km alert line is the responsibility of the local police. The public is generally not allowed to view the execution. The role of the executioner was fulfilled in the past by the People's Armed Police soldiers. In recent times, the People's Courts’ judicial police officers () assumed this role. China commonly employs two methods of execution. Since 1949, the most common method has been execution by firing squad, which has been largely superseded by lethal injection, using the same three-drug cocktail pioneered by the United States, introduced in 1996. Execution vans are unique to China, however. Lethal injection is more commonly used for "economic crimes", such as corruption, while firing squads are used for more common crimes like murder. In 2010, Chinese authorities moved to have lethal injection become the dominant form of execution; in some provinces and municipalities, it is now the only legal form of capital punishment. The Dui Hua foundation notes that it is impossible to ascertain whether these guidelines are closely followed, as the method of execution is rarely specified in published reports. Reform Chinese authorities have recently been pursuing measures to reduce the number of crimes punishable by death, and limit how often the death penalty is utilized. In 1996, the government made lethal injection a legal method of execution. The Supreme People's Court distributed the execution kits, developed by the China Academy of Medical Science Pharmaceutical Institute, and the first experiments occurred in 1997. Since 2006, under global pressures, China has embarked on significant reforms on the death penalty system. In 2011, China abolished the death penalty for 13 crimes in Amendment VIII to the Criminal Law of PRC, which was the most important amendment passed since 1997. The National People's Congress Standing Committee adopted an amendment to reduce the number of capital crimes from 68 to 55. According to "The Death Penalty in China: Reforms and Its Future", the 13 crimes (19% of the total number of crimes punishable through death) were: "smuggling of cultural relics; smuggling of precious metals; smuggling of precious animals or their products; smuggling of ordinary freight and goods; fraud connected with negotiable instruments; fraud connected with financial instruments; fraud connected with letters of credit; false invoicing for tax purposes; forging and selling value-added tax invoices; larceny; instructing in criminal methods; excavating and robbing ancient cultural sites or ancient tombs, and excavating and robbing fossil hominids and fossil vertebrate