🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa010)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html","crawl_time":1769954909,"first_indexed_time":1491869086,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty Says - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["An Amnesty International report adds to the debate about how much to trust Beijing’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nApril 10, 2017\nJia Jinglong, a Chinese villager who was executed for killing an official.\nCredit...\nJia Jingyuan\nBEIJING — When Jia Jinglong, a villager in northern China, was\nexecuted late last year for killing an official\nhe blamed for the demolition of his home, the news media\nboiled with debate\nabout the death sentence. Mr. Jia’s family and lawyers argued that the official had victimized him and that his life should have been spared.\n“The verdict against my brother was unfair,” Mr. Jia’s sister, Jia Jingyuan, said in an interview this week. “There’s a gap between the standards written in the laws and how those standards are enforced.”\nA\nreport released by Amnesty International\non Tuesday suggests that such complaints of injustice are far from isolated but often remain muffled by official secrecy. That secrecy has undermined the Chinese government’s vows to limit death sentences, distorting how common executions are in China, the report said.\n“This deliberate and elaborate secrecy system, which runs counter to China’s obligations under international law, conceals the number of people sentenced to death and executed every year, both of which Amnesty International estimates run into the thousands,” said the report, which is 44 pages long.\nThe Amnesty report is the latest addition to a debate among experts and advocates about how much to trust China’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes.\nChina’s president, Xi Jinping, has harshly stifled political protest and has overseen a widespread crackdown on human rights lawyers. In January, the head of China’s courts,\nZhou Qiang, railed against\nany notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.\nBut Mr. Xi has also promised to give ordinary citizens a fairer and more open legal system, and in recent years courts have exonerated prisoners who had been executed or had been given decades-long prison sentences for crimes that they had not committed.\nIn 2007, China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, won back the power to review death sentences, in an attempt to make use of the penalty more consistent and to root out egregious injustices. Mr. Xi’s government has also promised much greater transparency about judicial decisions and standards.\nSome foreign experts say that the number of executions in China appears to have dropped, even though the government does not issue statistics.\nAt the height a decade or so ago, China probably executed 10,000 or more prisoners a year, the Amnesty report said, citing a Chinese scholar quoted in a news report last year.\nBut the number executed annually is now probably in the “low thousands,” said\nSusan Trevaskes\n, a professor at Griffith University in Australia who studies China’s use of the death penalty.\nImage\nChief Justice Zhou Qiang at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March. In January, he railed against any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.\nCredit...\nAndy Wong\/Associated Press\n“All major death penalty scholars in China say that death penalty decision-making has improved greatly since 2007,” Professor Trevaskes said by email. “I believe that the government has significantly reduced use of the death penalty since the mid-2000s.”\nBut China still executes far more prisoners than any other country, and the government’s refusal to release full records about death sentences has undercut its claims to have reduced executions, said the report from Amnesty International, which opposes all uses of the death penalty. Amnesty argues that the persistent secrecy easily conceals abuses and that any trend toward fewer executions could be reversed, depending on the political winds.\n“There are no guarantees that the reforms adopted so far, even if they had led to a decrease in the number of executions, will prove effective in the long term or that they could not be reversed at some point in the future,” the report said.\nThe report found that an official website for Chinese court decisions,\nChina Judgments Online\n, published records of only 701 defendants whose death sentences were approved by the Supreme People’s Court from the start of 2011 to the end of 2016, although the actual number of executions every year probably “runs into the thousands.”\nCombing through Chinese news reports online, Amnesty found accounts of 931 people executed between 2014 and 2016, but only 85 of them also turned up in the court judgments database.\nThe gaps in the public records indicated that the Chinese government was not living up to its promises to be more transparent and consistent in how courts imposed death sentences, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International, who helped write the report.\n“The scale of the incompleteness makes it seem unlikely that it’s just an administrative oversight,” Mr. Nee said by telephone. “There probably is some sort of systematic concealment going on.”\nThe Amnesty report said that public reports of executions appeared to leave out many cases of death sentences for drug offenses and for terrorism-related crimes, especially in Xinjiang, the tense western region where the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority, have become increasingly estranged from the government.\nChinese courts have also announced death sentences against foreigners who have been convicted of smuggling banned drugs into China. Often these defendants are lowly drug couriers, and verdicts against them do not appear in the official court database, said Mr. Nee, the Amnesty researcher.\nCourt verdicts for Mr. Jia, the executed farmer, are among those that do appear in the open court records. One of his lawyers, Gan Yuanchun, said he had noticed a drop in death sentences in recent years and had successfully pleaded for reducing death sentences to prison terms in dozens of cases.\n“There’s been an improvement in transparency in enforcement of the death penalty, but total numbers are still not disclosed,” Mr. Gan said by telephone.\nBut Mr. Jia’s case showed Chinese courts still lacked accountability, he said. The courts had ignored the evidence that Mr. Jia had been wronged by the official, who did not give him due compensation for his demolished home, Mr. Gan said. (The Supreme People’s Court publicly defended its decision to approve the execution.)\n“Of course, that’s not an excuse to kill someone,” Mr. Gan said. “But in using the death penalty, you should consider the misdeeds of the victim.”\nAdam Wu contributed research from Beijing.\nA version of this article appears in print on\nApril 11, 2017\n, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty International Report Says\n.