China with a booming economy may have been inching towards becoming the 21st century scientific and economic superpower, but its rigid set of laws and continuous violation of human rights still drag it into the dark ages.

The Chinese government’s recent decision to execute Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of food and drug regulator, for corruption has further cast dark clouds over its tainted reputation worldwide.

This isn’t for the first time that questions around the world have been raised against its authoritarian rules or judgments; China has a long account of atrocious verdicts that have marred its voyage to be converted into the undisputed economic power of the world. China’s enthusiasm for capital punishment has long been a target for international criticism of its human rights record.

• China executes more people than the rest of the world combined.

• According to Amnesty International, a human-rights watchdog, as many as 10,000 people are killed by the state each year.

• Amnesty International counted at least 1,770 executions in 2006 and the real total could be as high as 8,000.

• Freedom of expression is severely curtailed, torture is rampant and systematic, and executions are carried out after unfair trials.

• Thousands of Falun Gong supporters are locked up for practicing a banned religion and Tibetans in Chinese custody are tortured and beaten.

• At present, at least 17 bishops of Catholic underground churches are missing or have been arrested or forced into living under segregation.

• Last year, about 650 pastors of house churches were arrested and many churches were demolished.

• The gloomiest facet, which may look even the atrocities of the dark ages small, is that executed prisoners are the principal source of supply of body organs for medical transplantation purposes in China, generating a handsome revenue for government from this inhumane trading.

Moreover, the Chinese people are deprived of the basic right to freedom of speech or expression. Its citizens are not free to express their views liberally, especially on government and the constitution.

• An unofficial report reveals that presently there are at least 31 journalists and 51 online authors serving prison sentences in China.

• China’s Ministry of Public Security has appointed more than 30,000 Internet police officers to censor the online speech or articles of the common people.

Reason for the high rates of execution

One area in which the situation in China is both unacceptable and self-defeating is the application of the death penalty. The major reason for the high rates of execution is that Chinese allows the death penalty to be imposed for such non-violent crimes as stealing, tax fraud, accepting bribes, and drug trafficking.

Is there any improvement?

Encouragingly, China has recently showed some reaction on the issue of the death penalty. Reports of growing debate about the death penalty among China’s legal community and some amplification of the legal system been coming from time to time, but this hardly goes the distance.

In April 2001, the vice-president of the Beijing 2008 bid committee, Liu Jingmin, said, ‘By allowing Beijing to host the Games you will help the development of human rights’ and IOC executive director Francois Carrard believed, ‘Seven years from now we will see many changes’. Since then, nothing much has actually changed. The over optimistic gamble that IOC took six years ago now appears to be a foolish bid.

As regards China’s holding of human rights exhibitions, they represent nothing but the sheer hypocrisy of the Chinese government to dodge its true face of human rights maltreatment.

Will world be ready to make ties with a tyrant superpower?

Human rights prove to be the deadlock that world face when it comes to do business with a tyrant. The nations trading with China will undoubtedly ask that is the promotion of human rights being trampled underfoot?

Any future partnership, be it political, economic or social, with China would be like being friends with a neighbor that you know beats his family members every night.

With a campaign to ’strike hard’ against crime and devoid of political democracy, freedom of religion and speech, there can never be true human rights in China.