Every year, the lives of more than 1000 convicted Chinese criminals end with a bullet to the back of the head. The story goes, well nourished in the foreign media, that in a final indignity the family of the executed felon is sent a bill for the bullet. As execution methods go, it is probably no more or less brutal a method than hanging, electrocution or firing squad. But China has decided to move away from the bullet, with the recent announcement that it will adopt lethal injections for executions.
China is undisputed world champion of the death penalty.
Every year it executes more than 10 times the number of its nearest rivals, Congo and the United States. Despite growing publicity, the precise number of executions in China remains obscure. Last Tuesday, four men who stabbed to death an expatriate German family of four during a robbery in the eastern city of Nanjing were executed. There are almost 70 capital offences under Chinese law, ranging through homicide, theft and corruption to economic and political crimes. Over the past decade, China executed an estimated 18,000 felons.