Chinese law is very ambiguous about the grounds for the court to decide whether a death sentence with immediate execution is warranted. In a capital case, if the immediate execution of the defendant “is not necessary” the court may impose a suspended death sentence. The death sentence is suspended for two years after which the court will decide whether to commute the sentence to life imprisonment or carry out the execution. Under the criminal law a suspended death sentence will normally be commuted to either life imprisonment or a fixed term imprisonment of 25 years provided that the prisoner has not committed any intentional crimes in the two-year period (CL.17 Art.50). In the Ninth Amendment to the Criminal Law this was amended to specify that prisoners with suspended death sentences would only be subject to executions if they committed crimes in “heinous circumstances” (qingjie e’lie). In the most recent amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law, in October 2018, the revisions have raised the bar for execution where those given a two-year suspension of the death penalty commit a further offence. In future only intentional crimes, committed in the most heinous circumstances, will result in the enforcement of the death penalty (CPL.18 Art.261). Once the suspended death sentence has been commuted the prisoner will, normally, be eligible for periodic sentence reductions or parole. As courts grapple, in individual cases, with deciding between the death penalty with immediate execution and the option of the suspended death sentence, the criminal law now allows the court to restrict the possibility of sentence reductions or parole in cases of recidivism and violent offences (CL.17 Art.50). The Eighth Amendment to the Criminal Law (2011) increased the minimum tariff for the suspended death sentence and life imprisonment. Prisoners who were given a suspended death sentence later commuted to life and then eligible for further commutation must now serve a minimum of 15 years. The Eighth Amendment also introduced the suspended death sentence with limited or restricted commutation. The revision was intended to address concerns that, in some cases, the suspended death sentence was too lenient while execution would have been too harsh. Under these new sentences a prisoner may not be released until after serving a minimum period of 20 or 25 years. The new sentence may be used for those convicted of violent crimes as well as some recidivists. This use of the suspended death sentence for murder, without the possibility of a sentence reduction, is cited approvingly in one of the Guiding Cases. Michelle Miao has noted that drug offenders are not the main target for these restrictions on the use of parole, although drug crime is understood to represent a large percentage of executions.14 The Ninth Amendment (2015) to the Criminal Law introduced a further restriction on the use of the suspended death sentence. This new sentence is a two-year suspension of execution without the possibility of any commutation. It is, Miao argues, a harsher sentence than Life Without Parole (LWOP) since the prisoner spends the first two years under the threat of execution. This sentence is currently restricted to corruption cases. There has been speculation in Chinese legal circles that this new sentencing option may signal interest in using life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty for other offences. An “Interpretation of Several Issues on the Application of Law for Restricting 14 Miao, Michelle. ‘Death-Eligible Drug Offenders in China.’ American Journal of Comparative Law. Volume 67, Issue 2, p.327–382. June 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avz017 14