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Human rights in mainland China are periodically reviewed by the
United Nations Human Rights Committee The United Nations Human Rights Committee is a treaty body composed of 18 experts, established by a 1966 human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Committee meets for three four-week sessions per ...
(UNHRC), on which the
Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...
(CCP),
government of the People's Republic of China The Government of the People's Republic of China () is an authoritarian political system in the People's Republic of China under the exclusive political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It consists of legislative, executive, mili ...
(PRC) and various foreign governments and
human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
organizations have often disagreed. CCP and PRC authorities, their supporters, and other proponents claim that existing policies and enforcement measures are sufficient to guard against
human rights abuses Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of h ...
. However other countries and their authorities (such as the
United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...
,
Global Affairs Canada Global Affairs Canada (GAC; french: Affaires mondiales Canada; AMC)''Global Affairs Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (). is the department ...
, etc.), international
non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in ...
s (NGOs) including
Human Rights in China Human rights in mainland China are periodically reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), on which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and various foreign governments and ...
and
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...
, and citizens, lawyers, and
dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th ...
s inside the country, state that the authorities in
mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the China, People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming Island, Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territorie ...
regularly sanction or organize such abuses. Jiang Tianyong is the latest lawyer known for defending jailed critics of the
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...
. In the
709 crackdown The 709 Crackdown ( or 709案 '709 Case' for short) was a nationwide crackdown on Chinese lawyers and human rights activists instigated during the summer of 2015. It is known as the "709 crackdown" as it started on 9 July 2015. Yaqiu Wang of Hum ...
which began in 2015, more than 200 lawyers, legal assistants, and activists, including Jiang, were arrested ''and/or'' detained. Independent NGOs such as Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
, as well as foreign governmental institutions such as the U.S. State Department, regularly present evidence of the PRC violating the freedoms of
speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...
, movement, and
religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
of its citizens and of others within its
jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...
. Authorities in the PRC claim to define human rights differently, so as to include economic and social as well as political rights, all in relation to " national culture" and the level of development of the country. Authorities in the PRC, referring to this definition, claim that human rights are being improved. They do not, however, use the definition used by most countries and organizations. PRC politicians have repeatedly maintained that, according to the PRC Constitution, the "
Four Cardinal Principles The Four Cardinal Principles () were stated by Deng Xiaoping in March 1979, during the early phase of Reform and Opening-up, and are the four issues for which debate was not allowed within the People's Republic of China. The Four Cardinal Princi ...
" supersede citizenship rights. PRC officials interpret the primacy of the Four Cardinal Principles as a legal basis for the arrest of people who the government says seek to overthrow the principles. Chinese nationals whom authorities perceive to be in compliance with these principles, on the other hand, are permitted by the PRC authorities to enjoy and exercise all the rights that come with citizenship of the PRC, provided they do not violate PRC laws in any other manner. Numerous
human rights groups A human rights group, or human rights organization, is a non-governmental organization which advocates for human rights through identification of their violation, collecting incident data, its analysis and publication, promotion of public awarenes ...
have publicized human rights issues in mainland China that they consider the government to be mishandling, including: the death penalty (
capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
), the
one-child policy The term one-child policy () refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. That initiative was part of a much bro ...
(in which China had made exceptions for
ethnic minorities The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
prior to abolishing it in 2015), the political and legal status of
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...
, and neglect of
freedom of the press Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exerc ...
in mainland China. Other areas of concern include the lack of legal recognition of human rights and the lack of an independent judiciary,
rule of law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannic ...
, and
due process Due process of law is application by state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to the case so all legal rights that are owed to the person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual per ...
. Further issues raised in regard to human rights include the severe lack of
worker's rights Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influ ...
(in particular the ''hukou'' system which restricts migrant labourers' freedom of movement), the absence of labour unions independent of the CCP and allegations of discrimination against rural workers and
ethnic minorities The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
, as well as the lack of religious freedom rights groups have highlighted repression of the
Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...
,
Tibetan Buddhist Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...
, Uyghur
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
, and
Falun Gong Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.Junker, Andrew. 2019. ''Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora'', pp. 23–24, 33, 119 ...
religious groups. Some Chinese activist groups are trying to expand these freedoms, including Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Chinese human rights attorneys who take on cases related to these issues, however, often face harassment, disbarment, and arrest.
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...

Walking on Thin Ice
28 April 2008.
Amnesty International
"China: No Rule of Law when Defence Lawyers Cannot Perform their Legitimate Role,"
5 October 2010
According to the Amnesty International report from 2016/2017 the government continued to draft and enact a series of new
national security National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military att ...
laws that presented serious threats to the protection of human rights. The nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists continued throughout the year. Activists and human rights defenders continued to be systematically subjected to monitoring,
harassment Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral ...
, intimidation, arrest and detention.Amnesty International report from 2016/2017
/ref> The report continues that
police The police are a Law enforcement organization, constituted body of Law enforcement officer, persons empowered by a State (polity), state, with the aim to law enforcement, enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citize ...
detained increasing numbers of human rights defenders outside of formal detention facilities, sometimes without access to a
lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solicit ...
for long periods, exposing the detainees to the risk of
torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts ...
and other ill-treatment. Booksellers,
publishers Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, news ...
, activists and a
journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
who went missing in neighboring countries in 2015 and 2016 turned up at detention in China, causing concerns about China's law enforcement agencies acting outside their jurisdiction. In June 2020, nearly 50 UN independent experts raised wide-ranging concerns over the repression of “
fundamental freedoms Fundamental rights are a group of rights that have been recognized by a high degree of protection from encroachment. These rights are specifically identified in a constitution, or have been found under due process of law. The United Nations' Susta ...
” by the Chinese government. They highlighted the collective repression of the population, especially religious and ethnic minorities, to the detention of lawyers, prosecution and
human rights defender A human rights defender or human rights activist is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. They can be journalists, environmentalists, whistleblowers, trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, housing camp ...
s. They also denounced "impunity for excessive use of force by police, the alleged use of chemical agents against protesters, the alleged
sexual harassment Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions fr ...
and assault of women protesters in police stations, and the alleged harassment of health care workers".


