Authorities have executed 22 people, mostly convicted robbers, and passed death sentences on two others, state-run media said.
They were shot immediately after the Higher People's Court in Hunan province affirmed their death sentences recently, Xinhua (the New China News Agency) said yesterday.
In a separate case, a Shanghai court ordered a death sentence for Gui Hongxin, a peasant from eastern Anhui province who stabbed and killed a worker during a robbery in July last year.
Another court in Hefei, Anhui, ordered the death sentence in May for a woman who ran a brothel.
Judges have been ordered to apply the liberally used death penalty even more frequently as part of a four-month-old crime crackdown.
Chinese leaders ordered the campaign in part to mollify public fears that crime was growing out of control.