\nOrder Reprints\n|\nToday’s Paper\n|\nSubscribe\nRelated Content\nMore in Asia Pacific\nDaniel Berehulak\/The New York Times\nKevin Dietsch\/UPI, via Alamy\nJoe Raedle\/Getty Images\nAhmad Shah Habibi, via Reuters\nEditors’ Picks\nAram Herrera\/Airs Cloud Media for Sotheby’s International Realty\nSacha Strange\nTrending in The Times\nVincent Alban\/The New York Times\nSpencer Platt\/Getty Images\nVictor J. Blue for The New York Times\nBrett Carlsen\/Getty Images\nJon Elswick\/Associated Press\nDavid Guttenfelder\/The New York Times\nSara Krulwich\/The New York Times\nAmazon MGM Studios\nEric Lee for The New York Times\nKarsten Moran for The New York Times\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[Asia Pacific](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/world\/asia)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2017%252F04%252F10%252Fworld%252Fasia%252Fchina-execution-amnesty-international.html&asset=masthead)\n\nSunday, February 1, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\n[Asia Pacific](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/world\/asia)\\|China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty Says\n\nhttps:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html\n\n- Share full article\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-sponsor)\n# China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty Says\nBy [Chris Buckley](http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/chris-buckley)\n\n- April 10, 2017\n\n- Share full article\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/04\/11\/world\/11chinadeaths-1\/11chinadeaths-1-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nJia Jinglong, a Chinese villager who was executed for killing an official.Credit...Jia Jingyuan\n\nBEIJING — When Jia Jinglong, a villager in northern China, was [executed late last year for killing an official](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/16\/world\/asia\/china-executes-farmer.html) he blamed for the demolition of his home, the news media [boiled with debate](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/21\/world\/asia\/villagers-execution-in-china-ignites-uproar-over-inequality-of-justice.html) about the death sentence. Mr. Jia’s family and lawyers argued that the official had victimized him and that his life should have been spared.\n\n“The verdict against my brother was unfair,” Mr. Jia’s sister, Jia Jingyuan, said in an interview this week. “There’s a gap between the standards written in the laws and how those standards are enforced.”\n\nA [report released by Amnesty International](https:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/latest\/news\/2017\/04\/china-must-come-clean-about-capital-punishment\/) on Tuesday suggests that such complaints of injustice are far from isolated but often remain muffled by official secrecy. That secrecy has undermined the Chinese government’s vows to limit death sentences, distorting how common executions are in China, the report said.\n\n“This deliberate and elaborate secrecy system, which runs counter to China’s obligations under international law, conceals the number of people sentenced to death and executed every year, both of which Amnesty International estimates run into the thousands,” said the report, which is 44 pages long.\n\nThe Amnesty report is the latest addition to a debate among experts and advocates about how much to trust China’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes.\n\nChina’s president, Xi Jinping, has harshly stifled political protest and has overseen a widespread crackdown on human rights lawyers. In January, the head of China’s courts, [Zhou Qiang, railed against](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/18\/world\/asia\/china-chief-justice-courts-zhou-qiang.html?_r=0) any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.\n\nBut Mr. Xi has also promised to give ordinary citizens a fairer and more open legal system, and in recent years courts have exonerated prisoners who had been executed or had been given decades-long prison sentences for crimes that they had not committed.\n\nIn 2007, China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, won back the power to review death sentences, in an attempt to make use of the penalty more consistent and to root out egregious injustices. Mr. Xi’s government has also promised much greater transparency about judicial decisions and standards.\n\nSome foreign experts say that the number of executions in China appears to have dropped, even though the government does not issue statistics.\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/books\/review\/29TBR-FEBRUARY-BOOKS-SUB\/29TBR-FEBRUARY-BOOKS-SUB-thumbLarge.jpg)27 Books Coming in February](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/29\/books\/new-books-february.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/nyregion\/01diary-illos-1\/01diary-illos-1-thumbLarge.jpg)‘Spontaneously, We Both Start to Laugh, Giggle Even’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/nyregion\/metropolitan-diary.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/28\/business\/00Biz-Financial-Quiz-33\/00Biz-Financial-Quiz-33-thumbLarge.jpg)How Strong Is Your Financial Knowledge? Take Our Quiz.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/30\/business\/financial-knowledge-quiz.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\nAt the height a decade or so ago, China probably executed 10,000 or more prisoners a year, the Amnesty report said, citing a Chinese scholar quoted in a news report last year.\n\nBut the number executed annually is now probably in the “low thousands,” said [Susan Trevaskes](https:\/\/www.griffith.edu.au\/humanities-languages\/school-humanities-languages-social-science\/staff\/sue-trevaskes), a professor at Griffith University in Australia who studies China’s use of the death penalty.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/04\/11\/world\/11chinadeaths-2\/11chinadeaths-2-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nChief Justice Zhou Qiang at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March. In January, he railed against any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.Credit...Andy Wong\/Associated Press\n\n“All major death penalty scholars in China say that death penalty decision-making has improved greatly since 2007,” Professor Trevaskes said by email. “I believe that the government has significantly reduced use of the death penalty since the mid-2000s.”\n\nBut China still executes far more prisoners than any other country, and the government’s refusal to release full records about death sentences has undercut its claims to have reduced executions, said the report from Amnesty International, which opposes all uses of the death penalty. Amnesty argues that the persistent secrecy easily conceals abuses and that any trend toward fewer executions could be reversed, depending on the political winds.\n\n“There are no guarantees that the reforms adopted so far, even if they had led to a decrease in the number of executions, will prove effective in the long term or that they could not be reversed at some point in the future,” the report said.\n\nThe report found that an official website for Chinese court decisions, [China Judgments Online](http:\/\/www.court.gov.cn\/zgcpwsw\/), published records of only 701 defendants whose death sentences were approved by the Supreme People’s Court from the start of 2011 to the end of 2016, although the actual number of executions every year probably “runs into the thousands.”\n\nCombing through Chinese news reports online, Amnesty found accounts of 931 people executed between 2014 and 2016, but only 85 of them also turned up in the court judgments database.\n\nThe gaps in the public records indicated that the Chinese government was not living up to its promises to be more transparent and consistent in how courts imposed death sentences, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International, who helped write the report.\n\n“The scale of the incompleteness makes it seem unlikely that it’s just an administrative oversight,” Mr. Nee said by telephone. “There probably is some sort of systematic concealment going on.”\n\nThe Amnesty report said that public reports of executions appeared to leave out many cases of death sentences for drug offenses and for terrorism-related crimes, especially in Xinjiang, the tense western region where the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority, have become increasingly estranged from the government.\n\nChinese courts have also announced death sentences against foreigners who have been convicted of smuggling banned drugs into China. Often these defendants are lowly drug couriers, and verdicts against them do not appear in the official court database, said Mr. Nee, the Amnesty researcher.