Legal system

Since the legal reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s, the CCP has officially moved to embrace the language of the
rule of law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannic ...
and to establish a modern
court system A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accorda ...
. In the process, it has enacted thousands of new laws and regulations, and has begun training more legal professionals. The concept of 'rule of law' has been emphasized in the
constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these pr ...
, and the ruling party has embarked on campaigns to promote the idea that citizens have protection under the law. At the same time, however, a fundamental contradiction exists in the constitution itself, in which the Communist Party insists that its authority supersedes that of the law.Eva Pils
'Asking the Tiger for His Skin: Rights Activism in China'
Fordham International Law Journal, Volume 30, Issue 4 (2006).
Thus, the constitution enshrines the rule of law, yet simultaneously stresses the principle that the '
leadership Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets v ...
of the Communist Party' holds primacy over the law. Even some Chinese themselves have only a vague conception of the priority of the CCP leadership over constitutional and legal authority. The judiciary is not
independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...
of the Communist Party, and judges face political pressure; in many instances, private party committees dictate the outcome of cases. In this way, the CCP effectively controls the judiciary through its influence. This influence has produced a system often described as 'rule ''by'' law' (alluding to the CCP's power), rather than rule ''of'' law.
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

Rule by Law: A Series
2005.
Moreover, the legal system lacks protections for
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
, and often fails to uphold due process. This is opposed to a system of checks and balances or
separation of powers Separation of powers refers to the division of a state's government into branches, each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches. The typi ...
. Foreign experts estimate that in 2000, there were between 1.5 million and 4 million people in prison in mainland China. The PRC does not allow outsiders to inspect the penal system.


Civil liberties


Freedom of speech

Although the 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the " subversion of state power" and "protection of state secrets" clauses in their law system to imprison those who criticize the government. Another crime used to jail critics such as
Sun Dawu Sun Dawu (; born June 1954) is a Chinese billionaire. He co-owns the Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group with his wife, Liu Huiru (刘会茹). The Dawu Group was originally focused on agriculture and gradually broadened its scope to includ ...
is " picking quarrels and provoking trouble". During the
2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Nat ...
, the government promised to issue permits authorizing people to protest in specifically designated "protest parks" in Beijing. However, a majority of the applications were withdrawn, suspended, or vetoed, and the police detained some of the people who applied. References to certain controversial events and political movements, as well as access to web pages considered by the PRC authorities to be "dangerous" or "threatening to state security", are blocked on the internet in the PRC; and content disputed by or critical of PRC authorities is absent from many publications, and subject to the control of the CCP within mainland China. Laws in the People's Republic of China forbid the advocacy of separation of any part of its claimed territory from mainland China, or public challenge to the CCP's domination of the government of China. An unsanctioned protest during the Olympics by seven foreign activists at the China Nationalities Museum, protesting for a free Tibet and blocking the entrance, was cleared and the protesters deported. Foreign Internet search engines including Microsoft
Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...
,
Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...
, and Google China have come under criticism for aiding these practices.
Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...
, in particular, stated that it will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its Chinese customers from the authorities. In 2005, after Yahoo! China provided its personal emails and
IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
es to the Chinese government, reporter Shi Tao was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years for releasing an internal Communist Party document to an overseas Chinese democracy site.
Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debi ...
president Josh Silverman said it was "common knowledge" that
TOM Online TOM Online is a mobile Internet company in China, operating the popular Chinese-language Internet portal (www.tom.com) and offering a variety of online and mobile services, including wireless internet and online advertising. It is a subsidiary of ...
had "established procedures to...block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities"."China 'spying on Skype messages'"
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...
. 3 October.2008.
In June 2020, the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...
demanded an immediate release of Yu Wensheng, who after two years in detention, was sentenced on charges of “inciting subversion of state power”, for writing an open letter demanding constitutional reforms. On 24 July 2020, the CCP expelled an outspoken and influential property tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang, who denounced the country's authoritarian leader,
CCP general secretary The general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party () is the head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Since 1989, the CCP general secretary has been the paramount leader ...
Xi Jinping Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, ...
. He went missing in March after criticizing Xi, and later his case was passed to the judiciary system for criminal investigation. On 29 July 2020, the
Chinese government The Government of the People's Republic of China () is an authoritarian political system in the People's Republic of China under the exclusive political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It consists of legislative, executive, m ...
begun applying the new National Security Law to suppress peaceful speech, curtail academic freedom, and generate a chilling effect on the fundamental freedoms in
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
. On 11 August 2020,
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
demanded Chinese authorities on the basis of security law to immediately release the 10 democracy supporters and activists arrested on 10 August and drop all vague “national security” charges imposed on them. In June 2020, Cai Xia, a retired professor of CCP's Central Party School, criticized Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the CCP, called him a "mafia boss" and the ruling Communist Party a "political zombie". In a 20-minute audio on social networking sites, she said that everyone is Xi's slave, and there is no human rights and rule of law, She suggested that Xi should retire. On 17 August 2020, Cai Xia was expelled from the CCP's Central Party School and her retirement pensions were cancelled.


Freedom of speech during Coronavirus crisis of 2020

During the Coronavirus crisis of 2020, the PRC is reported to have suppressed the news of the virus and also attempted to downplay and under report deaths. There are reports of detentions, assaults, torture and disappearances of whistleblowers including activists, doctors, lawyers, students and businessmen who created and uploaded videos of overburdened hospitals and high number of deaths.
Some of these whistleblowers were: * Li Wenliang, a Chinese medical doctor who worked at Wuhan Central Hospital and issued emergency warnings to other hospitals and doctors about the new disease. He was arrested and accused of "making false comments" that had "severely disturbed the social order". *
Fang Bin Fang Bin () is a Chinese businessman, citizen journalist and whistleblower who used YouTube and WeChat to broadcast images of Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was arrested several times between February 1 and 9, 2020. Personal life Fa ...
, a Chinese businessman, citizen journalist and whistleblower who broadcast images of Wuhan during the Coronavirus crisis. He has been missing since 9 February 2020. *
Chen Qiushi Chen Qiushi (born September 1985), also known as Steven Chen, is a Chinese lawyer, activist, and citizen journalist who covered the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests and the COVID-19 pandemic which included criticism of the government response. He ...
, a Chinese lawyer, activist, and citizen journalist who covered the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests and the COVID-19 pandemic and has been missing since 6 February 2020. * Li Zehua, a Chinese citizen journalist, rapper and YouTuber who was trying to trace missing lawyer and citizen journalist Chen Qiushi. He has been missing since 26 February 2020. * Chen Mei and El amogid Wei, activists who were sharing censored articles about the coronavirus outbreak on an online archive, have been noncontactable since 19 April 2020 * Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a Hong Kong virologist and whistleblower had to escape to the US, after she found large scale cover ups of the pandemic by Chinese authorities. She said that if she told her story of the coverup in China, she "will be disappeared and killed."
Independent journalist Zhang Zhan
was served a four-year prison sentence for "picking quarrels and provoking troubles," a charge she received after she flew to Wuhan following the COVID-19 outbreak. At the time, she knew she was risking her own safety and arrest, but she wanted to learn more about the COVID-19 situation and share her findings with others.


