05 February 2024 :

Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who was arrested in China on espionage charges in 2019, on February 5, 2024 was handed a suspended death sentence by a court in Beijing.
The terms of the sentence mean Yang’s sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment for good behaviour.
“The Australian government is appalled by this outcome,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told reporters as she confirmed the sentence, the SBS News outlet reported.
Wong said Canberra would be responding “in the strongest terms”, including by summoning the Chinese ambassador.
“I want to acknowledge the acute distress that Dr Yang and his family will be feeling today, coming after years of uncertainty,” she said.
Yang, a 58-year-old blogger and pro-democracy activist, was arrested in January 2019 when he arrived at Guangzhou airport with his wife and was accused of having “endangered national security with particularly serious harm to the country and the people”.
Yang, a Chinese-born Australian, has denied the charges against him, as have his friends and family. A previous Australian government described the writer’s detention as “unacceptable”.
On February 5, supporters reacted with dismay to the sentence.
“He is punished by the Chinese government for his criticism of human rights abuses in China and his advocacy for universal values such as human rights, democracy and the rule of law,” friend and colleague Feng Chongyi was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Feng said Yang’s family, who were in court, had told him of the sentence.
Feng previously told Al Jazeera that Yang worked for the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) at the provincial level for 14 years and began writing spy novels as he became more frustrated with his work.
He moved to Australia in 2000 and five years later, began studying under Feng at the University of Technology Sydney, where he “transformed himself into a liberal”. At the time of his detention, he was working in New York.
Yang was put on trial in May 2021, having had limited access to lawyers. China has not revealed the exact charges against him or which country he is alleged to have been spying for.

14 November 2024 :

Three convicted child sex offenders were executed in China on November 13, 2024, according to an official statement from the Supreme People's Court, the country's highest court.
The sentencing and execution of the three criminals, all of whom were found to be rapists who targeted girls under the age of 14, have demonstrated China's zero tolerance of child sex abuse and are expected to serve as a further deterrent for child sex offenders, the court said.
One of the three men executed, a primary school teacher with the surname Guo, was found guilty of raping six female students over 100 times between 2013 and 2019. All of the victims were under the age of 14 when they were first abused by Guo.
The second man executed, a laborer surnamed Shang, was found to have sexually abused eight girls through the use of deceit or force between 2011 and 2020. He had met his victims in various public locations, including parks, buses and kindergarten gates. He was also found to have coerced several of his victims into continued sexual relationships by threatening to reveal indecent images of them, the statement said.
The third man executed, a village shopkeeper surnamed Gong, was found guilty of coercing a girl in his village into sexual acts for almost five consecutive years, beginning in 2015, at which time the victim was under the age of 12. In 2020, after multiple instances of sexual abuse by Gong and other offenders, the victim took her own life at the age of 16, according to the statement.
The top court stressed that China's people's courts will hand down sentences decisively for child sex abuse crimes that warrant the death penalty.
It noted that most offenders of child sex abuse cases have been found to be family members, teachers or neighbors of victims, or to have met their victims online. Perpetrators of child sex crimes often target minors with a low ability to protect themselves and inadequate family supervision -- especially rural children whose parents have moved away for work, and children with intellectual disabilities.
According to China's Criminal Law, any person who engages in sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 14 will be deemed to have committed rape and will be handed a heavier punishment.

06 November 2024 :

A former high-level Chinese government employee has been sentenced to death for leaking state secrets to a foreign power, Beijing's spy agency said on November 6, 2024.
The individual surnamed Zhang "provided a large number of top secret and classified state secrets to foreign intelligence agencies," the Ministry of State Security said in a post to its official WeChat account.
In his job, Zhang had access to "a large number of state secrets", the ministry said.
He was recruited and became a "puppet" after leaving that job and began handing foreign spy agencies state secrets in exchange for cash, the ministry said.
"Zhang... was weak in character and unable to resist the temptation of money," it added.
The ministry did not specify which state organization employed Zhang, nor did it give his full name.
It accused a foreign spy surnamed Li of luring Zhang to an unnamed country with the promise of "experiencing exotic customs", where they pressured him into becoming a double agent.
Zhang was sentenced to death following an investigation, it added.
A colleague who assisted him, surnamed Zhu, was given six years in jail, it said.
No details were given about when he would be executed.

