China, which executes more people than any other country, is to hold open trials for a large number of death penalty appeals in an effort to better regulate executions, a legal scholar said yesterday. From the second half of 2006, all death penalty appeals which go to a provincial high court will be heard publicly, a departure from the usual practice of closed reviews and probes, said Liu Renwen, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The number of executions in China is a state secret, but Liu said he agreed with estimates in academic circles that the figure was likely to be about 8 000 a year. Rights groups have estimated the number at between 5 000 and 12 000.

With the judicial system under scrutiny after a shangam series of widely publicised wrongful convictions, the Supreme Court has also moved to reclaim its right to final review of death sentences, but Liu said the policy was meeting resistence from lower courts.

?Whether the Supreme Court can take this power back is still a question,? Liu told foreign correspondents. ?Local governments think it is a good tool to control public security. If they lose such power they think of course it would not be good,? he said. The top court has set up three branch courts to conduct reviews, a move officials say could cut executions by 30 percent.

But experts say it is still too short-staffed to handle all death penalty cases and, with its bid to curb lower courts? authority meeting opposition, Liu said making more death penalty trials public was another way of controlling the legal process for cases that could result in execution.

<B> Lindsay Beck </B>