Freedom of the press

Critics argue that the CCP has failed to live up to its promises about the freedom of the mainland Chinese media.
Freedom House Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Wi ...
consistently ranks China as 'Not Free' in its annual press freedom survey, including the 2014 report. PRC journalist He Qinglian says that the PRC's media are controlled by directives from the Communist Party's propaganda department, and are subjected to intense monitoring which threatens punishment for violators, rather than to pre-publication censorship. In 2008,
ITV News ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British television network ITV. ITV has a long tradition of television news. Independent Television News (ITN) was founded to provide news bulletins for the network in 1955, and has since con ...
reporter John Ray was arrested while covering a 'Free Tibet' protest. International media coverage of Tibetan protests only a few months before the Beijing Olympics in 2008 triggered a strong reaction inside China. Chinese media practitioners took the opportunity to argue with propaganda authorities for more media freedom: one journalist asked, 'If not even Chinese journalists are allowed to report about the problems in Tibet, how can foreign journalists know about the Chinese perspective about the events?' Foreign journalists also reported that their access to certain websites, including those of human rights organizations, was restricted.
International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swis ...
president
Jacques Rogge Jacques Jean Marie Rogge, Count Rogge (, ; 2 May 1942 – 29 August 2021) was a Belgian sports administrator and physician who served as the eighth President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 2001 to 2013. In 2013, Rogge bec ...
stated at the end of the 2008 Olympic Games that 'The regulations overning foreign media freedom during the Olympicsmight not be perfect but they are a sea-change compared to the situation before. We hope that they will continue.' The Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) issued a statement during the Olympics that 'despite welcome progress in terms of accessibility and the number of press conferences within the Olympic facilities, the FCCC has been alarmed at the use of violence, intimidation and harassment outside. The club has confirmed more than 30 cases of reporting interference since the formal opening of the Olympic media center on 25 July, and is checking at least 20 other reported incidents.' Since the Chinese state continues to exert a considerable amount of control over media, public support for domestic reporting has come as a surprise to many observers. Not much is known about the extent to which the Chinese citizenry believe the official statements of the CCP, nor about which media sources they perceive as credible and why. So far, research on the media in China has focused on the changing relationship between media outlets and the state during the reform era. Nor is much known about how China's changing media environment has affected the government's ability to persuade media audiences. Research on political trust reveals that exposure to the media correlates positively with support for the government in some instances, and negatively in others. The research has been cited as evidence that the Chinese public believes propaganda transmitted to them through the news media, but also that they disbelieve it. These contradictory results can be explained by realizing that ordinary citizens consider media sources to be credible to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the extent to which media outlets have undergone reform. In 2012 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the Chinese government to lift restrictions on media access to the region and allow independent and impartial monitors to visit and assess conditions in Tibet. The Chinese government did not change its position. In March 2020, China expelled employees of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'', and ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' in response to U.S. treatment of state-owned Chinese media as employees of the Chinese government, requiring approval similar to diplomatic employees. China has periodically deported foreign journalists before. Ursula Gauthier, a journalist from France working for the media organization '' L'Obs'', was sent back to France after she commented on China's response to the Paris attacks that happened in November 2015. She noted that China's sympathetic stance wasn't "without ulterior motives." Gauthier had previously reported on China's treatment of the Uyghur ethnic group, many of whom believe in Islam. China often accuses Uyghur people of terrorism and has set up a system of camps, which they claim are "vocational training centers." However, those who have lived through the camps allege that the authorities torture, rape, and sexually abuse the prisoners as well as force them into unpaid labor and sterilize the women. Moreover, many experts and foreign policymakers consider the detentions arbitrary rather than linked to provable terrorist charges. As such, journalists such as Gauthier have been critical of China's actions. At the time of Gauthier's expulsion, she was the first journalist to be deported since China expelled Melissa Chan from Al Jazeera in 2015. Chan had reported on China's "black jails" and government land confiscation. Of her deportation, China Global Television Network's Yang Rui wrote, "We should shut up those who demonize China and send them packing," according to ''The Wall Street Journal''.


Information hyper-control

The 2020 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), shows that China is the world's biggest jailer of journalists. Mainland China, which is trying to establish a “new world media order,” maintains its system of information hyper-control, of which the negative effects for the entire world have been seen during the coronavirus public health crisis. It states that the PRC never stops enhancing its system of information hyper-control and persecution of dissident journalists and bloggers, and that further evidence of this came in February 2020, when it arrested two of its citizens for taking it upon themselves to cover the coronavirus crisis. The world's biggest jailer of journalists, China is currently holding around 100, of whom the vast majority are Uyghurs. On 29 May 2022, the U.S. expressed concern over China's "efforts to restrict and manipulate" the UN human rights chief's visit to the Xinjiang region. The conditions imposed by the Beijing authorities on Michelle Bachelet’s visit, did not enable a complete and independent assessment of the human rights environment in China.