17 October 2024 :

China's former deputy central bank governor, Fan Yifei, has been sentenced to death for taking bribes with a two-year reprieve, state media said on October 10, 2024, amid a sweeping anti-graft drive in the financial sector.
Fan was found guilty of illegally accepting property worth more than 386 million yuan ($54.55 million), taking advantage of his senior positions at the central bank and other financial institutions, including China Construction Bank, according to the report, citing a Chinese court.
Following the two-year reprieve, Fan's death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment, with no possibility of commutation or parole, state media cited Huanggang Intermediate People's Court in Hubei province as saying.
"Fan Yifei accepted bribes of an extremely large amount, the circumstances of his crimes were extremely serious, the social impact was extremely bad, and the interests of the state and the people suffered extremely heavy losses," the court was quoted as saying.
Fan, 60, is the highest-ranking official at the People's Bank of China to be arrested under President Xi Jinping's anti-graft drive in the past decade, in a campaign aimed at weeding out corrupt officials in the financial sector.
Fan was placed under investigation by Chinese authorities in late 2022, and was expelled from the Communist Party in 2023.
Reuters was not able to contact Fan for comment.
China's anti-graft watchdog has in recent months launched a sweeping crackdown on the financial sector that has ensnared some of the country’s biggest names, including Liu Liange, former chairman of state-owned Bank of China, and Wang Bin, former head of state-owned China Life Insurance.
In April, Liu, who stepped down in March 2023, pled guilty to accepting bribes totaling more than 121 million yuan, according to state media.
Tang Shuangning, ex-chairman of China Everbright Group, has also been charged with bribery and corruption.

09 September 2024 :

A former Chinese Communist Party official, accused of embezzling a staggering USD 421 million - the largest-ever corruption case in China's history, on August 27, 2024 was sentenced to death by a court in Inner Mongolia.
The Higher People's Court of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on August 27 turned down the appeal by Li Jianping, who was sentenced to death in September 2022 for corruption, bribery, embezzlement and engaging in organised crime.
He was found guilty by an intermediate court for pocketing a staggering 3 billion yuan (USD 421 million) in illegal gains — the largest sum involved in a single corruption case in China's history, Chinese news portal Caixin Global reported.
The ruling would be submitted to the Supreme People's Court for final examination and approval, said the court.
The court ruling found him guilty of multiple crimes, noting his extreme malice, severe social impact and the gravity of his offences, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Li, 64, once headed a special economic zone in Hohhot and the city's water management authority. He is the third official to be sentenced to death after being found guilty of graft since 2007 when China tightened the death penalty after Lai Xiaomin, former chairman of state-owned China Huarong Asset Management Co. Ltd., and Zhang Zhongsheng, a former vice mayor of Luliang in Shanxi province.
Li was a mid-level local official in the Chinese bureaucratic system, with his corrupt behaviour and prosecution flying largely under the public's radar.
His downfall in late 2018 attracted little attention at first, but as more details emerged, his case shocked the nation due to the huge amounts involved, the report said.
Li has been accused of using his position as the Communist Party chief and director of Hohhot Water Authority from 2001 and as secretary of the party working committee of the Hohhot Economic and Technological Development Zone a decade later to collect 578 million yuan (about USD 83 million) in exchange for favours relating to construction projects and business contracts.
He also maintained close contact with a leader of a criminal syndicate and condoned the organisation's illegal activities, Xinhua reported.

29 May 2024 :

Bai Tianhui, former general manager of China Huarong International Holdings Limited, was sentenced to death for taking huge amounts of bribes by a court in Tianjin on May 28, 2024.
Bai was also deprived of his political rights for life, all of his personal property was confiscated, and all his illegal gains were recovered and turned over to the state treasury, according to the verdict of the No. 2 Intermediate People's Court of Tianjin.
The court found that between 2014 and 2018, Bai had taken advantage of his various positions to provide assistance to others in matters such as project acquisitions and corporate financing, illegally accepting bribes totaling 1.108 billion yuan (US$155 million).
The court ruling said Bai's acts constituted the crime of bribery. The amount of bribes involved was particularly huge, the circumstances of the crime were especially serious, and the social impact was extremely bad, causing significant losses to the interests of the country and the people. His acts of providing tip-offs for investigation of other cases were not sufficient to warrant a lenient punishment considering the facts, nature, and circumstances of his offenses, the court said.

