(Not) Talking about Capital Punishment in the Xi Jinping Era

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the death penalty in China in the Xi Jinping era (2012-). Unlike previous administrations, Xi does not appear to have articulated a signature death penalty policy. Where policy in China is unclear, assessing both the quality and frequency of discourse on the topic can provide evidence about an administration’s priorities. We therefore analyse death penalty discourse during Xi’s tenure and compare it with discourse under his predecessors. We base our analysis on three large datasets assembled for this project—the collected works of China’s leaders, a complete corpus of The People’s Daily, and a database of academic publications in China. We find no references to the death penalty in Xi Jinping’s speeches. We also find a decline in The People’s Daily coverage of the death penalty beginning in 2015 and a sharp decrease in academic publications on capital punishment beginning in 2011. Our findings indicate that discourse about the death penalty has declined in the Xi era. We argue that under Xi the death penalty has been de-mobilised as a discursive site of political signaling. We end with some observations about discursive silence.

Keywords: Death penalty, China, Xi Jinping, discourse

JEL Classification: K14, Z18, H83