The first stakeholder In this issue I will be analysing is the Supreme court specifically Ni Shouming, the court’s spokesman. Shouming defends the death sentence “as it is necessary to protect the state and the people, and says conditions are not yet ripe for its abolishment” said Ni Shouming (Reuters).The country attempts to reduce the number of executions by reducing the penalty on some crimes but think it is necessary to imply it when murder or drug use occurs. It will eventually be reduced in terms of its use, but not during this period of time. Though they see it necessary to reduce the number of crimes held with the death penalty to do this “a draft amendment to China’s criminal law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress that would remove a further nine crimes from the list of capital crimes”. ( The Diplomat) . The reason for the so many crimes having the consequence of capital punishment is due to, Political philosopher Shang Yang (390-338 BCE) known for his of advocating of a very strong Judicial system.
He wanted to create an ideal society and applied the most harsh judgements on even the smallest of crime. The logic behind this was to instill fear within society so crime rates stay low due to the punishments they will receive. The public has no real say in the matter due to China enforcing a variation of Authoritarianism where the state take all decisions in the judgment of whether they receive capital punishment. However even the public according to (Chinese Daily) agrees with the government, it reports “The majority of the public could not accept that some murderers could go free after 10 years’ imprisonment.
” The implication of China continuing to use the death penalty has been rough as reported by the Reuters ” following media reports exposing a string of wrongful convictions concealed by investigators” However the biggest influence being the backlash by so many international communities causing to take action to some degree.(Reuters). Though Liu Renwen (liberal Professor) even in modern China, Renwen doesn’t see the possibility of a complete withdrawal of the death penalty from the register of punishments. The third and final perspective within in china essentially how there is an abuse of power within china Hao Jinsong says The power to review death penalty cases now lies with the provincial high courts, but they are still not rigorous enough. A lot of cases were waved through with little to no evidence, or insufficient evidence, resulting in a lot of miscarriages of justice. In my opinion the Supreme has now allocated the final decision for capital punishment to itself but is just imprudent as the lower courts.
The second stakeholder in this case is and who hold a view against China’s capital punishment is,Amnesty international, a London based NGO that focuses on Human rights. They as an organisation have the perspective that capital punishment “violates the most fundamental human right – the right to life. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.” ( Amnesty International) They firstly argue using the death penalty does not deter crime.The first example is, “In 2003 in Canada, 27 years after the country abolished the death penalty the murder rate had fallen by 44 per cent since 1975” the main argument they carry is how countries repeatedly cite how using the death penalty to attempt to reduce crime rates, but by evidence that is not true. They secondly argue how the countries are not transparent about the issue, they bring attention to china especially how information about the death penalty, such as the annual number of executions, is classified as a state secret. They then further prove this by stating how in china in 2015 the published amount of execution were 2,447 but their very own reports state their estimate is roughly 20,929.
China supreme court spokesman Ni Shouming denied this allegation ( as stated in the original first paragraph.) The reason Amnesty International holds this perspective is because the death penalty violates the fundamental human right which by the UN is stated as ” The right to life”. They do not support the use of the death penalty as in used against the most unaware in society. They state the highest use of the death penalty is against ( In no particular order) “poor, ethnic and religious minorities, and people with mental disabilities”.
The second influence for their perspective is how some governments use capital punishments and “unfair trials are provided and there is always a risk of “executing an innocent person is ever present when the death penalty is carried out, it is final and irreversible”