13 May 2024 :

Sun Yuanliang, a former senior political advisor of northeast China's Liaoning Province, was sentenced to death, with a two-year reprieve, for bribery on May 9, 2024.
The Intermediate People's Court of Chengde in north China's Hebei Province found that Sun, formerly vice chairman of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, abused his power in various positions he held between 1997 and 2022 to assist individuals and organizations on matters related to the requisition of land, bank loans and personnel promotion.
In return, Sun extorted and accepted money and valuables worth 159 million yuan (about 22.39 million U.S. dollars).
The court also found that between 2018 and 2022, Sun had used his influence to seek undue benefits for others in business operations and civil litigation, and took money and gifts worth 28.16 million yuan in return.
Sun will be deprived of his political rights for life, and all his personal assets will be confiscated, the court ruled.

12 February 2024 :

Tian Huiyu, a former president of China Merchants Bank, has been sentenced to death, suspended for two years, for accepting bribes, abusing power, trading on the basis of undisclosed information, insider trading and leaking inside information, a court announced on February 5, 2024.
Tian has been deprived of his political rights for life and had all his personal property confiscated, according to the public verdict released by the Intermediate People's Court of Changde, central China's Hunan Province on February 5.
Tian was sentenced to 15 years in prison and given a fine of 308 million yuan ($45 million) for abusing power and illegally participating in securities trading activities.
Proceeds from Tian's crimes and their gains were confiscated and will be directed to the state treasury, according to the court.
In Tian's case, the amount of the bribes was particularly large, and it has caused huge economic losses for the country and damaged the interests of the people, the court said, adding that the situation was extremely serious.
However, the court also said that the death penalty does not necessarily have to be carried out immediately considering that Tian, after his arrest, has taken the initiative to disclose most of the facts about his bribery, as well as other details.
Tian's case came after China's top anti-graft body ramped up efforts to strengthen supervision of public officials in the financial industry, as part of a broad push to prevent systemic risks within the country's capital market.  
On October 8, 2022, Tian was expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and dismissed from public office over serious violations of Party discipline and laws, according to China's top anti-graft body.  
Fifteen months later, he was held criminally liable for the crimes of bribery and abuse of power as well as trading undisclosed information, insider trading and leaking inside messages.
Shares in the bank on the A-share market closed at 30.71 yuan ($4.27) on February 5, up 1.59 percent from the previous trading day but down from 45 yuan in April 2022, when the case began.

28 October 2024 :

The Guiyang Intermediate People's Court on October 25, 2024 pronounced death sentence to Yu Huaying, a 60-year-old woman who was found guilty of child trafficking and abduction, after a retrial in Guizhou province.
The Guiyang court, while announcing the conviction and death sentence to the accused, also stripped of her political rights for life and ordered that all her personal assets be confiscated.
The court identified that Yu, between 1993 and 2003, abducted 17 children in Guizhou, Chongqing and Yunnan province along with her accomplices Gong Xianliang and Wang Jiawen, and then sold the victims to Handan in Hebei province for financial gains.
Gong died during the course of the case, and Wang, Yu's husband, pleaded guilty to the crime while standing trial in Yunnan last month.
The Guiyang court said that the abduction and trafficking had separated 12 families, making some parents spend years searching for their children or even die of depression.
"Considering the malice of Yu was extremely deep, and the circumstance of her criminal behaviors was extremely serious and the consequence of the crime was extremely severe, we imposed the death penalty on her," it added.
In September last year, the Guiyang court sentenced Yu to death for her offenses, while identifying 11 victims then. Yu moved an appeal to the Guizhou High People's Court at that time.
Early this year, the high court sent the case back to the lower court for a retrial, explaining that some details about the case were omitted in the original ruling.
During the retrial by the Guiyang court on Oct 11, the omitted content referred to six more children who were abducted and trafficked by Yu, taking the total number of victims to 17.
"The retrial was due to the discovery of new suspicious criminal facts that required judges to re-establish the exact number of abducted children, which is in line with the Criminal Procedure Law," Cheng Lei, deputy head of the Renmin University of China's Law School, told China Central Television.
Although Yu had already been given the capital punishment, "the six newly identified victims and their families also need to get the justice, which is also why the case was retried," he added.
However, Yu appealed to a higher court again after the ruling was announced on October 25.
Yu and her case caught widespread public attention since 2022 when police in Guiyang received a complaint from Yang Niuhua, alleging she was snatched by Yu in Guizhou and taken to Hebei in 1995. Soon after her complaint, police captured Yu from Chongqing.
Yang, who was also present at the Guiyang court on October 25, said, "I burst into tears when hearing Yu was sentenced to death."
"Yu said nothing other than that she would appeal. She kept her head down and hands shaking as the verdict was read," Yang added.