Freedom of the Internet

More than sixty Internet regulations exist in mainland China and serve to monitor and control internet publication. These policies are implemented by provincial branches of state-owned Internet service providers, companies, and organizations. The apparatus of the PRC's and/or CCP's Internet control is considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country in the world. The Golden Shield includes the ability to monitor online chatting services and mail, identifying IPs and all of the person's previous communication, and then being able to lock in on the person's location—because a person will usually use the computer at home or at work – which enables the arrest to be carried out. Amnesty International notes that China "has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world" and Paris-based
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
stated in 2010 and 2012 that "China is the world's biggest prison for
netizens The term netizen is a portmanteau of the English words '' internet'' and ''citizen'', as in a "citizen of the net" or "net citizen". It describes a person actively involved in online communities or the Internet in general.< ...
." As an example of the censorship, in 2013, 24 years after the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Four ...
, online searches for the term 'Tiananmen Square' were still censored by Chinese authorities. According to the Amnesty International report the controls on the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
, mass media and
academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
were significantly strengthened. For instance, Google, YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia are banned in mainland China. Repression of
religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
activities outside of direct state control increased.CHINA 2016/2017
/ref>


Hukou system

The CCP came to power in the late 1940s and instituted a
command economy A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, p ...
. In 1958,
Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...
, the
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party The Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party () was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. The position was established at the 8th National Congress in 1945 and abolished at the 12th National Congress in 1982, bei ...
, adopted a residency permit system defining where people could work, and classified workers as rural or urban.Macleod, Calum
'China reviews "apartheid" for 900 m peasants'
''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'', 10 June 2001.
'China's apartheid-like household registration system, which was introduced in the 1950s, still divides the population into two distinct groups, urban and rural.' Chan, Anita & Senser, Robert A
'China's Troubled Workers'
, ''
Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy a ...
'', March / April 1997.
In this system, a worker who was seeking to move from the country to an urban area in order to take up non-agricultural work would have to apply for permission to do so through the relevant bureaucratic institutions. There is uncertainty, however, as to how strictly the system has been enforced. People who worked outside the region in which they were registered would not qualify for grain rations, employer-provided housing, or health care.David Pines, Efraim Sadka, Itzhak Zilcha, ''Topics in Public Economics: Theoretical and Applied Analysis'', Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 334. There were controls over education, employment, marriage and other areas of life. One reason which was cited for the instituting of this system was the desire to prevent the possible chaos which would be caused by predictable large-scale urbanization. As a part of the
one country, two systems "One country, two systems" is a constitutional principle of the People's Republic of China (PRC) describing the governance of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The constitutional principle was formulated in the earl ...
policy which was proposed by
Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. Aft ...
and accepted by the British and Portuguese governments, the
special administrative regions The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provincial-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Co ...
(SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau retained separate border control and immigration policies with the rest of the PRC. Chinese nationals had to gain permission from the government before they were allowed to travel to
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
or
Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
, but this requirement was officially abolished for each SAR after its respective handover. Since then, restrictions which have been imposed by the SAR governments have been the main factors which limit travel. In 2000 ''
The Washington Times ''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughou ...
'' reported that although migrant labourers play a major role in spreading wealth in Chinese villages, they are treated 'like second-class citizens by a system which is so discriminatory that it has been likened to
apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
.'Macleod, Calum and Macleod, Lijia '' China's migrants bear brunt of bias'', The Washington Times, 14 July 2000. Anita Chan also posits that the People's Republic of China's household registration and temporary residence permit system has created a situation which is analogous to the passbook system that was implemented in South Africa in order to control the supply and actions of cheap labourersChan, Anita, ''China's Workers under Assault: The Exploitation of Labor in a Globalizing Economy'', Introduction chapter, M.E. Sharpe. 2001, from underprivileged ethnic groups, as well as to control the quality and quantity of such labourers. In 2000, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy alleged that people of Han descent in Tibet have a far easier time acquiring the necessary permits to live in urban areas than ethnic Tibetans do. Abolition of this policy has been proposed in 11 provinces, mainly along the developed eastern coast. After a widely publicized incident in 2003, when a university-educated migrant died in Guangdong province, the law was changed in order to eliminate the possibility of summary arrest for migrant labourers. The Beijing law lecturer who exposed the incident said it spelt the end of the ''hukou'' system: he believed that in most smaller cities, the system had been abandoned, and it had 'almost lost its function' in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.Luard, Tim
'China rethinks peasant "apartheid
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...
, 10 November 2005.


Treatment of rural workers

In November 2005, Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the
University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a Public university, public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexande ...
, said that the ''hukou'' system was one of the most strictly enforced apartheid structures in modern world history. He stated, 'Urban dwellers enjoy a range of social, economic and cultural benefits while peasants, the majority of the Chinese population, are treated like second-class citizens.' The discrimination which was enforced by the ''hukou'' system became particularly onerous in the 1980s after hundreds of millions of migrant workers were forced out of state corporations, co-operatives and other institutions.'Chinese apartheid: Migrant labourers, numbering in the hundreds of millions, who have been ejected from state concerns and co-operatives since the 1980s as China instituted "socialist capitalism", have to have six passes before they are allowed to work in provinces other than their own. In many cities, private schools for migrant labourers are routinely closed down in order to discourage migration.' 'From politics to health policies: why they're in trouble', ''
The Star ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'', 6 February 2007.
Attempts to move to urban centers by workers who were classified as rural workers were tightly controlled by the Chinese bureaucracy, which enforced its control by denying them access to essential goods and services such as grain rations, housing, and health care, and regularly closing down migrant workers' private schools. The ''hukou'' system also enforced
pass laws In South Africa, pass laws were a form of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, manage urbanization and allocate migrant labor. Also known as the natives' law, pass laws severely limited the movements of not only blac ...
which have been compared to those which existed in apartheid South Africa.'As in South Africa under ''apartheid'', households in China faced severe restrictions on their mobility during the Mao era. The household registration system (''hukou'') system... specified where people could work and, in particular, it classified workers as either rural or urban workers. A worker who was seeking to move from rural agricultural employment to urban non-agricultural work would have to apply for permission to do so through the relevant bureaucracies, and the number of workers who were allowed to make such moves was tightly controlled. The enforcement of these controls was closely intertwined with state controls on the distribution of essential goods and services. For instance, unauthorized workers could not qualify for grain rations, employer-provided housing, or health care.' Wildasin, David E. 'Factor mobility, risk, inequality, and redistribution' in David Pines, Efraim Sadka, Itzhak Zilcha, ''Topics in Public Economics: Theoretical and Applied Analysis'', Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 334.The permit system controls migrant workers in a way which is similar to the passbook system which existed under apartheid.Most migrant workers live in crowded dormitories which are provided to them by the factories or they live in shanties. Their transient existence is precarious and exploitative. In the Chinese case, the discrimination which migrant workers are subjected to is not based on race, but the control mechanisms which are set in place in order to regulate the supply of cheap labor in the so-called free labor market, the underlying economic logic of the system, and the abusive consequences which are suffered by the migrant workers, share many of the characteristics which existed under the apartheid system.' Chan, Anita. ''China's Workers Under Assault: The Exploitation of Labor in a Globalizing Economy'', M.E. Sharpe, 2001, p. 9.'The application of these regulations is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa's hated pass laws. The police periodically carry out raids in order to round up those who do not possess temporary residence permits. Those who are without papers are placed in detention centers and then they are removed from cities.' Waddington, Jeremy. ''Globalization and Patterns of Labour Resistance'', Routledge, 1999, p. 82. Rural workers who wanted to work in provinces other than their own were required to possess six passes, and the police periodically conducted raids in which they rounded up those workers who were without permits, placed them in detention centers for a short period of time, and then deported them. It is also found that rural workers have been paid under minimum wage to nothing at all. A group of coal miners in Shuangyashan were being paid little to nothing. With the families and people whom they had to care for, each and every one of the workers protested for the money that they deserved. As in South Africa, the restrictions placed on the mobility of migrant workers were pervasive, and transient workers were forced to live a precarious existence in company dormitories or shanty towns, suffering abusive consequences. Anita Chan comments further that China's household registration and temporary residence permit system has created a situation analogous to the passbook system in apartheid South Africa, which were designed to regulate the supply of cheap labor. The
Chinese Ministry of Public Security The Ministry of Public Security () is a Ministries of the People's Republic of China, government ministry of the China, People's Republic of China responsible for public security, public and political security. It oversees more than 1.9 mil ...
has justified these practices on the grounds that they have assisted the police in tracking down criminals and maintaining public order, and they have also provided demographic data for government planning and programs.'The ''hukou'' system has been criticized in some quarters and has been called "the equivalent of and apartheid system between rural and urban residents" (''China Labor Bulletin'', 25 February 2002). However, the Ministry of Public Security has continued to justify the ''hukou'' system as an instrument for keeping public order (the ministry said it allowed the police to track down criminals more easily) and for providing demographic data for planning and program formulation.' Laquian, Aprodicio A. ''Beyond Metropolis: The Planning and Governance of Asia's Mega-Urban Regions'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, pp. 320–321.


