The death penalty in China

The latest newsletter of the Duihua Foundation has a good report on recent reforms in the death penalty regime, as well as some interesting statistics from Yunnan. Among other things, the report estimates (unfortunately without citing a source) that there were only one or two thousand executions in the early 1980s; informed estimates (cited in the report) for 2005 and 2006 put the numbers at about 8000 and 7000 respectively.