30 April 2024 :

A man who killed his wife during their divorce cooling-off period was given a death penalty in the first trial by a court in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province on April 25, 2024. 
Two weeks after submitting their divorce application, the 36-year-old victim surnamed Zhou was stabbed to death by her 37-year-old husband Zhao Liuchao outside an industrial park in July 2023, despite being accompanied by six relatives and friends at the time. 
The Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court announced the verdict of the first trial against the defendant in accordance with the law. Zhao was sentenced to death for the crime of intentional homicide and deprived of his political rights for life. 
According to the victim’s younger sister Zhou Mei (pseudonym), after the verdict was pronounced, the judge asked the defendant whether he had anything to say on the verdict and the defendant asked the judge whether he would be immediately executed. After he was given an affirmative answer, he said he did not intend to kill his wife on purpose and was taken away, the Xiaoxiang Morning News reported on April 25. 
Zhao and Zhou were married in 2011 and they applied for divorce at the marriage registration office of the local civil affairs bureau in Pingyu county, Central China’s Henan Province on July 7, 2023. On the evening of July 30, 2023, the victim was accompanied by six relatives and friends and met the defendant outside of a local industrial park. 
When the defendant arrived at the meeting place, he rushed to the victim and took out a knife to stab her and the other people, leading to the death of the victim and other four people being wounded. 
According to the court, the defendant deliberately and illegally deprived others of their lives, resulting in one death, and four other people suffering minor injuries. His actions have constituted the crime of intentional homicide. 
Zhao displayed a high degree of subjective malignancy, employed cruel means in committing the crime, and caused severe consequences, thus, he should be severely punished, the court concluded.
According to reports, the victim was born in Leizhou, South China’s Guangdong Province in 1987. In 2008, the two people got married and had a son and a daughter. In Jul 7, 2023, the couple applied for divorce in Henan and Zhou returned to Guangzhou for work. 
According to Zhou’s younger sister, the defendant appeared to remain calm, agreed to get divorced and signed the divorce agreement during the first week of the cooling-off period before divorce. 
However, Zhao soon regretted his actions and asked Zhou to meet again. Since the defendant’s attitude was very volatile, Zhou was worried that the defendant would exhibit violent behaviors. So, Zhou went to the appointment in the company of her younger sister, elder brother and four other male friends. 
According to Guangzhou Municipal People’s Procuratorate, Zhou filed for divorce due to her husband’s long-term domestic violence with the civil affairs bureau in Henan. After Zhou returned to Guangzhou, Zhao repeatedly threatened Zhou over phone for a meeting and threatened to kill her family. 
According to Zhou’s younger sister, the results of Zhao’s psychiatric assessment showed that he had no mental issues. 
The divorce cooling-off period was introduced as part of the first-ever Civil Code in China on January 1, 2021. It requires couples to wait a month after reaching a settlement and then go together to collect their divorce certificates. 