Freedom of association

The People's Republic of China does not allow freedom of association in general; in particular, it does not allow a free choice of membership with trade unions and political parties. Under the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt ...
(UDHR), articles 20 and 23, every worker has the right to join an association of their choosing, to have their interests represented against their employer, and to take
collective action Collective action refers to action taken together by a group of people whose goal is to enhance their condition and achieve a common objective. It is a term that has formulations and theories in many areas of the social sciences including psyc ...
including the
right to strike Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the In ...
. In China, on a model similar to the
Deutsche Arbeitsfront The German Labour Front (german: Deutsche Arbeitsfront, ; DAF) was the labour organisation under the Nazi Party which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. History As early as March 1933, t ...
from 1934 to 1945 in Germany, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions has a monopoly on union activity: it is effectively a nationalized organization. This dynamic violates
International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...
Conventions Number 87 and 98 on freedom of association and collective bargaining. The leadership of the ACFTU is not freely elected by its members, and it is not independent from the state or employers. The CCP effectively monopolizes organized political activity in China. There is, therefore, no possibility of genuine electoral competition at any level of government, nor within the Party itself. This violates the UDHR article 21(1), which states, 'Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.'


Religious freedom

During the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
(1966–1976), particularly during the Destruction of the Four Olds campaign, religious affairs of all types were persecuted, renunciated and strongly discouraged by Chairman Mao Zedong's government and its ideological allies. Many religious buildings were looted or destroyed. Since then, there have been efforts to repair, reconstruct and protect historical and cultural religious sites. In its International Religious Freedom Report for 2013, the US Department of State criticized the PRC as follows:
The government’s respect for and protection of the right to religious freedom fell well short of its international human rights commitments. (...) The government harassed, detained, arrested, or sentenced to prison a number of religious adherents for activities reported to be related to their religious beliefs and practices. These activities included assembling for religious worship, expressing religious beliefs in public and in private, and publishing religious texts. There were also reports of physical abuse and torture in detention.
The 1982 Constitution provides its citizens the right to believe in any religion, as well as the right to refrain from doing so:
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organization, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.
Members of the Communist Party are officially required to be atheists, but this rule is not regularly enforced and many party members privately engage in religious activities. Global studies from
Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and th ...
in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country.


Christianity

The Chinese government tries to maintain tight control over all organized religion, including Christianity. The only legal Christian groups are the
Three-Self Patriotic Movement The Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM; ) is the official government supervisory organ for Protestantism in the People's Republic of China. It is colloquially known as the Three-Self Church (). The National Committee of the Three-Self Patriot ...
and the
Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association The Catholic Patriotic Association (), abbreviated CPA, is a state-sanctioned organization of Catholicism in the People's Republic of China. It was established in 1957 after a group of Chinese Catholics met in Beijing with officials from the C ...
, the latter of which has been condemned by the Pope. (See in particular section 8, paragraph 12; and section 10, paragraph 6.) Both of these groups are under the control of the CCP. The members of the illegal, underground Catholic church and members of Protestant
house churches A house church or home church is a label used to describe a group of Christians who regularly gather for worship in private homes. The group may be part of a larger Christian body, such as a parish, but some have been independent groups that see ...
face prosecution from PRC authorities. In 2007, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association elected a Catholic bishop of Beijing to replace the deceased Fu Tieshan. The standard Catholic practice is for a bishop to be appointed by the Pope; the Catholic Church does not recognize the legitimacy of bishops elected by the Association, but not appointed by the Pope. According to Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church in particular is viewed in China as a foreign power. Its situation is somewhat analogous to that of the Catholic Church in Post-Reformation England, in which the official church was also controlled by the state. In early January 2018, Chinese authorities in Shanxi province demolished a church, which created a wave of fear among the Christians. In reports of countries with the strongest anti-Christian persecution, China was ranked by the Open Doors organization in 2019 as the 27th most severe country and in 2020 as 23rd most severe.


