Prison Sentences and Capital Punishment in China

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Where can one find statistics of prison sentences and capital punishment in China?

To find statistics on prison sentences and capital punishment in China, one must rely on human rights organizations and research groups, as the Chinese government treats these figures as a state secret. Official statistics are often incomplete, unreliable, and less transparent over time. 

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and research groups

Reliable, though often estimated, data can be found from the following sources:

• Amnesty International: A primary source for reports on China's use of the death penalty. The organization states that China executes more people than all other countries combined, and it compiles estimates based on all available information, as official numbers are not released.
• The Dui Hua Foundation: This U.S.-based human rights group specializes in statistics on China's criminal justice system. It has tracked the estimated number of executions over time, noting a significant decline since the early 2000s based on its research.
• Safeguard Defenders: This NGO publishes investigative reports based on official Chinese work reports, court documents, and other sources. Their analyses offer insights into trends in arrests, prosecutions, and convictions, including the extremely high conviction rate in Chinese courts (99.975% in 2022).
• The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty: This organization also publishes estimates on the number of executions in China, though figures can vary widely between different human rights groups. 

Official Chinese sources (with limitations)

While lacking comprehensive statistics on executions, official data can still offer some limited insight into the judicial system: 

• Supreme People's Court Monitor: This is an independent blog that analyzes information on China's judiciary. It has reported on the limitations of China's own public-facing case database, noting that less than 50% of resolved cases were uploaded in 2014-2015. 
• Official Work Reports: Government work reports from the Supreme People's Court and other agencies can sometimes provide limited data on the justice system, though these reports have become less transparent over time. 
• China Judgments Online: An official judicial database operated by the Supreme People's Court. However, access has become more restricted, and many verdicts, including death penalty dispositions and those related to residential surveillance, have been removed from the public database. 

What the statistics show

Despite the secrecy, reporting from human rights groups and research provides a picture of China's use of prison sentences and capital punishment: 

Capital Punishment: China is believed to be the world's leading executioner, responsible for more executions than the rest of the world combined. Due to official secrecy, estimates for the number of executions vary.

Prison Sentences: With an estimated 1.7 million people incarcerated as of 2020, China has the second-highest prison population after the United States.

High Conviction Rate: China's courts have a consistently high conviction rate, which was 99.975% in 2022, a historic high.

Decreasing Transparency: In recent years, access to judicial information has been increasingly restricted, and information that was once public has been removed from official databases.