21 February 2024 :

A man convicted of robbing a woman, murdering her, and desecrating her body has been executed, Beijing Youth Daily reported on February 19, 2024.
The man, surnamed Zhang, was sentenced to death on charges of robbery, intentional homicide and corpse desecration as ruled by the Hubei Higher People's Court in 2022.
The Supreme Court approved his death penalty after a review.
Zhang, 41, carried a dagger to Nanshan Park in Zhushan County, Hubei Province, with the intention to commit a robbery on November 1, 2021.
After seeing that the victim, a 21-year-old woman surnamed Zhu, was alone, he followed her and stole her iPhone.
He then forced Zhu at knife-point to some bushes. When she resisted and cried out for help, Zhang, in order to silence her, repeatedly stabbed her with the dagger, resulting in her death.
Zhang sold the iPhone and returned to the scene the following day to carry out acts of desecration on the corpse, which was later placed in a plastic bag with the knife and discarded in the river.
Zhu's body was found by local police on November 5. Three days later, Zhang was apprehended.According to China Judgements Online, Zhang had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998 for the crimes of robbery, rape and theft. However, he was released in 2016 after commutation of his sentence.

08 February 2024 :

Zhang Keping, who stabbed a colleague to death while drunk in 2022, was executed on February 4, 2024 after China's top court approved his death sentence.
The execution was carried out by the Haidong Intermediate People's Court in Qinghai province, where Zhang was convicted of intentional homicide and dangerous driving and given the death penalty.
The court said in a statement on February 5 that it allowed Zhang to meet family members before his execution, which was supervised by Haidong prosecutors.
The Haidong court said Zhang and the victim, surnamed Yang, worked for the same company, with Yang being Zhang's superior. In September 2021, when Zhang's job was adjusted by their employer, Zhang became discontented with Yang, believing Yang had made the change and it would affect his performance.
On Aug 3, 2022, while attending a banquet, Zhang received work arrangement messages from Yang, which made him unhappy. After drinking alcohol and concealing a knife in his clothes, Zhang drove to the company and stabbed Yang, who was providing training for employees, multiple times in his chest.
When Yang ran downstairs, Zhang continued stabbing Yang in the back and chest, resulting in the death of Yang, then 37, due to a pierced heart and lungs and massive blood loss.
Zhang was first subdued by onlookers, and then detained by police.
The Haidong court sentenced Zhang to death for the crime of intentional homicide, saying "the killing means of Zhang, who couldn't solve work conflicts with the colleague in a right way, were extremely cruel, as he stabbed the victim more than 10 times".
The ruling was then upheld by the Qinghai High People's Court.
The top court recently approved the convictions and the death penalty, along with a fine of 2,000 yuan ($278) for drunken driving.

07 February 2024 :

Jiang Wenhua, a former researcher at Fudan University, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on February 1, 2024 for intentional homicide.
The sentence was handed down to Jiang by the Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People's Court. Jiang has also been deprived of his political rights for life, and restrictions on commutation were imposed on him.
During his tenure as a researcher at the School of Mathematical Sciences at the university, Jiang, facing difficulties in his work, harbored resentment toward the Party secretary of the school, who was surnamed Wang. On June 7, 2021, Jiang entered Wang's office with a knife and inflicted multiple stabs on Wang, leading to his death, said the court.
Jiang has been suffering from recurrent depressive disorder and thus had diminished criminal responsibility in the case, according to investigation.
The court held that Jiang planned the crime and his methods were brutal, with severe consequences, and the verdict was made in accordance with the law, taking into account several factors such as his diminished criminal responsibility and surrender. 

01 February 2024 :

China on January 31, 2024 executed a couple for throwing two young children out of the window of an apartment building, in a case that caused nationwide outrage.
Zhang Bo and Ye Chengchen were previously found responsible for the fatal falls of the two-year-old girl and one-year-old boy from the 15th floor of a residential tower in southwest China's Chongqing.
Zhang, who was the father of the two children, had begun an affair with Ye, who was initially unaware he was married and had children.
She then urged Zhang to kill his two children, which she "regarded as obstacles" to their getting married and a "burden on their future life together", the Chongqing No. 5 Intermediate People's Court said in a statement.
In November 2020, Zhang threw his children out of the window of the apartment in the absence of their mother, with whom he had agreed to divorce.
Both were found guilty of conspiring "to kill his daughter and younger son by staging an accidental fall from the 15th floor of his apartment building", state-backed China Daily reported last year.
The couple were sentenced to death in December 2021 and executed on January 31, the court said.
Zhang and Ye's crime sent shock waves across China for its cold-blooded premeditation, as well as the youth of the victims.
Their executions quickly rose to the top of a list of trending topics on Chinese social media site Weibo on January 31, receiving nearly 200 million views.

