Here is an encouraging story about how the Chinese Supreme People’s Court has been rejecting a number of death sentences. So yes, the government is secretive as to how many executions take place. That could improve. But if this is one step at a time, this is quite a BIG one.

The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.