China:China, which kills more convicts than any other country, is planning to gradually reduce the number of executions, according to the country's top legal authorities.
A joint statement by the Supreme People's Court, the police, the justice ministry and the country's top prosecutor said there would be fewer public displays of condemned criminals, and police have been warned against the use of torture.
It is a step forward for prisoners' rights in China, but the new regulations do not promise a quick end to its liberal use of the death sentence.
China carries out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined. Amnesty International estimates that China executed at least 1,770 people in 2005 - about 80 per cent of the world's total.
Execution is carried out with a bullet to the back of the head, although lethal injection is being used more in some provinces.
But the real figure is thought to be much higher, probably about 10,000 people a year, according to both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Other estimates of China's annual executions range between 5,000 and 12,000.
"Our country still cannot abolish the death penalty but should gradually reduce its application," said the statement.
Non-violent crimes such as corruption and tax fraud as well as the traditional capital offences such as murder are among 68 crimes that can earn you the death penalty in China.
Since the start of this year, final authority in death sentences has been returned to the country's Supreme People's Court, reducing the authority of local courts, which tend to order more executions.
While the death penalty is very popular among the general population, there have been some calls for it to be less freely applied following widespread media reports about wrongful convictions which had been concealed.
A woman who was believed to have been murdered in the 1980s reappeared in 2005, 16 years after the man convicted of killing her was executed. The court had said the defendant confessed.
The new rules aim to stop the police torturing confessions from suspects.
They are being urged to be more careful in gathering evidence, and to use fingerprinting and DNA testing rather than beating a confession out of a suspect. They are also being urged to hand over all evidence to prosecutors, even if it includes proof of a suspect's innocence.
Under the new rules, executions should be publicly announced, but the practice of humiliating condemned prisoners by parading them through the streets, which still happens in some remote areas, is banned, as is "desecrating the corpse".