BEIJING — A kilogram of heroin sealed Ding Aguo's doom.
On June 22, the 31-year-old woman was executed by firing squad here along with six other people convicted of drug trafficking. The next day, 11 drug dealers in the city of Chengdu were rounded up, paraded before a stadium of spectators, then led away to be shot.
Within a single week, authorities put to death at least 48 people as part of an aggressive national anti-drug campaign. More than a dozen others also were executed for committing violent crimes.
It was par for the course for China, which executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined, for crimes ranging from murder to embezzlement to antiques theft.
The country's liberal application of the death penalty has drawn fire from a host of Western countries. France and Germany regularly raise the issue in talks with Beijing. Australia, Britain and Canada make it part of their human rights dialogues with China.
The only major Western power not to protest China's use of the death penalty is a fellow advocate of it: the United States, whose support of capital punishment yokes Beijing and its usual human rights nemesis in an awkward solidarity over a practice most industrialized nations condemn.
"The U.S. is not exactly in a position to talk about the issue" with China, Catherine Baber, a researcher with Amnesty International, noted dryly.
The sheer number of executions here is staggering.
Since 1990, at least 18,008 people have been put to death. Last year alone, Amnesty International logged 1,077 executions here--an average of nearly three a day--while the rest of the world's countries that practice capital punishment, including nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, together racked up 736. Ninety-eight of those executions were in the United States.
Experts believe that the number of executions in China is even higher than estimated because the government doesn't publicize all executions and has deemed the exact count a "state secret."
"The [complete] figures," Baber said, "would be mind-boggling."
Judges in China hand down the death sentence not only for violent crimes such as murder and rape but for offenses considered far less egregious elsewhere.
Bribe-taking, tax evasion and credit card fraud on a big scale can all command the death penalty. So can stealing "cultural relics," as three thieves discovered earlier this year after pilfering a set of ancient murals.
