Twenty-seven officials in China have been "penalised" for the wrongful execution of a teenager 20 years ago, state news agency Xinhua reported late Sunday.

Hugjiltu was 18 in 1996 when he was sentenced and put to death for the rape and murder of a woman in the toilet of a textile factory in Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In 2014 Hugjiltu was finally exonerated after another man, Zhao Zhihong, confessed to the crime and was in turn convicted and sentenced to death.

"One of the blacklisted officials responsible for the wrongful conviction of Huugjiltu, Feng Zhiming, was suspected of job-related crimes and was subject to further investigation," Xinhua reported authorities as saying in a statement.

Feng, a former deputy chief with the public security bureau in Hohhot, could face prosecution, Xinhua added.

The other 26 -- among them police officers and court officials -- "received administrative penalties including admonitions and record of demerit", Xinhua said without giving further detail.

The case has highlighted the shortcomings in China's Communist Party-controlled legal system, where acquittals are extremely rare -- 99.93 percent of defendants in criminal cases were found guilty in 2013, according to official statistics.

The use of force to extract confessions remains widespread in the country and defendants often do not have effective defence in criminal trials, leading to regular miscarriages of justice.

China to execute two for killing British monk: report
Beijing (AFP) Feb 1, 2016 - China has sentenced two men to death for stabbing to death a British monk who founded Europe's first Tibetan monastery over a financial dispute, state media said.

Akong Tulku Rinpoche, co-founder of Scotland's Samye Ling monastery, was found dead with multiple stab wounds at his home in the southwestern city of Chengdu in 2013.

A court in the city sentenced two men, named in Chinese as Tudeng Gusang and Tsering Banjue, to death for the murders of Akong and two other men, while an accomplice was sentenced to three years in jail, the state-run China News Service reported late Sunday.

It cited authorities as saying that Gusang, who had worked at the Scottish monastery, and Banjue had stabbed Akong, his nephew and a driver to death in a dispute over a 2.7 million yuan ($410,000) payment.

The verdict, posted by the court on social media, said the murders were "brutal" and that the suspects would be "treated severely in accordance with the law".

Britain said in a statement that it communicated its opposition to the death penalty to Beijing.

Akong, who was in his early 70s, took British citizenship after fleeing Tibet in 1959, and founded the facility in rolling Scottish hills in 1967.

He had the title of Rinpoche, an honorific given to the most respected teachers in Tibetan Buddhism, and his monastery said at the time of his killing that he had been "assassinated".

The institution was a pilgrimage site for artists and musicians including Leonard Cohen as well as senior Tibetan monks including the Dalai Lama.

Despite fleeing China, Akong had maintained a relationship with authorities in Beijing, regularly returning to Tibetan regions.

Many Tibetans say that China represses their religious freedom and culture. Beijing says it has brought massive investment to the relatively undeveloped region.

Rights groups say China executes more people than the rest of the world combined, though the annual number sentenced to death has declined significantly over the past decade. Beijing regards the figure as a state secret and does not release it.

The British embassy in Beijing said it was aware of the outcome of the trial, adding: "The British government maintains its longstanding opposition to the death penalty, and has formally communicated this to the Chinese government."