\n\nCourt verdicts for Mr. Jia, the executed farmer, are among those that do appear in the open court records. One of his lawyers, Gan Yuanchun, said he had noticed a drop in death sentences in recent years and had successfully pleaded for reducing death sentences to prison terms in dozens of cases.\n\n“There’s been an improvement in transparency in enforcement of the death penalty, but total numbers are still not disclosed,” Mr. Gan said by telephone.\n\nBut Mr. Jia’s case showed Chinese courts still lacked accountability, he said. The courts had ignored the evidence that Mr. Jia had been wronged by the official, who did not give him due compensation for his demolished home, Mr. Gan said. (The Supreme People’s Court publicly defended its decision to approve the execution.)\n\n“Of course, that’s not an excuse to kill someone,” Mr. Gan said. “But in using the death penalty, you should consider the misdeeds of the victim.”\n\nAdam Wu contributed research from Beijing.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2017, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty International Report Says. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\nSee more on: [Amnesty International](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/amnesty-international), [Communist Party of China](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/communist-party-of-china)\n\n- Share full article\n\n### Related Coverage\n[China’s Chief Justice Rejects an Independent Judiciary, and Reformers Wince Jan. 18, 2017 ![China’s Chief Justice Rejects an Independent Judiciary, and Reformers Wince](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/01\/19\/world\/19CHINA-1\/19CHINA-1-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/18\/world\/asia\/china-chief-justice-courts-zhou-qiang.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer)\n\n[China Grants Courts Greater Autonomy on Limited Matters Jan. 2, 2016 ![China Grants Courts Greater Autonomy on Limited Matters](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2016\/01\/03\/world\/03chinalaw01\/03chinalaw01-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/01\/03\/world\/asia\/china-grants-courts-greater-autonomy-on-limited-matters.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer)\n\n[Villager’s Execution in China Ignites Uproar Over Inequality of Justice Nov. 20, 2016 ![Villager’s Execution in China Ignites Uproar Over Inequality of Justice](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2016\/11\/21\/world\/21CHINA-4\/21CHINA-4-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/21\/world\/asia\/villagers-execution-in-china-ignites-uproar-over-inequality-of-justice.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer)\n\n## Related Content\n### [More in Asia Pacific](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/world\/asia)\n- [Years After Coup, Myanmar’s Government in Exile Teeters on Irrelevance](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/world\/asia\/myanmar-coup-anniversary-government.html)\n  \n  ![Lining up to vote in the general election in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, in late December.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/multimedia\/00int-myanmar-nug-01-bjtp\/00int-myanmar-nug-01-bjtp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Daniel Berehulak\/The New York Times\n- [T. Kumar, Rights Activist Who Was Shaped by Time in Prison, Dies at 76](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/world\/asia\/t-kumar-dead.html)\n  \n  ![T. Kumar in 2010. As a young man, he spent more than five years in various stints in the prisons of his native Sri Lanka because he was an outspoken student leader for the persecuted, predominately Hindu Tamil minority.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30Kumar--flcb\/30Kumar--flcb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Kevin Dietsch\/UPI, via Alamy\n- [Indonesia Lifts Ban on Grok After New Assurances From X Corp](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/world\/asia\/indonesia-lift-grok-ban.html)\n  \n  ![In this photo illustration, the Grok Imagine web page, which produces A.I.-generated images and video, is displayed on a computer screen.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/multimedia\/01xp-grok-01-hlqb\/01xp-grok-01-hlqb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Joe Raedle\/Getty Images\n- [Missing in Kabul: The U.S. Citizen Witnesses Say Was Held by the Taliban](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/28\/world\/asia\/us-citizen-missing-afghanistan-taliban.html)\n  \n  ![Mahmood Shah Habibi, right, posed for a photo with his brother, Ahmad Habibi, in Canada in 2014. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/28\/multimedia\/28int-afghanistan-detainee-gfhc\/28int-afghanistan-detainee-gfhc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Ahmad Shah Habibi, via Reuters\n\n### Editors’ Picks\n- [Gene Hackman’s Santa Fe Compound Is for Sale a Year After His Death](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/30\/realestate\/gene-hackman-armani-house-sales.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30re-ticket-hackman-01-blth\/30re-ticket-hackman-01-blth-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Aram Herrera\/Airs Cloud Media for Sotheby’s International Realty\n- [How to Make Friends as an Adult](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/article\/how-to-make-friends-as-an-adult.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/20\/t-magazine\/20tmag-friends-slide-FZ4C-copy\/20tmag-friends-slide-FZ4C-copy-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Sacha Strange\n\n### Trending in The Times\n- [Bovino Is Said to Have Mocked Prosecutor’s Jewish Faith on Call With Lawyers](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/us\/bovino-jewish-prosecutor-minnesota.html)\n  \n  ![Gregory Bovino at a news conference in Minneapolis earlier this month.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/multimedia\/29nat-minnesota-bovino-1-tqbk\/29nat-minnesota-bovino-1-tqbk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Vincent Alban\/The New York Times\n- [Opinion: Slovenian Sphinx Flick Nixed\\!](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/opinion\/melania-trump-movie.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/31\/multimedia\/31dowd-zbjt\/31dowd-zbjt-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Spencer Platt\/Getty Images\n- [ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/30\/us\/politics\/ice-expands-power-agents-warrants.html)\n  \n  ![Federal agents attempted to raid a home in Minneapolis earlier this week.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30dc-warrants-jkpl\/30dc-warrants-jkpl-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Victor J. Blue for The New York Times\n- [Usha Vance’s Pregnancy Becomes a Talking Point](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/style\/usha-vance-pregnancy.html)\n  \n  ![Usha Vance, the eldest of two daughters of Indian immigrants, initially thought that she was more or less done growing her family after she had her third child.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/ST-USHA-PREGNANT-01-fmgq\/ST-USHA-PREGNANT-01-fmgq-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Brett Carlsen\/Getty Images\n- [They Said They Weren’t Close to Epstein. New Documents Show Otherwise.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/us\/epstein-powerful-men.html)\n  \n  ![The Justice Department released millions of pages of new documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/31\/multimedia\/31epstein-relationships-gwvp\/31epstein-relationships-gwvp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Jon Elswick\/Associated Press\n- [Federal Judge Denies Request to Temporarily Block ICE Surge in Minnesota](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/us\/judge-minnesota-ice-ruling.html)\n  \n  ![The lawsuit sought to halt the aggressive tactics of immigration agents in Minneapolis-St.Paul.