The landscape of crime and punishment in the People's Republic of China has undergone dramatic changes in the past six decades. While prereform China has been regarded as a “crime‐free” society in terms of street crime, the crime rate has soared in the recent three decades due to rapid industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. Along with the rising street crime, white‐collar crime has also become rampant against a background of corruption, money‐worship, and moral anomie. China's incarceration rate is around the world average, but its wide use of the death penalty makes it one of the most punitive countries in the world. Its reliance on labor as a tool of rehabilitation has both roots in traditional Chinese culture and recent communist revolution. Although China is still criticized for many of its practice for violation of human rights in punishment, some progresses have been made in the recent decade such as abolishment of re‐education through labor system, limiting the use of public sentence rally, and reduction of death‐penalty usage.