Death Penalty in China Continues to Raise Concerns Amid Execution of Ex-Food Safety Czar

Estimates Suggest China Executes More People in One Year Than All Other Countries Combined

China executed Zheng Xiaoyu, 63, the former head of China's State Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday with approval of the Supreme People's Court.

He was handed down the death sentence on May 29 after an intermediate people's court in Beijing found Zheng guilty of taking $850,000 of bribes and dereliction of duty, according to the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing. Zheng's trial began on May 15 so in just under two months, Chinese officials swiftly carried out the sentence.

China's government has come under intense scrutiny for manufacturing and shipping poisoned foods around the world. Allegations about "padding" food supplies with ingredients that provide exaggerated weights and nutrient standards have also mounted against the food manufacturers and distributors in China.

While these food and drug incidents remain unacceptable within the world's standards for safety, the world is also shocked by the statistics for the death penalty system and numbers of executions in China. The swiftness for carrying out the death penalty in China may also shock people in free countries, even those with the death penalty.

The People's Republic of China does not release its country's death penalty statistics, even though internationally accepted communications requiring all countries using the death penalty report those statistics. However, Amnesty International claims that one Chinese Communist Party internal document says that China executed 60,000 people in the four years from 1997-2001. This is an average of 15,000 people per year or one in every 86,000 people in the population. A group of scholars and legislators at a law university in China estimated that China executes around 10,000 people per year.

Assuming that 15,000 executions per year take place in China, that would mean that China kills a higher percentage of their population than any other country in the world, except Singapore. It would also suggest that China kills more people than all the world's executions combined.