Body Count Politics: Quantification, Secrecy, and Capital Punishment in China

Abstract

As quantification has become socially ubiquitous, the disclosure of numerical data emerges as a key feature of legal reform and global governance. Scholars document how seemingly value-neutral statistical indicators shape, and are shaped by, institutional interests. Although less attention has been paid to cases where states resist numerical disclosure, prohibitions on the disclosure of such indicators also produce social effects. This article extends scholarship on the governance effects of quantification to include secrecy by exploring the case of capital punishment data in China, which is reportedly the world’s leading executioner state. Amid a major death penalty reform effort, China steadfastly refuses international calls to publicly disclose relevant statistics. I analyze capital cases and draw on seventy-three interviews with legal insiders in China’s death penalty system to identify the impact of state efforts to conceal capital punishment indicators while undertaking reforms in three areas: transparency; legal representation; and criminal procedure. I show how tension between the disclosure and nondisclosure of death penalty numbers does not simply suppress data; it also shapes and becomes data, influencing both policy and action in the legal sphere in ways that are seemingly far removed from quantification.

Smart Governance in China’s Political-Legal System

“…In doing so, Guo repeats a common critique of the international literature that quantified data not only are shaped by values, choices, and preferences of people (Merry 2016;Lynch 2019) but, in turn, also shape people and institutions as well (Espeland and Sauder 2007;Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier 2013). This has become especially visible in China's political-legal institutions (Smith 2020;Ng and Chan 2021).…”

Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China

“…19 The state regards both the number of judicial executions and the true number of transplants as official secrets. 20,21 The identity of all prisoner donors is also unknown, and controversy has long centered on whether non-condemned political prisoners like Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghur Muslims have been used as an organ source. 22 In the medical literature, China is thought to be the second-largest transplant country in the world as measured by absolute transplant volume, behind the United States.…”