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/28\/multimedia\/00nat-minnesota-ruling-ctpk\/00nat-minnesota-ruling-ctpk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  David Guttenfelder\/The New York Times\n- [The Devastating Monologue That Is Leaving Audiences Spellbound](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/theater\/oedipus-lesley-manville-broadway.html)\n  \n  ![Lesley Manville portrays Jocasta in Robert Icke’s retelling of the Greek tragedy.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/27\/multimedia\/27cul-lesley-manville-gqbt\/27cul-lesley-manville-gqbt-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Sara Krulwich\/The New York Times\n- [6 Takeaways from ‘Melania,’ the Documentary About the First Lady](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/30\/movies\/melania-documentary-movie-takeaways-trump.html)\n  \n  ![The first lady in a scene from the new documentary about her.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30cul-melania-takeaways-gbvz\/30cul-melania-takeaways-gbvz-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Amazon MGM Studios\n- [Powerful Men Who Turn Up in the New Batch of Epstein Files](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/us\/epstein-trump-gates-musk-tisch-andrew.html)\n  \n  ![President Trump was mentioned in more than a dozen tips received by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, but the released files contained no corroborating evidence.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30epstein-files-live-Trump-salacious-topart-lvhz\/30epstein-files-live-Trump-salacious-topart-lvhz-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Eric Lee for The New York Times\n- [Sell America Is the New Trade on Wall Street](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/business\/sell-america-dollar-financial-markets.html)\n  \n  ![The U.S. stock market has plateaued in dollar terms since the start of the year and started to slide when measured in other 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[Canada](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/ca\/)\n- [International](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/international\/)\n- [Help](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us)\n- [Subscriptions](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscription?campaignId=37WXW)","attrs_readable_markdown":"Advertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/asia\/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-top)\n\n- April 10, 2017\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/04\/11\/world\/11chinadeaths-1\/11chinadeaths-1-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nJia Jinglong, a Chinese villager who was executed for killing an official.Credit...Jia Jingyuan\n\nBEIJING — When Jia Jinglong, a villager in northern China, was [executed late last year for killing an official](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/16\/world\/asia\/china-executes-farmer.html) he blamed for the demolition of his home, the news media [boiled with debate](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/21\/world\/asia\/villagers-execution-in-china-ignites-uproar-over-inequality-of-justice.html) about the death sentence. Mr. Jia’s family and lawyers argued that the official had victimized him and that his life should have been spared.\n\n“The verdict against my brother was unfair,” Mr. Jia’s sister, Jia Jingyuan, said in an interview this week. “There’s a gap between the standards written in the laws and how those standards are enforced.”\n\nA [report released by Amnesty International](https:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/latest\/news\/2017\/04\/china-must-come-clean-about-capital-punishment\/) on Tuesday suggests that such complaints of injustice are far from isolated but often remain muffled by official secrecy. That secrecy has undermined the Chinese government’s vows to limit death sentences, distorting how common executions are in China, the report said.\n\n“This deliberate and elaborate secrecy system, which runs counter to China’s obligations under international law, conceals the number of people sentenced to death and executed every year, both of which Amnesty International estimates run into the thousands,” said the report, which is 44 pages long.\n\nThe Amnesty report is the latest addition to a debate among experts and advocates about how much to trust China’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes.\n\nChina’s president, Xi Jinping, has harshly stifled political protest and has overseen a widespread crackdown on human rights lawyers. In January, the head of China’s courts, [Zhou Qiang, railed against](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/18\/world\/asia\/china-chief-justice-courts-zhou-qiang.html?_r=0) any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.\n\nBut Mr. Xi has also promised to give ordinary citizens a fairer and more open legal system, and in recent years courts have exonerated prisoners who had been executed or had been given decades-long prison sentences for crimes that they had not committed.\n\nIn 2007, China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, won back the power to review death sentences, in an attempt to make use of the penalty more consistent and to root out egregious injustices. Mr. Xi’s government has also promised much greater transparency about judicial decisions and standards.\n\nSome foreign experts say that the number of executions in China appears to have dropped, even though the government does not issue statistics.\n\nAt the height a decade or so ago, China probably executed 10,000 or more prisoners a year, the Amnesty report said, citing a Chinese scholar quoted in a news report last year.\n\nBut the number executed annually is now probably in the “low thousands,” said [Susan Trevaskes](https:\/\/www.griffith.edu.au\/humanities-languages\/school-humanities-languages-social-science\/staff\/sue-trevaskes), a professor at Griffith University in Australia who studies China’s use of the death penalty.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2017\/04\/11\/world\/11chinadeaths-2\/11chinadeaths-2-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nChief Justice Zhou Qiang at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March. In January, he railed against any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.Credit...Andy Wong\/Associated Press\n\n“All major death penalty scholars in China say that death penalty decision-making has improved greatly since 2007,” Professor Trevaskes said by email. “I believe that the government has significantly reduced use of the death penalty since the mid-2000s.”\n\nBut China still executes far more prisoners than any other country, and the government’s refusal to release full records about death sentences has undercut its claims to have reduced executions, said the report from Amnesty International, which opposes all uses of the death penalty. Amnesty argues that the persistent secrecy easily conceals abuses and that any trend toward fewer executions could be reversed, depending on the political winds.\n\n“There are no guarantees that the reforms adopted so far, even if they had led to a decrease in the number of executions, will prove effective in the long term or that they could not be reversed at some point in the future,” the report said.\n\nThe report found that an official website for Chinese court decisions, [China Judgments Online](http:\/\/www.court.gov.cn\/zgcpwsw\/), published records of only 701 defendants whose death sentences were approved by the Supreme People’s Court from the start of 2011 to the end of 2016, although the actual number of executions every year probably “runs into the thousands.”