US presidents regularly issue pardons, Chinese presidents don’t – but could that change?
- Donald Trump, like other presidents before him, has pardoned prisoners in the waning weeks of his presidential term. In China pardons happen much less often
- Xi Jinping has twice issued pardons, the first since Mao’s era, and legal experts say China should consider regularising presidential pardons
In his final weeks in office, US President Donald Trump has issued a wave of controversial pardons to family members, close allies and Blackwater guards who killed Iraqi civilians.
But controversial presidential pardons are hardly unique for outgoing presidents. US President Bill Clinton pardoned 176 people on his final day in office in 2001, including his brother. He received harsh blowback for the decision.
In China, executive pardons work differently and are granted much less often. Since the ruling Communist Party took power in 1949, the government has only issued special pardons, which can cover multiple people, in nine of the past 70 years, two of which took place in the past five years. There were no pardons issued between 1975 and 2015.
I think China should expand [special pardons] and make them part of a regular judicial process, instead of issuing them only on special occasions
In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a special pardon that made him the first leader of China to use the power since Mao Zedong. He issued another pardon in 2019. Xi’s pardons have led some legal experts in China to believe that the country might start to issue pardons more regularly and systematically.
Unlike the US, where pardon applications are usually directed to the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department to review and investigate, China does not have a dedicated organisation to handle executive pardons.
Legal scholars, including Yin Jianfeng, a criminal law professor at Beijing Normal University, argue that the absence of a dedicated agency to review special cases had hindered the country’s pardon process.