Tibetan Buddhism

The
Dalai Lama Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current D ...
is a highly influential figure in
Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...
, who has traditionally lived in Tibet. Because of Chinese governmental control over the Tibetan area, the current Dalai Lama resides in
Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh Dharamshala (; also spelled Dharamsala) is the winter capital of Himachal Pradesh, India. It serves as administrative headquarters of the Kangra district after being relocated from Kangra, a city located away from Dharamshala, in 1855. Th ...
, in the Republic of India. In a regulation promulgated 3 August 2007, the Chinese government declared that after 1 September 2007, " oliving Buddha ay be reincarnatedwithout government approval, since the Qing dynasty, when the live Buddha system was established." The PRC Government-appointed
Panchen Lama The Panchen Lama () is a tulku of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. Panchen Lama is one of the most important figures in the Gelug tradition, with its spiritual authority second only to Dalai Lama. Along with the council of high lamas, ...
is labelled a fake by those who regard the PRC's effort to control organized religion as contradictory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other ethical principles. Examples of the political controls exercised over religion in 1998 include: * quotas on the number of monks to reduce the spiritual population * forced denunciation of the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader * the expulsion of unapproved monks from monasteries * forced recitation of patriotic scripts supporting China * restriction of religious study before age 18 Monks celebrating the reception of the US Congressional Gold Medal by the Dalai Lama have been detained by the PRC. In November 2012 the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner urged the PRC to address the allegations of rights violations in Tibet; the violations had led to an alarming escalation of 'desperate' forms of protest in the region, including self-immolations. Amnesty International report reports that Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ow ...
Region and in Tibetan-populated areas.


Uyghurs

Article 36 of the PRC Constitution provides constitutional protection for citizens’ freedom of religion and the country's official ethnic policies also reiterate protection of the freedom of religion of ethnic minorities, but in practice the Uyghur population, predominantly living in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
, are subject to strict controls on the practice of Islam.U.S. Department of Justice (March 2015
‘Annual Report 2008’
Retrieved 6 December 2017.
Examples of these restrictions now include: *Official religious practices must be held in government-approved mosques *Uyghurs under 18 years old are not allowed to enter mosques or pray in school *The study of religious texts is only permitted in designated state schools *Government informers regularly attend religious gatherings in mosques *Women are not allowed to wear headscarves and veils and men are not allowed to have beards *The use of traditionally Islamic names (e.g., Abdul), is banned Since the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
in 2001, the Chinese government began to label violence in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as terrorism, unlike in previous years. Chinese counter-terror legislation now makes explicit links between religion and extremism and has led to regulations that explicitly ban religious expression among Uyghurs in particular. Since Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, reports have surfaced that around a million Muslims (Chinese citizens and some Central Asian nationals) were detained in
internment camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
throughout Xinjiang without trial or access to a lawyer. In these camps they were 're-educated' to disavow their Islamic beliefs and habitats while praising the Communist Party. The camps have expanded rapidly, with almost no judicial process or legal paperwork. Chinese officials are quoted in state media as saying that these measures are to fight separatism and Islamic extremism. Since 2017, the Chinese government has pursued a policy which has led to more than one million
Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
(the majority of them
Uyghurs The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia, Cent ...
) being held in secretive detention camps without any
legal process Legal process (sometimes simply process) is any formal notice or writ by a court obtaining jurisdiction over a person or property. Common forms of process include a summons, subpoena, mandate, and warrant. Process normally takes effect by s ...
. Critics of the policy have described it as the
sinicization Sinicization, sinofication, sinification, or sinonization (from the prefix , 'Chinese, relating to China') is the process by which non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture, particularly the language, societal norms, cul ...
of
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...
and called it an ethnocide or cultural genocide, with many activists, NGOs, human rights experts, government officials, and the U.S. government calling it a
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
. New bans and regulations were implemented on 1 April 2017. Abnormally long beards and wearing veils in public were both banned. Not watching state-run television or listening to radio broadcasts, refusing to abide by family planning policies, or refusing to allow one's children to attend state-run schools were all prohibited. Giving a child a name that would "exaggerate religious fervor," such as
Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد;  570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mon ...
, was made illegal. Along with this, many mosques were demolished or destroyed. According to
Radio Free Asia Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a United States government-funded private non-profit news service that broadcasts radio programs and publishes online news, information, and commentary for its audiences in Asia. The service, which provides editoria ...
, the Chinese government jailed Uyghur Imam Abduheber Ahmet after he took his son to a religious school not sanctioned by the Chinese state. Ahmet had previously been lauded by China as a "five-star" imam but was sentenced in 2018 to over five years in prison for his action. Also in 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to assimilation, and to watch for frowned-upon religious or cultural practices. These government workers were trained to call themselves "relatives" and have been described in Chinese state media as being a key part of enhancing "ethnic unity". In addition, records of the government indicate that thousands of Uighur children have been separated from their parents. New evidence shows that over 9,500 children in Yarkand county had at least one parent detained – most of them are Uighur children. According to the researcher Adrian Zenz, in 2019, the number of children living in boarding facilities increased by 76%, reaching a total of 880,500 children. In March 2020, the Chinese government was found to be using the Uyghur minority for forced labor, inside
sweat shops A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...
. According to a report published then by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from the region of Xinjiang and used for forced labor in at least twenty-seven corporate factories. According to the Business and Human Rights resource center, corporations such as
Abercrombie & Fitch Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) is an American lifestyle retailer that focuses on casual wear. Its headquarters are in New Albany, Ohio. The company operates three other offshoot brands: Abercrombie Kids, Hollister Co., and Gilly Hicks. As of Februa ...
,
Adidas Adidas AG (; stylized as adidas since 1949) is a German multinational corporation, founded and headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, that designs and manufactures shoes, clothing and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufacture ...
,
Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
,
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
, BMW,
Fila Fila Holdings Corp. is a sportswear brand of shoes and apparel. The company was founded by Ettore and Giansevero Fila in 1911 in Coggiola, near Biella, Piedmont, Italy. In 2003, it was sold to United States-based Sports Brand International. ...
, Gap, H&M, Inditex,
Marks & Spencer Marks and Spencer Group plc (commonly abbreviated to M&S and colloquially known as Marks's or Marks & Sparks) is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in Paddington, London that specialises in selling clothing, beauty, home ...
, Nike,
North Face North face or Northface or The North Face may refer to: * North face (Eiger), in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland * North Face (Everest), in Himalaya, usually traversed ascending Everest from the north * North face (Fairview Dome), a climbing route ...
, Puma, PVH,
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
, and UNIQLO each have each sourced from these factories prior to the publication of the ASPI report. On 19 July 2020, British Foreign Secretary
Dominic Raab Dominic Rennie Raab (; born 25 February 1974) is a British politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Secretary of State for Justice, and Lord Chancellor since October 2022, having previously served from 2021 t ...
accused the PRC of "gross and egregious" human rights abuses against its Uyghur population. He added that while
Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
wanted good relations with China, it could not stand by the reports of forced sterilization and mass education camps targeting the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. It is believed that up to a million Uyghur people have been detained over the past few years in what the Chinese state defines as "re-education camps". On 24 July 2020, two Members of the
European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the Legislature, legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven Institutions of the European Union, institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and in ...
, Hilde Vautmans and Katalin Cseh, wrote a letter to Josep Borrell Fontelles, the vice-president of the European Commission, urging him to punish mainland China for violating the human rights of its Uyghur population and
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
citizens. They also stated to enact EU
Magnitsky Act The Magnitsky Act, formally known as the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, is a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in ...
in order to sanction the leaders who committed these human rights violations. On 28 July 2020, a report documented that the US government and several activist groups mounted pressure on global businesses to reexamine and cut ties with China's Xinjiang region, where allegations of human rights violations have run rampant for years. The Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the region have been imprisoned in internment camps and are forced to work. On 31 August 2020, human rights campaigners requested the US authorities to ban all imports of
cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...
from the Chinese province of Xinjiang, due to allegations of widespread
forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
. The documents cited substantial evidence that the Uighur community and other minority groups in China were being press-ganged into working in the region's cotton fields. On 10 October 2020, the UK shadow foreign secretary,
Lisa Nandy Lisa Eva Nandy (born 9 August 1979) is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities since 2021. A member of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party, she has been Member of Parliament (United Kin ...
urged Britain to block China’s seat on the
United Nations Human Rights Council The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), CDH is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. ...
over the country’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims. On 19 January 2021, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally declared that China is committing a genocide against the Uighurs and
crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
. In a written letter, Pompeo wrote, “I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state.” Pompeo called for “all appropriate multilateral and relevant juridical bodies, to join the United States in our effort to promote accountability for those responsible for these atrocities." China strongly denies that human rights abuses are going on in Xinjiang. Pompeo has previously stated that China is trying to "erase its own citizens." In 2021, independent sources reported that Uyghur women in China's internment camps have been systematically raped, sexually abused and tortured. Victims said there is a system of organized rape. The Chinese police also electrocute and torture them. There is planned dehumanization, sterilization and torture. On 16 August 2021, a young Chinese woman, named Wu Huan, told the ''
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...
'' in her testimony that she was allegedly held for eight days at a Chinese-run secret detention facility in the
United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (Middle East, The Middle East). It is ...
, along with two other Uyghurs. Wu Huan said she was abducted from a hotel in
Dubai Dubai (, ; ar, wikt:دبي, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the List of cities in the United Arab Emirates#Major cities, most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 ...
and detained by Chinese officials at a villa converted into a jail. It was the first evidence that China was operating a “black site” beyond its borders. On 31 August 2022, the
UN Human Rights Office The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nati ...
issued an assessment of human rights concerns in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The report published in the wake of the visit by UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, stated that “allegations of patterns of torture, or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.”


