10,000 criminals executed per year in China says delegate

China sentences to death and immediately executes about 10,000 convicted criminals every year, said a delegate who sought to curb the practice in an appeal to the nation's just closed parliamentary session.

"Every year China has nearly 10,000 cases of the death penalty that result in immediate execution. This is about five times more than all the other death penalty cases from other nations combined," said Chen Zhonglin, a National People's Congress (NPC) delegate from Chongqing municipality.

Chen's statement, in the China Youth Daily, is believed to be the first time that such a number has appeared in the state-controlled press.

Executions have traditionally been carried out with a bullet to the back of the neck, but recently the state has resorted to lethal injections administered in mobile execution vans parked outside court houses.