What Technocrats Can Do
I'm so relieved Beijing's technocrats can listen to world opinion about capital punishment: ask for toleration and humanity, and get a needle.
Lethal injections were considered "more humane and will eventually be used in all intermediate people's courts", the China Daily quoted Jiang Xingchang, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, as saying.
China has been slowly reforming the death penalty system after several high-profile wrongful convictions raised public anger.
The Supreme People's Court last year took back its power of final approval on death penalties, relinquished to provincial high courts in a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s.
But the China Daily did not suggest any quick end to China's use of the death penalty.
"We cannot talk about abolishing or controlling the use of death sentences in the abstract without considering ground realities and social security conditions," it quoted Chief Justice Xiao Yang as saying, adding that there was a strong belief in the concept of "an eye for an eye and a life for a life".
The death penalty is imposed for dozens of crimes, including non-violent offences such as corruption and tax fraud.
I guess someone missed the news about how inhumane lethal injections can be, but perhaps, for Beijing, that's an endorsement. Or, perhaps, Beijing believes it's slowly complying with the UN General Assembly's call for a moratorium. But then again, it's probably also a whole lot greener cleaner
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