China issues the death penalty for a wide range of crimes from murder to economic corruption. These practices have met with strong criticism from other countries that view China's use of the death penalty as in defiance of basic human rights.

"Execution by lethal injection demonstrates tremendous progress in China's criminal judgment proceedings and due to our solid efforts, Zhejing Province is capable of carrying out a death penalty of this kind," Supreme Court director Ying Yong says.

"They will be able to better deal with the relationship between law enforcement and effective control of capital punishment," Ying says. "We won't be merciful with those who deserve the death penalty, but to those who haven't committed a grave crime, we won't carry out such a penalty."

China is taking aggressive measures to change its international image.

China has set up three new criminal tribunals under the Supreme People's Court to review provincial death sentence cases, which began operations on April 1 this year, according to a Xinhua report.

China also signed a repatriation deal with Spain on April 29 this year, which ensured that China would not punish corrupt officials who flee to Spain and are repatriated to China with the death penalty.