Chinese civil rights
The state of human civil rights in China has been addressed by various sources, particularly Western countries and some international organizations, as lacking on many counts. Past human rights issues include the 'Tiananmen Square' protests of 1989. It was at this time that between 200-3000 civilians were killed and thousands more were injured.
Multiple sources, which include the US State Department, as well as studies from other groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented the Peoples Republic of China's (or PRC) abuses of human rights in violation of internationally recognized norms.
In March, 2004, an amendment was made to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In it it states that "The State respects and preserves human rights."
Death penalty in China
Despite this, China had the highest number of death penalties in 2005. In total 1,770 people were executed. Between 1994 and 1999, according to the United Nations Secretary-General, China, which has the world's largest population of 1.3 billion people, was ranked 7th in terms of the number of executions carried out in comparison to overall population. This was behind Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Sierra Leone, Kyrgyzstan and Jordan. Amnesty International claims that official figures are much smaller than the real number. This is most likely to be because in China the statistics are considered State secrets. Amnesty International also stated that according to various reports, in 2005 3,400 people were executed. Following this, in March of that year, a senior member of the National People's Congress announced that China executes around 10,000 people per year.
There is concern from several foreign governments over the number of crimes punishable by death, 68 in all, including some white collar crimes such as embezzlement and tax fraud. India has a similar population to China at 1.1 billion but yet it rarely uses the death penalty.
Furthermore, the inconsistent and sometimes corrupt nature of the legal system in mainland China bring into question the fair application of capital punishment there.