Falun Gong

Following a period of meteoric growth of
Falun Gong Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.Junker, Andrew. 2019. ''Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora'', pp. 23–24, 33, 119 ...
in the 1990s, the Communist Party led by General Secretary
Jiang Zemin Jiang Zemin (17 August 1926 – 30 November 2022) was a Chinese politician who served as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1989 to 2002, as chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2004, and as p ...
banned Falun Gong on 20 July 1999. An extra-constitutional body called the
6-10 Office The 610 Office (; full name: 中央防范和处理邪教问题领导小组办公室; abbreviated 中央防范办) was a security agency in the People's Republic of China. Named for the date of its creation on June 10, 1999, it was established f ...
was created to lead the suppression of Falun Gong.Congressional-Executive Commission on China (31 October 2008
‘Annual Report 2008’
Retrieved 24 December 2013.
The authorities mobilized the state media apparatus, judiciary, police, army, the education system, families and workplaces against the group. The campaign is driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and internet.Leung, Beatrice (2002) 'China and Falun Gong: Party and society relations in the modern era', Journal of Contemporary China, 11:33, 761 – 784 There are reports of systematic torture,(23 March 2000
The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called ''heretical organizations''
Amnesty International
illegal imprisonment, forced labour,
organ harvesting Organ procurement (also called organ harvesting) is a surgical procedure that removes organs or tissues for reuse, typically for organ transplantation. Procedures If the organ donor is human, most countries require that the donor be legally de ...
and abusive psychiatric measures, with the apparent aim of forcing practitioners to recant their belief in Falun Gong. Foreign observers estimate that hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in "re-education through labor" camps, prisons and other detention facilities for refusing to renounce the spiritual practice.U.S. Department of State
2009 Country Report on Human Rights: China (includes Hong Kong and Macau)
/ref> Former prisoners have reported that Falun Gong practitioners consistently received "the longest sentences and worst treatment" in labour camps, and in some facilities Falun Gong practitioners formed the substantial majority of detainees.Human Rights Watc

of repor
"We Could Disappear at Any Time"
December 2005
As of 2009 at least 2,000 Falun Gong adherents had been tortured to death in the persecution campaign, with some observers putting the number much higher. Some international observers and judicial authorities have described the campaign against Falun Gong as a genocide. In 2009, courts in Spain and Argentina indicted senior Chinese officials for genocide and crimes against humanity for their role in orchestrating the suppression of Falun Gong.Reuters
"Argentine judge asks China arrests over Falun Gong"
, 22 December 2009.


