Capital punishment is used in most East Asian countries and territories, including Japan, North Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Taiwan.[6][7][8][9] According to Amnesty International, China executes more people than all other countries combined.[10] The exact numbers of executions and death sentences are not publicly available, being considered a state secret by China.[11] According to the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, the estimated number of executions has declined steadily in the twenty-first century, from 12,000 each year to 2,400.[12] However, in 2022 the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty announced that since 2007 at least 8,000 people per year were executed in China.[13] Since 2006, the Chinese government has taken effective measures to limit use of the death penalty,[14] proclaiming that it is doing this with the aim of completely abolishing it.[15]
Capital punishment in China should not be confused with death sentence with reprieve, which is a form of lenient sentencing that is handed down by Chinese courts as frequently as, or more often than, actual death sentences.[16] Death sentence with reprieve is used to emphasize the seriousness of the crime and the mercy of the court, and is sometimes inaccurately added to the number of actual death sentences.[17]
^Zhang, Lijia (2014-12-29). "China's Death-Penalty Debate". The New York Times. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2016-04-14. Retrieved 2017-04-11. A majority of Chinese people support capital punishment, often citing the traditional saying "to repay a tooth with a tooth and to pay back blood with blood."
^"Canadian's death sentence in China 'horrific', family says". BBC. 2019-01-15. Archived from the original on 2019-01-15. Retrieved 2019-01-15. China is believed to execute more people annually than any other country, but is highly secretive about the number. Human rights group Amnesty International puts the figure in the thousands – more than the rest of the world's nations put together.