\n\nCombing through Chinese news reports online, Amnesty found accounts of 931 people executed between 2014 and 2016, but only 85 of them also turned up in the court judgments database.\n\nThe gaps in the public records indicated that the Chinese government was not living up to its promises to be more transparent and consistent in how courts imposed death sentences, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International, who helped write the report.\n\n“The scale of the incompleteness makes it seem unlikely that it’s just an administrative oversight,” Mr. Nee said by telephone. “There probably is some sort of systematic concealment going on.”\n\nThe Amnesty report said that public reports of executions appeared to leave out many cases of death sentences for drug offenses and for terrorism-related crimes, especially in Xinjiang, the tense western region where the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority, have become increasingly estranged from the government.\n\nChinese courts have also announced death sentences against foreigners who have been convicted of smuggling banned drugs into China. Often these defendants are lowly drug couriers, and verdicts against them do not appear in the official court database, said Mr. Nee, the Amnesty researcher.\n\nCourt verdicts for Mr. Jia, the executed farmer, are among those that do appear in the open court records. One of his lawyers, Gan Yuanchun, said he had noticed a drop in death sentences in recent years and had successfully pleaded for reducing death sentences to prison terms in dozens of cases.\n\n“There’s been an improvement in transparency in enforcement of the death penalty, but total numbers are still not disclosed,” Mr. Gan said by telephone.\n\nBut Mr. Jia’s case showed Chinese courts still lacked accountability, he said. The courts had ignored the evidence that Mr. Jia had been wronged by the official, who did not give him due compensation for his demolished home, Mr. Gan said. (The Supreme People’s Court publicly defended its decision to approve the execution.)\n\n“Of course, that’s not an excuse to kill someone,” Mr. Gan said. “But in using the death penalty, you should consider the misdeeds of the victim.”\n\nAdam Wu contributed research from Beijing.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2017, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty International Report Says. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\n## Related Content\n[More in Asia Pacific](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/world\/asia)\n\n- ![Lining up to vote in the general election in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, in late December.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/multimedia\/00int-myanmar-nug-01-bjtp\/00int-myanmar-nug-01-bjtp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Daniel Berehulak\/The New York Times\n- ![T. Kumar in 2010. As a young man, he spent more than five years in various stints in the prisons of his native Sri Lanka because he was an outspoken student leader for the persecuted, predominately Hindu Tamil minority.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30Kumar--flcb\/30Kumar--flcb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Kevin Dietsch\/UPI, via Alamy\n- ![In this photo illustration, the Grok Imagine web page, which produces A.I.-generated images and video, is displayed on a computer screen.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/multimedia\/01xp-grok-01-hlqb\/01xp-grok-01-hlqb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Joe Raedle\/Getty Images\n- ![Mahmood Shah Habibi, right, posed for a photo with his brother, Ahmad Habibi, in Canada in 2014. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/28\/multimedia\/28int-afghanistan-detainee-gfhc\/28int-afghanistan-detainee-gfhc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Ahmad Shah Habibi, via Reuters\n\nEditors’ Picks\n\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30re-ticket-hackman-01-blth\/30re-ticket-hackman-01-blth-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Aram Herrera\/Airs Cloud Media for Sotheby’s International Realty\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/20\/t-magazine\/20tmag-friends-slide-FZ4C-copy\/20tmag-friends-slide-FZ4C-copy-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Sacha Strange\n\nTrending in The Times\n\n- ![Gregory Bovino at a news conference in Minneapolis earlier this month.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/multimedia\/29nat-minnesota-bovino-1-tqbk\/29nat-minnesota-bovino-1-tqbk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Vincent Alban\/The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/31\/multimedia\/31dowd-zbjt\/31dowd-zbjt-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Spencer Platt\/Getty Images\n- ![Federal agents attempted to raid a home in Minneapolis earlier this week.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/30dc-warrants-jkpl\/30dc-warrants-jkpl-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Victor J. 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URL	https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html
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Meta Title	China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty Says - The New York Times
Meta Description	An Amnesty International report adds to the debate about how much to trust Beijing’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes.
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Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT April 10, 2017 Jia Jinglong, a Chinese villager who was executed for killing an official. Credit... Jia Jingyuan BEIJING — When Jia Jinglong, a villager in northern China, was executed late last year for killing an official he blamed for the demolition of his home, the news media boiled with debate about the death sentence. Mr. Jia’s family and lawyers argued that the official had victimized him and that his life should have been spared. “The verdict against my brother was unfair,” Mr. Jia’s sister, Jia Jingyuan, said in an interview this week. “There’s a gap between the standards written in the laws and how those standards are enforced.” A report released by Amnesty International on Tuesday suggests that such complaints of injustice are far from isolated but often remain muffled by official secrecy. That secrecy has undermined the Chinese government’s vows to limit death sentences, distorting how common executions are in China, the report said. “This deliberate and elaborate secrecy system, which runs counter to China’s obligations under international law, conceals the number of people sentenced to death and executed every year, both of which Amnesty International estimates run into the thousands,” said the report, which is 44 pages long. The Amnesty report is the latest addition to a debate among experts and advocates about how much to trust China’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has harshly stifled political protest and has overseen a widespread crackdown on human rights lawyers. In January, the head of China’s courts, Zhou Qiang, railed against any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control. But Mr. Xi has also promised to give ordinary citizens a fairer and more open legal system, and in recent years courts have exonerated prisoners who had been executed or had been given decades-long prison sentences for crimes that they had not committed. In 2007, China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, won back the power to review death sentences, in an attempt to make use of the penalty more consistent and to root out egregious injustices. Mr. Xi’s government has also promised much greater transparency about judicial decisions and standards. Some foreign experts say that the number of executions in China appears to have dropped, even though the government does not issue statistics. At the height