This book presents a detailed account of Chinese netizens’ opinions on death penalty cases. It is a continuation of the two authors’ well-received prior works on the death penalty and empirical criminology of China. China is the world leader in the application of the death penalty, in terms of both death sentences handed down and executions per year. In fact, China executes more people each year than the rest of the world combined. Government officials often justify the use of the death penalty by stating that the Chinese people overwhelmingly support it, and the law should respect their will. Surprisingly, in stark contrast to the importance of the issue, little empirical evidence has been published on the actual public opinion in China. Chinese Netizens’ Opinions on Death Sentences fills this gap in the literature, and it is the most important book surveying public punitive attitudes in China to have been published in recent years.

Bin Liang and Jianhong Liu used a unique approach to gathering their research materials. They searched a major internet news channel, sina.com.cn, and observed 63 news stories reporting death penalty cases in 2015. They then collected all netizens’ comments in the comment section that followed each news report. For the sample of 63 cases, 38,512 comments were gathered. These materials were then examined in depth to analyse netizens’ attitudes.

The central argument of the book is that the claim of “overwhelming public support” made by the Chinese government is problematic, as it fails to identify the diversity and complexity of public opinion. The book seeks to provide additional nuance to enrich the understanding of Chinese public opinion on capital punishment. Few of the book's specific findings will surprise anyone who is familiar with netizen behaviour in China, but that does not seem to be its objective. Instead, the book's contribution comes in its comprehensiveness: it provides arguably the most vivid and thorough description in any language on the types and contents of public comments on death sentences in China.

Following an introductory chapter, the book discusses the diversity of public opinion on the death penalty in China. The authors show that the opinions of Chinese netizens cover a broad range of topics, ranging from their positions on a particular death sentence and the parties involved in a particular case to their critical evaluation of China's criminal justice system and its professionals (chapter six returns to this and shows the comments in more detail); to their critique of the government and governmental officials; to their reflections on related social, systemic and structural issues (chapter seven discusses this topic at length); and to many others. By diversity, the authors also refer to the observation that, for many topics, netizens hold opposing views and provide a wide range of rationales (chapter three further illustrates this) and that their opinions change in relation to different factors, including type of crime, nature of defendant and victim, and the media reporting style (chapter five is devoted to this topic).

In a book mostly intended to provide a descriptive account of public punitive attitudes, the authors seemingly refrain from being drawn into excessive theoretical discussion or making normative judgments. But the lack of a strong theoretical motivation to their many empirical inquiries seems to be a major weakness in the book. Only in one of the last chapters (chapter eight) do the authors base their discussions on theoretical rather than mere empirical questions. This chapter analyses whether Chinese netizens’ comments and discussions online were, to use their language, rational or irrational. They cite Habermas's concept of communicative rationality to set out the standards for this, and they find examples of both rationality (e.g., case comparisons and policy suggestions) and irrationality, including personal attacks, calls to punish innocent people and forgo proper legal procedures, and discrimination. Readers may expect a more in-depth discussion of many relevant issues. For example, a total of 9,594 comments used “foul words” (personal attacks), representing 24.8 per cent of the total comments, and obscene language occurred in 55.6 per cent of all cases. If such a large proportion of comments come from netizens who are irrational, should we take them seriously? Further, if netizen irrationality is an important phenomenon by itself worth studying, what is the theoretical question that would motivate such a study, and what would be the normative implications?

One obvious limitation of the book concerns the representativeness of the sample it studies. As suggested by its title, the book focuses on netizens’ comments. But the authors use comments from only one internet media platform, sina.com, which can be likened to a Chinese version of yahoo.com. It is worth noting that the users on this site cannot be taken to represent the general netizen population; social media platforms such as Weibo and WeChat also attract a large share of internet users, who are in general younger and have a higher education level. Also, there is always a danger in generalizing what we learn from netizens to the general public, the majority of whom are silent. A very small share of the population posts comments online, and those who express their views in this environment tend to be extreme; both are factors that may bias any conclusion we draw from netizens who speak about netizens in general. Of course, using netizens’ comments was a conscious and prudent methodological choice of the authors, as there are nearly no other ways to gather detailed mass public opinion in a comprehensive manner.

Despite these limitations, this book is, all in all, an important contribution. Its description of its topic is exhaustive and reliable, and it is valuable for readers at all levels. It will be beneficial to anyone interested in the Chinese legal system and public opinion, and it is especially useful for introductory readers.