31 January 2024 :

Wu Xieyu, a former Peking University student who killed his mother, was executed on January 31, 2024 after China's top court approved his death sentence.
The execution was carried out by the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court in Fujian province, where Wu was convicted of intentional homicide, fraud and the illegal purchase of identity cards and given the death penalty.
The court told Wu, 29, he had the right to apply to meet family members before the execution, but he did not make an application. The execution process supervised by Fuzhou prosecutors.
According to the Supreme People's Court statement approving the death sentence, Wu, from Fujian, was pessimistic and tried to commit suicide. After his father died of an illness he thought the life of his mother, Xie Tianqin, was meaningless, so he prepared to kill her in early 2015 and bought some items for that purpose.
On July 10 that year, when Xie arrived home, Wu hit her repeatedly in the head and face with a dumbbell, resulting in her death, and then fled the scene, the statement said.
Previous reports said Wu wrapped his mother's body in layers of bedsheets, plastic sheets and activated carbon bags after the killing.
To cover up the killing, Wu "borrowed" 1.44 million yuan ($201,000) from relatives and friends, telling them he and his mother would need the money when she accompanied him as he traveled overseas to study. In reality, he squandered the money, the top court said.
He also purchased more than 10 identity cards to hide his real identity and avoid arrest, it added.
The relatives became suspicious when Xie failed to contact them for some time, and they found his mother's body in February 2016 in her faculty dormitory apartment at the Fuzhou middle school where she worked.
Wu was then named as suspect by local police. He was captured in Chongqing in 2019 after being on the run for more than three years.
The Fuzhou court heard Wu's case in late 2020, and handed down the death penalty in August 2021.
In May last year, the Fujian High People's Court upheld the original ruling.
In China, a death sentence made by lower courts must be submitted to the top court for review. The sentence can only be carried out after it is approved by the top court.
On January 31, the top court said that Wu's behavior had constituted the crimes of intentional killing and the illegal purchase of ID cards, and the sum of the money involved in the fraud he perpetrated was extremely large.
"Wu should be punished, as his killing method was cruel, which seriously violated human ethics and trampled on the public's emotion, with severe negative effects to society," it said.
It agreed with the verdicts made and upheld by the lower courts, saying the facts in the case were clear, the evidence was sufficient, the application of the law was correct and the sentencing was appropriate.

30 June 2024 :

China has a conviction rate of more than 99%. That means some people may be wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit.
China's legal system has introduced reforms, but with limited effect.
NPR's Emily Feng reports on one man's 20-year fight on China's death row.
“This month, a man named Yuan Weidong had his fourth trial on charges of murder. Twice courts in China's Hebei Province ruled the evidence presented against him was heavily flawed, and twice lower circuit courts retried him, found him guilty, and sentenced him to the death penalty again. Yuan was arrested in 2002 in a case that relies almost entirely on forced confessions.
This is Yuan's wife, Li Jie. She recounts seeing her husband about a month after he'd been arrested on suspicion of two clusters of murders. His face, she said, was unrecognizable from being beaten, his body misshapen. And then it was her turn to be questioned. Bright yellow - that was the color Li says she remembers. It was the color of the jacket she wore the day she was detained.
Then she was repeatedly electrocuted by five officers, she recounted. They also beat her, forcing her to testify against her husband. When they released her 12 days later, that yellow coat was covered in blood, she said.
Upon hearing that his wife was being tortured, Yuan readily confessed, says this man, the only lawyer from their home province who would take their case. His name is Lv Baoxiang.
Lv specializes in wrongful conviction cases, all of them based on forced confessions using electrocution.
Yuan was later cleared of the first set of murders in 2009. And on the second set, Lv says he discovered what he thought was a watertight alibi. Yuan had gone to pay an agricultural tax at the time of those murders. There were tax officials who witness Yuan paying and a time-stamped payment receipt. Yet Yuan remains on death row. The original judge presiding over Yuan's case has actually been promoted. The Provincial Justice Ministry did not respond when NPR asked them for comment about Yuan's case. Chi Yin, a scholar at New York University's U.S.-Asia Law Institute who studies wrongful convictions, says Yuan's case persists despite legal reform since 2012, requiring video recording of interrogation from the beginning to the end.
Being able to exclude evidence illegally gathered, including from torture. China now says it has about eight to 900 retrials a year. In one notable case, a court paid out compensation for mental trauma to a man exonerated from his life sentence after the alleged victim walked back to his village alive and well. This is all encouraging says Chi Yin, but she says overturning previous wrongful convictions is still difficult.
Usually when there's lots of pressure to admit to a mistake, people's reactions is not to admit it.
And Yuan's case remains beset by legal difficulties. After more than 20 years on death row, Yuan is in poor health and suffering from stomach cancer. Police have lost most of the original evidence. Lv, his original lawyer, has retired, and his current lawyer joined last minute after their previous lawyer was disbarred for representing other human rights cases.
Wang Xing, the current lawyer, told NPR right after the trial this month that one of their key witnesses did show up, despite earlier state intimidation not to. So he's optimistic the court may clear Yuan. Now, the court is deliberating, and the Yuan family is hoping the fourth time is the charm.

