I've been spending a lot of time trying to gather my thoughts in order to compose a series of entires reflecting on the 15 months I spent living in various parts of China and just when I thought it impossible to find something positive to say about Chinese law, I discovered a newfound, yet bittersweet sense of appreciation:

POLICE in northeast China have detained a 32-year-old man suspected of sexually assaulting and killing more than 20 children. Gong Runbo is believed to have lured the children to his apartment in Jiamusi city in Heilongjiang province where he carried out the killings and often left the bodies to decompose, reports said.

He was only stopped on February 28, when a boy escaped and managed to alert the police, according to the report in the Beijing News. Officers sent to search Gong's apartment came across a gruesome scene of rotting bodies and scattered bones, it said. Four of the corpses were still in a somewhat intact state and showed signs of having been sexually abused before their deaths, according to the paper. Forensic evidence led police to conclude that perhaps more than 20 children had been killed in the apartment, it said.

The maximum punishment for murder in China is the death penalty.

Of course, I can also appreciate the fact that this sick imbecile will not spend the next 27 years appealing his sentence from Death Row and nor will his execution be delayed in order to ensure that it is carried out in a humane manner - a consideration his victims were not so fortunate to receive.