Death Penalty

According to the estimates of human rights groups, China executes more prisoners each year than all other nations in the world combined. However, because the figures on executions are closely guarded State secrets, there is no way for anyone outside of the government to know the exact scale of execution in China. With 68 capital offenses, including financial and other non-violent crimes, the lives of countless scores of convicts rest in the hands of Chinese judges. Moreover, owing to the general lack of due process and judicial independence in China, as well as widespread official corruption, there is little in the way of legal protections to ensure that the innocent are not executed.

In the thirty years following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there were no clear laws governing executions, which were carried out on a massive scale. In the earliest years, millions of Kuomintang soldiers, landlords, and members of the bourgeois class, seen as threats to the new regime, were killed. In 1950 alone, 2 million people were executed as part of the “Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries” campaign.

Throughout the Mao period, the number of executions always peaked during political campaigns. In 1971, 100,000 people were executed during a single campaign, one of many such campaigns during the Cultural Revolution period. During these political campaigns, particularly in the 1950s, regional governments were often tasked with meeting execution quotas, premised on Mao’s belief that a certain percentage of the population was always beyond reform. While the number of executions fell after Mao’s death, the pattern of political campaigns and executions continued throughout the Reform period. In 1983, for example, Deng Xiaoping launched the first of several “Strike Hard” Campaigns in order to reduce skyrocketing crime rates (though many suspect there was a political component to these campaigns as well), resulting in more than 24,000 executions in a single year.

Until the mid-1990s, executions were almost always carried out in public so as to instill fear in the population, or as the Chinese saying goes, “kill the chicken to scare the monkey.” Prior to these public executions, prisoners were paraded through stadiums or parks with signs stating their names and crimes hung from their necks. Each prisoner’s name was crossed out with a large, red X. Prisoners were then taken to another outdoor location, also typically in public view, and shot. Although isolated reports of public executions still emerge, China has for the most part stopped the practice of public executions in recent years. The government is instead encouraging the switch to lethal injection, which better facilitates the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners for medical transplants. Although regulations now stipulate that death sentences must be approved by the Supreme People’s Court—a move welcomed by many human rights advocates—without releasing any figures on capital punishment, it is impossible to determine what, if any, impact that reform has had. More importantly, the Chinese legal system still holds no guarantee of due process, and the Chinese government has no plans to discontinue the use of the death penalty.

Organ Harvesting

Another human rights issue closely relating to the death penalty in China is the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners. China ranks second only to the US in the number of organ transplants performed each year. In 2006, China’s Vice Minister of Health, Huang Jiefu, publicly acknowledged that the majority of organs transplanted in China came from executed prisoners. Although Chinese officials maintain that organs are not removed from executed prisoners without their prior consent or the consent of their families, there is consensus among ethicists and human rights advocates that incarcerated persons are not in a position to give consent, as they are particularly vulnerable to coercion. Indeed, given the pervasive corruption in China’s legal system, combined with the large profits prisons stand to gain from the sale of organs, any proof of consent is dubious at best. Nevertheless, organ harvesting has become commonplace in Chinese prisons, providing the State with yet another means of exploiting prisoners, even after their deaths.

Recently, the Chinese government has encouraged the switch to lethal injection as the preferred means of execution. While the government claims it adopted this method for humanitarian reasons, many human rights groups, including LRF, believe that lethal injection, which leaves the body intact and requires the presence of doctors, is now being used because it facilitates the extraction of organs from executed prisoners. LRF and other organizations have documented cases in certain provinces where mobile lethal injection vans have been deployed to travel from prison to prison in order to perform lethal injections on prisoners and extract their organs.

Historically, China has not had a culture of organ donation. In accordance with tradition, most Chinese people prefer to be buried with their bodies intact. Consequently, voluntary organ donation remains very uncommon in China, which further suggests that any proof of consent from executed prisoners is likely fabricated. Additionally, the organ trade is extremely lucrative for Chinese hospitals; many organs from executed prisoners find their way to privileged cadres and wealthy foreigners who are willing to pay exorbitant fees rather than ordinary Chinese patients in need of a transplant. Thus, widespread condemnation from the US Congress, the European Union, the Australian government, human rights organizations and medical practitioners throughout the world notwithstanding, the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners in China continues unchecked.

”Bodies Exhibits”

Perhaps one of the most macabre examples of abuse resulting from the Chinese policy of organ harvesting is the alleged sale of executed prisoners’ bodies to several popular exhibitions that are currently touring the world.

Exhibitions such as those owned by Premier Exhibitions Inc., including “Bodies Revealed” and “Bodies... The Exhibition,” feature Chinese cadavers that have been skinned, removed of liquids and fat, neatly dissected, “plastinated” (injected with a polymer substance that preserves the remains), and propped up for display in a variety of poses. When questions about the provenance of these bodies began to emerge, Premier acknowledged that the Chinese bodies it used were “unclaimed,” though it did not specify exactly what that meant or how the bodies came to be unclaimed. After New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched a probe into the issue, Premier finally admitted in May 2008 that the bodies it displayed were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police which may receive bodies from Chinese prisons and that, despite its prior claims, it could not independently verify that the human remains in its exhibits were not those of executed Chinese prisoners.

Moreover, an ABC News "20/20" investigation that aired in February of 2008 provided evidence that Premier was indeed involved in the illicit trade of cadavers. 20/20’s investigators tracked down a broker who deals in the black market body trade and who claimed to have delivered the bodies of executed prisoners to the plastination lab that supplies Premier Exhibitions. He even provided photographs of the blood stained corpses, hands still bound, that he saw during his first such transaction. Given this evidence, and our knowledge of the profit-driven organ trade in China, LRF has concluded that it is very likely that at least some of the bodies on display in these exhibits are those of executed prisoners.

Regardless of whether any of the bodies did indeed belong to executed prisoners, it has become clear that none of the decedents whose bodies appear in the exhibitions gave any form of consent for their bodies to be used in that way. As a result of the attention given to this issue by LRF and the media, federal and state governments have begun taking action to put an end to this unethical corporate exploitation of Chinese persons. Legislation that would restrict such commercial practices has been introduced in the U.S. Congress, California, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington State.

What LRF Does

LRF serves as a vocal opponent of the death penalty in China. Our work on this issue includes:

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• Documenting and raising awareness of execution practices in China
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• Organizing Congressional hearings
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• Publishing reports on the death penalty and organ harvesting in China
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• Providing information and analysis to policymakers and the media
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• We are particularly active in documenting, exposing, and advocating against the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners