The number of people sentenced to death by Chinese courts is continuing to fall following legal reform, state media said today.
International rights groups had estimated China executes between 5,000 and 12,000 people a year, more than any other country.
But China has been slowly reforming the death penalty system after several high-profile wrongful convictions raised public anger.
On January 1st, the Supreme People's Court took back its power of final approval on death penalties, relinquished to provincial high courts in a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s.
"Among the death penalty cases the Supreme People's Court reviewed from January to July, a relatively large proportion was not given approval," Jiang Xingchang, vice president of the top court, said.
The approval rate had been increasing as a percentage of all death penalty cases, but it only reflected the improved quality of initial trials by local courts, Mr Jiang said.
Mr Jiang said the number of Chinese sentenced to death in 2006 was the smallest in about ten years and that the figure continued to drop in the first half of 2007. He did not give figures.