a decade or so ago, China probably executed 10,000 or more prisoners a year, the Amnesty report said, citing a Chinese scholar quoted in a news report last year. But the number executed annually is now probably in the “low thousands,” said Susan Trevaskes , a professor at Griffith University in Australia who studies China’s use of the death penalty. Image Chief Justice Zhou Qiang at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March. In January, he railed against any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control. Credit... Andy Wong/Associated Press “All major death penalty scholars in China say that death penalty decision-making has improved greatly since 2007,” Professor Trevaskes said by email. “I believe that the government has significantly reduced use of the death penalty since the mid-2000s.” But China still executes far more prisoners than any other country, and the government’s refusal to release full records about death sentences has undercut its claims to have reduced executions, said the report from Amnesty International, which opposes all uses of the death penalty. Amnesty argues that the persistent secrecy easily conceals abuses and that any trend toward fewer executions could be reversed, depending on the political winds. “There are no guarantees that the reforms adopted so far, even if they had led to a decrease in the number of executions, will prove effective in the long term or that they could not be reversed at some point in the future,” the report said. The report found that an official website for Chinese court decisions, China Judgments Online , published records of only 701 defendants whose death sentences were approved by the Supreme People’s Court from the start of 2011 to the end of 2016, although the actual number of executions every year probably “runs into the thousands.” Combing through Chinese news reports online, Amnesty found accounts of 931 people executed between 2014 and 2016, but only 85 of them also turned up in the court judgments database. The gaps in the public records indicated that the Chinese government was not living up to its promises to be more transparent and consistent in how courts imposed death sentences, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International, who helped write the report. “The scale of the incompleteness makes it seem unlikely that it’s just an administrative oversight,” Mr. Nee said by telephone. “There probably is some sort of systematic concealment going on.” The Amnesty report said that public reports of executions appeared to leave out many cases of death sentences for drug offenses and for terrorism-related crimes, especially in Xinjiang, the tense western region where the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority, have become increasingly estranged from the government. Chinese courts have also announced death sentences against foreigners who have been convicted of smuggling banned drugs into China. Often these defendants are lowly drug couriers, and verdicts against them do not appear in the official court database, said Mr. Nee, the Amnesty researcher. Court verdicts for Mr. Jia, the executed farmer, are among those that do appear in the open court records. One of his lawyers, Gan Yuanchun, said he had noticed a drop in death sentences in recent years and had successfully pleaded for reducing death sentences to prison terms in dozens of cases. “There’s been an improvement in transparency in enforcement of the death penalty, but total numbers are still not disclosed,” Mr. Gan said by telephone. But Mr. Jia’s case showed Chinese courts still lacked accountability, he said. The courts had ignored the evidence that Mr. Jia had been wronged by the official, who did not give him due compensation for his demolished home, Mr. Gan said. (The Supreme People’s Court publicly defended its decision to approve the execution.) “Of course, that’s not an excuse to kill someone,” Mr. Gan said. “But in using the death penalty, you should consider the misdeeds of the victim.” Adam Wu contributed research from Beijing. A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2017 , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty International Report Says . Order Reprints \| Today’s Paper \| Subscribe Related Content More in Asia Pacific Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times Kevin Dietsch/UPI, via Alamy Joe Raedle/Getty Images Ahmad Shah Habibi, via Reuters Editors’ Picks Aram Herrera/Airs Cloud Media for Sotheby’s International Realty Sacha Strange Trending in The Times Vincent Alban/The New York Times Spencer Platt/Getty Images Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Brett Carlsen/Getty Images Jon Elswick/Associated Press David Guttenfelder/The New York Times Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Amazon MGM Studios Eric Lee for The New York Times Karsten Moran for The New York Times Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [Asia Pacific](https://www.nytimes.com/section/world/asia) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2017%252F04%252F10%252Fworld%252Fasia%252Fchina-execution-amnesty-international.html&asset=masthead) Sunday, February 1, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) [Asia Pacific](https://www.nytimes.com/section/world/asia)\\|China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty Says https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html - Share full article Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-sponsor) # China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty Says By [Chris Buckley](http://www.nytimes.com/by/chris-buckley) - April 10, 2017 - Share full article ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/11/world/11chinadeaths-1/11chinadeaths-1-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Jia Jinglong, a Chinese villager who was executed for killing an official.Credit...Jia Jingyuan BEIJING — When Jia Jinglong, a villager in northern China, was [executed late last year for killing an official](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/world/asia/china-executes-farmer.html) he blamed for the demolition of his home, the news media [boiled with debate](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/world/asia/villagers-execution-in-china-ignites-uproar-over-inequality-of-justice.html) about the death sentence. Mr. Jia’s family and lawyers argued that the official had victimized him and that his life should have been spared. “The verdict against my brother was unfair,” Mr. Jia’s sister, Jia Jingyuan, said in an interview this week. “There’s a gap between the standards written in the laws and how those standards are enforced.” A [report released by Amnesty International](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/china-must-come-clean-about-capital-punishment/) on Tuesday suggests that such complaints of injustice are far from isolated but often remain muffled by official secrecy. That secrecy has undermined the Chinese government’s vows to limit death sentences, distorting how common executions are in China, the report said. “This deliberate and elaborate secrecy system, which runs counter to China’s obligations under international law, conceals the number of people sentenced to death and executed every year, both of which Amnesty International estimates run into the thousands,” said the report, which is 44 pages long. The Amnesty report is the latest addition to a debate among experts and advocates about how much to trust China’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has harshly stifled political protest and has overseen a widespread crackdown on human rights lawyers. In January, the head of China’s courts, [Zhou Qiang, railed against](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/asia/china-chief-justice-courts-zhou-qiang.html?