Capital punishment in China is a legal penalty. It is commonly applied for murder and drug trafficking, although it is also a legal penalty for various other offenses. Executions are carried out by lethal injection or by shooting. In a survey conducted by the New York Times in 2014, it was found the death penalty retained widespread support in Chinese society. The use of capital punishment is active in most East Asian countries and territories, including Japan, North Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Taiwan. According to Amnesty International, China executes more people than all other countries combined. The exact numbers of executions and death sentences are considered a state secret by China, and are not publicly available. According to the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S.-based organization, the estimated number of executions has declined steadily in the twenty-first century, from 12,000 each year to 2,400. Although in 2022, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty announced that since 2007, at least 8,000 people were executed in China per year. Since 2006, the Chinese government has taken effective measures in order to limit use of the death penalty, proclaiming that it is doing this with the aim of completely abolishing it. Capital punishment in China should not be confused with death sentence with reprieve, which is a form of lenient sentencing that is handed down by Chinese courts as frequently as, or more often than, actual death sentences. Death sentence with reprieve is used to emphasize the seriousness of the crime and the mercy of the court, and is sometimes inaccurately added to the number of actual death sentences. Historical background Capital punishment was one of the classical Five Punishments of China's dynastic period. In Chinese philosophy, capital punishment was supported by the Legalists, but its application was tempered by the Confucians, who preferred rehabilitation and mercy over capital punishment. Confucius did not oppose capital punishment absolutely, but did take the view that in a well-ordered society based on moral persuasion, capital punishment would become unnecessary. During China's early dynasties, capital punishment and amputation were predominant among the five punishments. Later, amputation became less common, but capital punishment and corporal punishment remained. There was wide variability in the number of types of capital offences over time. Under the Punishments of Lu (Lu Xing), written sometime in the Warring States period (475-221 BCE), there were 200 capital offences. The Tang Code (653