CHINESE EXECUTIONS RISE AMID HUMAN-RIGHTS UPROAR

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 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 protesting China's use of the death
penalty is a fellow advocate of it: the United States. 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,
said Catherine Baber, a researcher with Amnesty International.

The sheer number of executions in China is staggering. Since 1990, at least
18,008 people have been put to death. Last year alone, Amnesty
International logged 1,077 executions - an average of nearly three a day -
while the rest of the world's countries that practice capital punishment
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 (real) figures," Baber said, "would be mind-boggling."

Judges in China hand down death sentences 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.

Political separatists in restive western Xinjiang province have been put to
death, as was a drunken driver who hit a pedestrian, sped off and left his
victim to die. Pandering and forcible prostitution, in extreme cases, can
earn an offender the ultimate punishment.

The high number of executions dovetails with a significant broadening of
China's definition of capital crime over the past two decades.

In 1979, there were 28 types of offenses, including "counterrevolutionary"
activity, that merited being put to death. But by 1995, in response to an
escalating crime rate in China's new society, the list had risen to 74 and
incorporated an increasing number of nonviolent offenses, especially
economic ones.

Yet the United States has largely stayed silent on China's use of the death
penalty, despite Washington's insistence that human rights remain a core
element of its ties with Beijing. Officially, the United States, as a
prominent practitioner of capital punishment, doesn't weigh in on other
nations' right to mete out the death penalty.

In fact, Chinese officials often justify their use of capital punishment by
citing its practice in the United States.

It has been left to countries other than the United States to call
attention to China's ready application of the death penalty. Perhaps the
most vocal critic is the European Union, which ranks abolition of capital
punishment worldwide as one of its prime social objectives.

Public support of the death penalty remains high in China. Executions for
economic crimes are extremely popular, particularly as the poor in China
watch a swelling elite enrich itself through shady practices or misuse of
public funds.

Justice in China can be brutally swift. Some executions reportedly occur
hours after a sentence is handed down. Executions are mostly by gunshot.