China has announced plans to increase the use of their lethal injection program - rather than to execute its citizens by gun shot. There appears to be no discussion by Chinese authorities around plans to limit the use of the death penalty, to ensure fair trials or to cease the use of torture.

To discuss methods of killing people rather than abolishing the death penalty is to completely ignore human rights and specifically contradicts China's statement that hosting the 2008 Olympics would see an improvement in human rights in the country.

China's announcement comes only weeks after the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

Jiang Xingchangs, vice-president of the Supreme Peoples Court (SPC) of China has stated that lethal injection execution is more humane than execution by shooting.

Catherine Baber, Director of Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific program responded by stating that; There is nothing dignified or humane in the state killing of individuals by whatever mean. This move goes against the spirit of the Olympic Charter for the Beijing Olympics, which places the preservation of human dignity at the heart of the Olympic movement."

The extension of the lethal injection program flies in the face of the clear international trend away from using the death penalty. Regardless of method used, underlying problems in China include unfair trials, miscarriages of justice including execution of the innocent and the use of torture to illicit guilty pleas.

Amnesty International has welcomed the Supreme People's Court review of all death sentences in China (in force since January 2007), this was intended to reduce the number of executions. Yet the lack of transparency in the application of the death penalty in China will make it impossible to assess or verify any change in the number of executions being carried out.

Rather than altering methods of killing and attempting to pass of one method as being more humane than another; China must make public the actual numbers of people executed and radically cut the number of capital offences - presently 68 crimes are punishable by death, some 'white collar crimes'.

The cruel and inhumane nature of the death penalty cannot be solved by changing the method of execution.

Find out more by reading our fact sheet on the death penalty.

LA Times article discussing the case of a now retired Chinese judge who had a role in over 1,000 executions.