China banned the death penalty for people over 75 and for a dozen non-violent crimes yesterday in a largely symbolic gesture unlikely to reduce the annual toll of executions. The Communist regime executes more people than any other nation, and critics claim that too many crimes remain punishable by death.
However, experts said the move was unlikely to significantly reduce executions, since people convicted of those crimes in the past have rarely received the maximum penalty and capital punishment can still be used to punish offenses such as corruption in the economic sphere.
"The big obstacle, I think, is corruption. Because there still is a very strong sense that corrupt officials must die among the Chinese population at large," said Joshua Rosenzweig, the research manager for the US-based human rights group, Dui Hua Foundation.
For more: China trims its list of death penalty crimes and exempts over-75s - Scotsman.com News
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