_r=0) any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control. But Mr. Xi has also promised to give ordinary citizens a fairer and more open legal system, and in recent years courts have exonerated prisoners who had been executed or had been given decades-long prison sentences for crimes that they had not committed. In 2007, China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, won back the power to review death sentences, in an attempt to make use of the penalty more consistent and to root out egregious injustices. Mr. Xi’s government has also promised much greater transparency about judicial decisions and standards. Some foreign experts say that the number of executions in China appears to have dropped, even though the government does not issue statistics. ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/29/books/review/29TBR-FEBRUARY-BOOKS-SUB/29TBR-FEBRUARY-BOOKS-SUB-thumbLarge.jpg)27 Books Coming in February](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/books/new-books-february.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/nyregion/01diary-illos-1/01diary-illos-1-thumbLarge.jpg)‘Spontaneously, We Both Start to Laugh, Giggle Even’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/28/business/00Biz-Financial-Quiz-33/00Biz-Financial-Quiz-33-thumbLarge.jpg)How Strong Is Your Financial Knowledge? Take Our Quiz.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/business/financial-knowledge-quiz.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-pp_edpick) At the height a decade or so ago, China probably executed 10,000 or more prisoners a year, the Amnesty report said, citing a Chinese scholar quoted in a news report last year. But the number executed annually is now probably in the “low thousands,” said [Susan Trevaskes](https://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-humanities-languages-social-science/staff/sue-trevaskes), a professor at Griffith University in Australia who studies China’s use of the death penalty. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/11/world/11chinadeaths-2/11chinadeaths-2-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Chief Justice Zhou Qiang at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March. In January, he railed against any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.Credit...Andy Wong/Associated Press “All major death penalty scholars in China say that death penalty decision-making has improved greatly since 2007,” Professor Trevaskes said by email. “I believe that the government has significantly reduced use of the death penalty since the mid-2000s.” But China still executes far more prisoners than any other country, and the government’s refusal to release full records about death sentences has undercut its claims to have reduced executions, said the report from Amnesty International, which opposes all uses of the death penalty. Amnesty argues that the persistent secrecy easily conceals abuses and that any trend toward fewer executions could be reversed, depending on the political winds. “There are no guarantees that the reforms adopted so far, even if they had led to a decrease in the number of executions, will prove effective in the long term or that they could not be reversed at some point in the future,” the report said. The report found that an official website for Chinese court decisions, [China Judgments Online](http://www.court.gov.cn/zgcpwsw/), published records of only 701 defendants whose death sentences were approved by the Supreme People’s Court from the start of 2011 to the end of 2016, although the actual number of executions every year probably “runs into the thousands.” Combing through Chinese news reports online, Amnesty found accounts of 931 people executed between 2014 and 2016, but only 85 of them also turned up in the court judgments database. The gaps in the public records indicated that the Chinese government was not living up to its promises to be more transparent and consistent in how courts imposed death sentences, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International, who helped write the report. “The scale of the incompleteness makes it seem unlikely that it’s just an administrative oversight,” Mr. Nee said by telephone. “There probably is some sort of systematic concealment going on.” The Amnesty report said that public reports of executions appeared to leave out many cases of death sentences for drug offenses and for terrorism-related crimes, especially in Xinjiang, the tense western region where the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority, have become increasingly estranged from the government. Chinese courts have also announced death sentences against foreigners who have been convicted of smuggling banned drugs into China. Often these defendants are lowly drug couriers, and verdicts against them do not appear in the official court database, said Mr. Nee, the Amnesty researcher. Court verdicts for Mr. Jia, the executed farmer, are among those that do appear in the open court records. One of his lawyers, Gan Yuanchun, said he had noticed a drop in death sentences in recent years and had successfully pleaded for reducing death sentences to prison terms in dozens of cases. “There’s been an improvement in transparency in enforcement of the death penalty, but total numbers are still not disclosed,” Mr. Gan said by telephone. But Mr. Jia’s case showed Chinese courts still lacked accountability, he said. The courts had ignored the evidence that Mr. Jia had been wronged by the official, who did not give him due compensation for his demolished home, Mr. Gan said. (The Supreme People’s Court publicly defended its decision to approve the execution.) “Of course, that’s not an excuse to kill someone,” Mr. Gan said. “But in using the death penalty, you should consider the misdeeds of the victim.” Adam Wu contributed research from Beijing. A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2017, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty International Report Says. [Order Reprints](https://nytimes.wrightsmedia.com/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY) See more on: [Amnesty International](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/amnesty-international), [Communist Party of China](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/communist-party-of-china) - Share full article ### Related Coverage [China’s Chief Justice Rejects an Independent Judiciary, and Reformers Wince Jan. 18, 2017 ![China’s Chief Justice Rejects an Independent Judiciary, and Reformers Wince](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/01/19/world/19CHINA-1/19CHINA-1-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/asia/china-chief-justice-courts-zhou-qiang.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer) [China Grants Courts Greater Autonomy on Limited Matters Jan. 2, 2016 ![China Grants Courts Greater Autonomy on Limited Matters](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/01/03/world/03chinalaw01/03chinalaw01-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/world/asia/china-grants-courts-greater-autonomy-on-limited-matters.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer) [Villager’s Execution in China Ignites Uproar Over Inequality of Justice Nov. 20, 2016 ![Villager’s Execution in China Ignites Uproar Over Inequality of Justice](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/11/21/world/21CHINA-4/21CHINA-4-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/world/asia/villagers-execution-in-china-ignites-uproar-over-inequality-of-justice.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer) ## Related Content ### [More in Asia Pacific](https://www.nytimes.com/section/world/asia) - [Years After Coup, Myanmar’s Government in Exile Teeters on Irrelevance](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/world/asia/myanmar-coup-anniversary-government.html) ![Lining up to vote in the general election in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, in late December.