1 out of every 100 Americans are in Prison.

[killbotfactory]

34. That's not true at all, we have a staggeringly large prison population

We still end up with more prisoners, accounting for executions

Let's do the math:

"The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all

2,300,000,000 prisoners in the US plus about 40 executions per year for the US.

According to HRW: The death penalty and executions. The government does not publicize figures for the death penalty, but it is mandated for no fewer than 68 crimes. Though the exact number is a state secret, it is estimated that as many as 10,000 executions are carried out each year.
http://china.hrw.org/agenda_for_reform

10,000 suspected executions plus:

"China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison." -NYT

So we have:

China: 1,600,000 + 10,000 suspected executions.
US: 2,300,000 + 40 executions

So, unless China is actually executing 700,000 more people than estimated, that is not the reason for their lower prison population. And these are just raw numbers.

China has a population of over a billion people
US has a population of over 300 million

If China imprisoned people at the rate we do, they would have close to 10 million people in jail. You will only arrive at that number if you include the estimated population of forced labor camps in China.

That the US has a prison population comparable to China with it's huge forced labor camps is atrocious. These are not good numbers, no matter how anyone tries to shrug them off.