25 June 2024 :

China on June 21, 2024 threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases for "diehard" Taiwan independence separatists, a ratcheting up of pressure even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction on the democratically governed island.
China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has made no secret of its dislike of President Lai Ching-te who took office last month, saying he is a "separatist", and staged war games shortly after his inauguration.
Taiwan has complained of a pattern of ramped up Chinese pressure since Lai won the election in January, including ongoing military actions, trade sanctions and coast guard patrols around Taiwan-controlled islands next to China.
The new guidelines say China's courts, prosecutors, public and state security bodies should "severely punish Taiwan independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession crimes in accordance with the law, and resolutely defend national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity", according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.
The guidelines are being issued in accordance with laws already on the books, including the 2005 anti-secession law, Xinhua said.
That law gives China the legal basis for military action against Taiwan if it secedes or seems about to.
Sun Ping, an official from China's Ministry of Public Security, told reporters in Beijing the maximum penalty for the "crime of secession" was the death penalty.
"The sharp sword of legal action will always hang high," she said.
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council on June 21 slammed Beijing's move, urging its people not to be threatened by China.
"The Beijing authorities have absolutely no jurisdiction over Taiwan, and the Chinese communists' so-called laws and norms have no binding force on our people. The government appeals to our country's people to feel at ease and not to be threatened or intimidated by the Chinese Communist Party," it said in a statement.
The guidelines detail what is considered a crime worthy of punishment, including promoting Taiwan's entry to international organisations where statehood is a condition, having "external official exchanges" and "suppressing" parties, groups and people that promote "reunification".
The guidelines add a further clause to what could be considered a crime - "other acts that seek to separate Taiwan from China" - meaning the rules can be broadly interpreted.
Lai has repeatedly offered to hold talks with China but has been rebuffed. He says only Taiwan's people can decide their future.
China has taken legal measures against Taiwanese officials before, including imposing sanctions on Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan's former de facto ambassador to the United States and now the island's vice president.
Such punishments have little practical effect as Chinese courts do not have jurisdiction in Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims.
Senior Taiwanese officials, including its president, also do not visit China.

17 April 2024 :

China indicated for the first time on April 15, 2024 that a man executed for spying in 2016 had sold secrets to the United States.
In a video posted on April 15 in a campaign to promote China's success in combating foreign espionage, state broadcaster CCTV confirmed that Huang Yu had been executed in May 2016, a month after his conviction and death sentence were announced.
At the time, China had given no details of the country Huang was accused of assisting. In the video on April 15, an announcer also made no explicit mention of the country, but images were shown of an American flag and the U.S. Capitol building.
The United States Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CCTV said the Sichuan man had handed over secrets, including details on China's military communications, to a foreign government.
Previously, China has said he had been paid US$700,000 (S$952,000) by his foreign handlers, before being arrested in 2011.
The video was part of a campaign in China's state media to heighten awareness of what Beijing sees as the threat from foreign spies and to celebrate China's counter-espionage successes.
A coordinated run of stories and videos was released ahead of a day dedicated to promote national security awareness and citizen vigilance established under President Xi Jinping nine years ago.