List of countries by incarceration rate
China. The rate of 118 is for sentenced prisoners in 2015 in Ministry of Justice prisons only. World Prison Brief: "1,649,804 [prisoners] at mid-2015 (via Asian and Pacific Conference of Correctional Administrators - sentenced prisoners in Ministry of Justice prisons only, excluding pre-trial detainees and those held in administrative detention). The Deputy Procurator-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate reported in 2009 that, in addition to the sentenced prisoners, more than 650,000 were held in detention centres In China. If this was still correct in mid-2015 the total prison population in China was at least 2,300,000. ... 118 [rate] based on an estimated national population of 1.4 billion at mid-2015 (from United Nations figures) – sentenced prisoners in Ministry of Justice prisons only. (A total prison population of 2,300,000 would raise the prison population rate to 164 per 100,000.)" See also: Re-education through labor and Laogai.
Human rights in China
The number of political prisoners peaked during the Mao era and has been decreasing since then. From 1953 to 1975, around 26 to 39 percent of prisoners were incarcerated for political reasons. By 1980, the percentage of prisoners incarcerated for political reasons was only 13 percent, and this figure decreased to 0.5 percent in 1989 and 0.46 percent in 1997. 1997 is also the year that the Chinese Criminal Law was amended to replace counterrevolutionary crime with crimes endangering national security.