China instated the death penalty for "particularly serious" cases involving supporters of Taiwanese independence. New judicial guidelines, entitled "Opinions on Punishing the Crimes of Splitting the Country & Inciting Splitting the Country by 'Taiwan Independence' Diehards," were jointly issued by... Read moreChina: death penalty for advocating ‘Taiwan independence’
I mean I think it makes sense to focus on the most severe possible punishment in this context.
That said, I did not find any mention of the death penalty in the linked page. I do not speak Chinese so I was relying on the translation feature in my browser, so I’m not sure if it was mistranslated, the article is wrong about that, or what. Curious if anyone has further information on this.
I used google’s webpage translation. It does mention death as a penalty, but it’s far from the only possible outcome.
OK so probably a translation issue. But to respond to your statement, if your city announced it would punish illegal parking with penalties ranging from 3 years imprisonment to fucking murder, which would you be more concerned with? And which would you rather local journalists make you aware of? Would you really be criticizing their clickbait headlines if they ran a similar story?
Like I said, focusing on the more severe possible punishment makes perfect sense in this context. Not to mention that all of the punishments are extremely excessive.
I never discounted the inclusion of the threat of death, I only commented on the fixation on it in that article. Of course the inclusion of the death penalty needs to be a part of the discussion.
We can spend the rest of forever discussing what-ifs and hypotheticals. I don’t think it does the original discussion justice to boil it down from the severity of secession to parking issues. I fear your simplification misrepresents the original discussion, as the nuance of the China-Taiwan situation cannot earnestly be recreated with parking violations in a city.
But yes, to answer your question, I do think that journalistic integrity is important at any level.
If you keep reading in that translated article linked in the original article, it says that if you change your stance and make an honest attempt to undo the damage you did, the charges may be dropped. So one could end up with no punishments at all.