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/29/multimedia/00int-myanmar-nug-01-bjtp/00int-myanmar-nug-01-bjtp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times - [T. 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Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/china-execution-amnesty-international.html#after-top) - April 10, 2017 ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/11/world/11chinadeaths-1/11chinadeaths-1-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Jia Jinglong, a Chinese villager who was executed for killing an official.Credit...Jia Jingyuan BEIJING — When Jia Jinglong, a villager in northern China, was [executed late last year for killing an official](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/world/asia/china-executes-farmer.html) he blamed for the demolition of his home, the news media [boiled with debate](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/world/asia/villagers-execution-in-china-ignites-uproar-over-inequality-of-justice.html) about the death sentence. Mr. Jia’s family and lawyers argued that the official had victimized him and that his life should have been spared. “The verdict against my brother was unfair,” Mr. Jia’s sister, Jia Jingyuan, said in an interview this week. “There’s a gap between the standards written in the laws and how those standards are enforced.” A [report released by Amnesty International](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/china-must-come-clean-about-capital-punishment/) on Tuesday suggests that such complaints of injustice are far from isolated but often remain muffled by official secrecy. That secrecy has undermined the Chinese government’s vows to limit death sentences, distorting how common executions are in China, the report said. “This deliberate and elaborate secrecy system, which runs counter to China’s obligations under international law, conceals the number of people sentenced to death and executed every year, both of which Amnesty International estimates run into the thousands,” said the report, which is 44 pages long. The Amnesty report is the latest addition to a debate among experts and advocates about how much to trust China’s claims that it has sharply cut the number of prisoners it executes. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has harshly stifled political protest and has overseen a widespread crackdown on human rights lawyers. In January, the head of China’s courts, [Zhou Qiang, railed against](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/asia/china-chief-justice-courts-zhou-qiang.html?_r=0) any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control. But Mr. Xi has also promised to give ordinary citizens a fairer and more open legal system, and in recent years courts have exonerated prisoners who had been executed or had been given decades-long prison sentences for crimes that they had not committed. In 2007, China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, won back the power to review death sentences, in an attempt to make use of the penalty more consistent and to root out egregious injustices. Mr. Xi’s government has also promised much greater transparency about judicial decisions and standards. Some foreign experts say that the number of executions in China appears to have dropped, even though the government does not issue statistics. At the height a decade or so ago, China probably executed 10,000 or more prisoners a year, the Amnesty report said, citing a Chinese scholar quoted in a news report last year. But the number executed annually is now probably in the “low thousands,” said [Susan Trevaskes](https://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-humanities-languages-social-science/staff/sue-trevaskes), a professor at Griffith University in Australia who studies China’s use of the death penalty. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/11/world/11chinadeaths-2/11chinadeaths-2-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Chief Justice Zhou Qiang at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March. In January, he railed against any notion that judges should be independent of Communist Party control.Credit...Andy Wong/Associated Press “All major death penalty scholars in China say that death penalty decision-making has improved greatly since 2007,” Professor Trevaskes said by email. “I believe that the government has significantly reduced use of the death penalty since the mid-2000s.” But China still executes far more prisoners than any other country, and the government’s refusal to release full records about death sentences has undercut its claims to have reduced executions, said the report from Amnesty International, which opposes all uses of the death penalty. Amnesty argues that the persistent secrecy easily conceals abuses and that any trend toward fewer executions could be reversed, depending on the political winds. “There are no guarantees that the reforms adopted so far, even if they had led to a decrease in the number of executions, will prove effective in the long term or that they could not be reversed at some point in the future,” the report said. The report found that an official website for Chinese court decisions, [China Judgments Online](http://www.court.gov.cn/zgcpwsw/), published records of only 701 defendants whose death sentences were approved by the Supreme People’s Court from the start of 2011 to the end of 2016, although the actual number of executions every year probably “runs into the thousands.” Combing through Chinese news reports online, Amnesty found accounts of 931 people executed between 2014 and 2016, but only 85 of them also turned up in the court judgments database. The gaps in the public records indicated that the Chinese government was not living up to its promises to be more transparent and consistent in how courts imposed death sentences, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International, who helped write the report. “The scale of the incompleteness makes it seem unlikely that it’s just an administrative oversight,” Mr. Nee said by telephone. “There probably is some sort of systematic concealment going on.” The Amnesty report said that public reports of executions appeared to leave out many cases of death sentences for drug offenses and for terrorism-related crimes, especially in Xinjiang, the tense western region where the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority, have become increasingly estranged from the government. Chinese courts have also announced death sentences against foreigners who have been convicted of smuggling banned drugs into China. Often these defendants are lowly drug couriers, and verdicts against them do not appear in the official court database, said Mr. Nee, the Amnesty researcher. Court verdicts for Mr. Jia, the executed farmer, are among those that do appear in the open court records. One of his lawyers, Gan Yuanchun, said he had noticed a drop in death sentences in recent years and had successfully pleaded for reducing death sentences to prison terms in dozens of cases. “There’s been an improvement in transparency in enforcement of the death penalty, but total numbers are still not disclosed,” Mr. Gan said by telephone. But Mr. Jia’s case showed Chinese courts still lacked accountability, he said. The courts had ignored the evidence that Mr. Jia had been wronged by the official, who did not give him due compensation for his demolished home, Mr. Gan said. (The Supreme People’s Court publicly defended its decision to approve the execution.) “Of course, that’s not an excuse to kill someone,” Mr. Gan said. “But in using the death penalty, you should consider the misdeeds of the victim.” Adam Wu contributed research from Beijing. A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2017, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Death Penalty Is Still Veiled in Secrecy, Amnesty International Report Says. 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