Yao Jiaxin, the 21-year-old music student who stabbed a young mother to death after hitting her with his car, was executed last Tuesday. His sentence prompted another round of discussion over the increasingly controversial use of the death penalty.

China executes more criminals than any other nation in the world, but the eighth amendment to China's Criminal Law, which came into effect on May 1 last year, abolished the death penalty for 13 crimes, including smuggling relics and burglary, and abolished capital punishment for anyone over 75.

The pilot move was the first step in the gradual abolishment of death sentence.

The debate about capital punishment has raged worldwide since the 18th century, but since the 1960s, the abolitionists have been clearly on the ascendant.

An increasing number of countries and regions have abolished death penalty, although a few reintroduced it later. No less than 111 countries and regions have ended the use of capital punishment, either legally or in practice. An average of three nations have abolished capital punishment every year since 1990. The Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macao have already abolished it.

The US and Japan are the only two developed nations which retain the death penalty, although the US suspended it from 1961 to 1971. Austria has abolished and reintroduced the death penalty no less than five times, and Italy, Switzerland, and the Philippines also abolished, reintroduced, and then re-abolished capital punishment.

In academic circles, particularly in the legal field, support for abolishment of capital punishment has become the mainstream. The key reason is that statistical evidence shows the death penalty does not reduce the frequency of severe crimes.

The death penalty cut off criminals' possibility of correcting their wrongdoings and making a fresh start.

Canceling death sentence helps school people to respect and revere life, reduce the inhuman killings and eliminate the possibility of murdering innocent people due to defects in the legal system. It also ties in with the overall trend of global criminal law.