> The US is the third-largest nation by population. It stands to reason its prison population should be in the top three.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world (that's prisoner:population ratio.) And there's a big gap between the US and #2, and a bigger gap between #2 and #3.

> China executes many of its prisoners.

Not really, maybe around a tenth of a percent annually. It has no significant effect on the statistics (leaving out political prisoners from the count does, but even correcting for that China wouldn't be anywhere close to the US.)

China has 1.7m prisoners and executes single-digit thousands each year. With those numbers, the fact that it "executes many of its prisoners" is immaterial for its incarceration rate vs the US (maybe those China #s aren't accurate, I can't be sure).

China also has "re-education camps". The numbers are unknown but the estimate for the Xinjiang re-education camps alone are estimated to hold 1.5 million. [1] So I doubt the 1.7 million number -- or, if accurate, it must discount China's various "re-education" camps and other involuntary political holding facilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

Sure. I'm not defending China or taking these numbers at face value.

But even if the 1.5m in Xinjiang is true, China is still significantly below the US in terms of incarceration rate. And it's sad that that's the comparison we're making.

I wouldn't trust the china stats either, but looking at a stats like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... I think it's still clear that USA is a outlier and that this is a problem.