A country doesn’t become a Global Economic Superpower by messing around. Thus, on Friday, China executed the former chairman of a state-owned airport-holding company six months after he was convicted on bribery and embezzlement charges involving more than $14.6 million, The New York Times reported.
This comes a week or so after China announced it will show more leniency to those given death sentences after it was once again declared No. 1 in executions worldwide by human rights groups. Zhang Jun, the vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, said the penalty should be reserved for a small number of serious crimes, particularly those that threaten “social stability.”
Currently, more than 60 crimes can be punished by death in China, the Times reported, including tax evasion, embezzlement and drug trafficking.
Zhang told the New York Times it could be possible to reduce the number of executions by scaling back the number of eligible crimes and encouraging lower courts to give sentences known as “death penalty with reprieve.”
For example, the high court overturned the death sentence of a man who was convicted of killing his girlfriend after learning of her affair. Zhang said the court suspended the execution because the man showed regret and promised compensation for the woman’s family.
Other mitigating factors, the paper reported, were that the victim’s behavior may have provoked the boyfriend’s violence and in the end, Zhang said, the crime did not “have a major social impact.”
Unlike former chairman’s Li Peiying’s theft of $14.6 million from Capital Airports Holding, which runs 30 airports in nine Chinese provinces, dead girlfriends don’t cost the state anything. This way, China can reach the twin goals of reducing executions and keeping the bottom line in check.
In July, President Obama held high-level talks with Chinese officials to lay the groundwork for a new era of “sustained cooperation, not confrontation” to fix the economy, nuclear proliferation and global climate change. (No awkward topics like human rights.) The Chinese officials made it clear they want explanations of what Washington plans to do about the soaring U.S. budget deficits. China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury debt — $801.5 billion — wants to know that those holdings are safe and won’t be jeopardized by inflation, the Associated Press reported.
So we better get our act together. No more rewarding those who misuse money. We don’t want to find out the consequences of not paying off the billions in debt and the threat that might create to our “social stability.”
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