, poorly educated males, were killed, either executed or shot by police while fleeing. This is equal to 15,000 a year or 97 per cent of the executions in the world.
The number of executions remains a closely guarded secret but since the first "strike hard campaign" in 1983, the number of crimes meriting the ultimate sanction has more than doubled from 32 to 72, including 28 vaguely defined white-collar crimes, such as smuggling, tax evasion, counterfeiting.
The first "strike hard" campaign was initiated by China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and revived in 1996 by President Jiang Zemin as an instrument to combat both rising crime and corruption.
During these anti-crime crackdowns, the country's legal institutions are required to speed up normal legal procedures in order to meet quotas for solved crimes. Death sentences are carried out swiftly by a bullet to the back of the head after the victims are paraded in front of audiences in public places such as stadiums.
Until 1997, a person caught stealing as little as 30,000 yuan ($3,164) could be tried and shot sometimes within a matter of weeks but now the bar has been raised to 3 or 4 million yuan.
Some experts present argued in favour of retaining the death penalty, saying that it is a deterrent to crime, prevents recidivism, and justice requires proper retribution.
"It is much cheaper than imprisoning people for long term. It only takes one shot or one injection while long-term jail sentences are drain on state coffers," one scholar quoted in the paper said.
"The death penalty is not a panacea for crimes," said Li Yunlong, a defence lawyer who has been campaigning against its arbitrary use for 18 years and has written four books on the subject. "Many people were executed during these 'strike hard' campaigns but China's crime and corruption are growing."