The death penalty in contemporary China

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China's infamous death penalty record is the product of firm Party-state control as policy informs capital punishment by courts. A quest for leniency eventually ousted China's 'Strike Hard' policy, as the Party-directed dialectic swung from 'kill many' for the first two decades of China's reform era from the early 1980s, towards 'kill fewer' from the mid-2000s. The Supreme People's Court is instrumental in reform, with regaining its gatekeeping capacity to review and approve all death penalty decisions (2007), and progressively institutionalizing the 'suspended death sentence' in the courts, both intrinsic to today's 'Balancing Leniency and Severity' policy to the ethos of 'kill fewer'. This book details the story.