A lot of you were probably already aware of this, but I was surprised by the chart I just saw in the latest issue of National Geographic. It said that while the US executed 37 people in 2008, China executed 1,718 (although that was only the "official" number-- the real number could have been much higher, according to the Dui Hua Foundation). This number is supposedly down significantly from past years, due to an overhaul of their capital punishment system in 2007, but it still seems extremely high. People are still being executed for non-violent crimes such as drug dealing and embezzling.
I realize that this is only one of many human rights issues being debated in China. Religious freedom, censorship, the one-child policy, discrimination against ethnic minorities... the list goes on. But this particular one is a life-or-death matter. Aside from the moral dilemma of using the death penalty in the first place, there is the question about the accuracy of their legal system. Based on the speed of the trial and execution process, I believe it's inevitable that mistakes are sometimes made and innocent people are sometimes executed.
With Americans facing so many challenges in our own country right now, and with so little power to change anything in China, it probably seems pointless to bring this up. All I can say is that I was taken aback to read those numbers in National Geographic, and it made me pause for a minute to realize how lucky we are. We're lucky to be fighting for health care, while millions of people in China are still facing even bigger human rights issues.