There's a lot of assumptions in your statement.

1. That death penalty is an effective deterrent.

2. That social hacking would be tried as corruption, or even at a level of corruption for the death penalty.

3. That China doesn't have a corruption problem already regardless of the potential penalty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_China (not saying this is the truth, just that you're making an assumption that not everyone agrees with)

In a system where social ranking determines opportunity, employment, and all other aspects of life - you better believe social hacking is going to happen.

If I bought large quantities of textbooks written by Party Authors and used them to support my tables and benches...would that lead to an execution for corruption or a higher CRO for ingenuity? ;)