May 30, 2007

Several clouds over China’s reputation

No one disputes that China is a rising great power thanks to its tremendous economic growth. But an announcement Tuesday May 29th cast several clouds over China’s reputation. The government says it will execute Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of its food and drug regulator, for corruption. The news represents a remarkable confluence of bad press for China: that high-level corruption is rampant, that its products have killed people and animals around the world, and that the country advertising its “peaceful rise” is a harsh, execution-happy dictatorship.

China may hope to dominate the world economically; it already does so in terms of the amount of people it executes. The total number is a carefully guarded state secret but Amnesty International, a human-rights watchdog, counted at least 1,770 executions in 2006 and the real amount could be as high as 8,000. The liberal use of the death penalty in China is not a subject of great public concern, partly because the extent of it is little appreciated. The media usually publicise only executions that are deemed by the government to have some wider cautionary value.

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