=Organ harvesting

= In 2006 allegations emerged that the vital organs of non-consenting Falun Gong practitioners had been used to supply China's organ tourism industry. In 2008, two United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their requests for "the Chinese government to fully explain the allegation of taking vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants that has been going on in China since the year 2000". Matas and Kilgour, and Gutmann have, between them, published three books alleging organ harvesting in China. The Kilgour-Matas reportReuters, AP (8 July 2006
"Falun Gong organ claim supported"
''The Age'', (Australia)
Endemann, Kirstin (6 July 2006) CanWest News Service; ''Ottawa Citizen'

stated, "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six-year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and "we believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners".
David Kilgour David William Kilgour (February 18, 1941 – April 5, 2022) was a Canadian human rights activist, author, lawyer, and politician. He was also a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. Kilgour graduated from the Universi ...
, David Matas (6 July 2006, revised 31 January 2007
An Independent Investigation into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China
(free in 22 languages) organharvestinvestigation.net
Ethan Gutmann Ethan Gutmann is an American writer, researcher, author, and a senior research fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation whose work has investigated surveillance and organ harvesting in China. Education Gutmann earne ...
, who interviewed over 100 individuals as witnesses, estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong prisoners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008.
Jay Nordlinger Jay Nordlinger (born November 21, 1963) is an American journalist. He is a senior editor of ''National Review'', and a book fellow of the National Review Institute. He is also a music critic for ''The New Criterion'' and '' The Conservative''. I ...
(25 August 2014
"Face The Slaughter: The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, by Ethan Gutmann"
National Review
Ethan Gutmann (August 2014
The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem
"Average number of Falun Gong in Laogai System at any given time" Low estimate 450,000, High estimate 1,000,000 p 320. "Best estimate of Falun Gong harvested 2000 to 2008" 65,000 p 322. Amazon.com


Political freedom

The People's Republic of China is a signatory to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a multilateral treaty that commits nations to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, fre ...
, but has not ratified it. Legally, all citizens of the People's Republic of China who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of ethnicity, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status, or length of residence, except for persons deprived of political rights according to laws imposed by the CCP's Constitution. In Mao's China, the CCP openly
repressed "Repressed" is a single by Apocalyptica, released on 19 May 2006. The title song features Max Cavalera (Soulfly and Sepultura) and Matt Tuck ( Bullet for my Valentine) on vocals. It's mostly sung in English and Portuguese, which parts in the l ...
all opposing political groups. This behaviour is now reflected in the judicial system, and has evolved into the selective repression of small groups of people who overtly challenge the CCP's power or its
people's democratic dictatorship People's democratic dictatorship () is a phrase incorporated into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. The premise of the "People's democratic dictatorship" is that the CCP and state represent and act on behalf of the people, but ...
. The most recent major movement advocating for political freedom was obliterated through the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the estimated death toll of which ranges from about 200 to 10,000 depending on sources.Timperlake, Edward. 1999 (1999). Red Dragon Rising. Regnery Publishing. In November 1992, 192 Chinese political activists and democracy advocates submitted a petition to the
16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party The 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held in Beijing between November 8 and 14, 2002. It was preceded by the 15th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. 2,114 delegates and 40 specially invited delegates a ...
to introduce political reforms. One of the six demands was the ratification of the Covenant. As a reaction to the petition, the Chinese authorities arrested Zhao Changqing, proponent of the petition, and are still holding a number of activists for attempted subversion. One of the most famous dissidents is
Zhang Zhixin Zhang Zhixin (; 5 December 1930 – 4 April 1975) was a dissident during the Cultural Revolution who became famous for criticizing the idolization of Mao Zedong and the Left Communism in China, ultra-left. She was imprisoned for six years (196 ...
, who is known for standing up against the ultra-left.Zheng, Yi. Sym, T. P. Terrill, Ross. 1996 (1996). Scarlet Memorial: Tales Of Cannibalism In Modern China. Westvuew Press. . In October 2008, the government denounced the European Parliament's decision to award the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to political prisoner Hu Jia, maintaining that it was 'gross interference in China's domestic affairs' to give such an award to a 'jailed criminal.. in disregard of he Chinese government'srepeated representations.' Although the Chinese government does not violate its people's privacy as much or as overtly as it used to, it still deems it necessary to keep track of what people say in public. Internet forums are strictly monitored, as are international postal mail (which sometimes is inexplicably delayed, or simply disappears) and e-mail. Local officials are chosen by election, and even though non-Communist Party candidates are allowed to stand, those with dissident views can face arbitrary exclusion from the ballot, interference with campaigning, and even detention. Freedom House rates China as a 6 (the second lowest possible rank) in political freedoms. In 2011, the organization said of the Chinese political leadership:
With a sensitive change of leadership approaching in 2012 and popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes occurring across the Middle East, the ruling Chinese Communist Party showed no signs of loosening its grip on power in 2011. Despite minor legal improvements regarding the death penalty and urban property confiscation, the government stalled or even reversed previous reforms related to the rule of law, while security forces resorted to extralegal forms of repression. Growing public frustration over corruption and injustice fueled tens of thousands of protests and several large outbursts of online criticism during the year. The party responded by committing more resources to internal security forces and intelligence agencies, engaging in the systematic enforced disappearance of dozens of human rights lawyers and bloggers, and enhancing controls over online social media.


Independence movements

The independence movements in China are mainly contained within the Inner Mongolian Regions, the Tibetan region, and the Xinjiang region. These regions contain people from ethnic and religious minority groups such as the Mongols, the Tibetans and the Uyghurs. The Chinese government has had strained relations with these regions since the early 1910s, when the first president of the Chinese Republic,
Sun Yat-sen Sun Yat-sen (; also known by several other names; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925)Singtao daily. Saturday edition. 23 October 2010. section A18. Sun Yat-sen Xinhai revolution 100th anniversary edition . was a Chinese politician who serve ...
, suggested a plan to move a large number of Han people from Southeast China to Northwest China in an effort to assimilate the ethnic minorities that lived in the area. While Sun Yat-sen lost political power before he could enforce this plan, his sinocentric, assimilationist attitude was adopted by future leader
Chiang Kai-shek Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...
. Chiang Kai-shek enacted educational policy that encouraged cultural assimilation and discouraged self-determinism until 1945, when Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist party became more lenient towards the various ethnic minorities. From this time until the establishment of the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, ethnic minorities experienced great independence from the Chinese government, with
Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million ...
becoming an independent state in 1921 and Xinjiang being named an autonomous region in 1955. Tibetan, Mongolian, and Xinjiang independence was severely restricted by the Communist Party in the 1950s under Mao Zedong, with the forced annexation of
Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...
,
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...
, and Xinjiang back into mainland China, leading to many protests and riots from the ethnic and religious minorities in the autonomous regions. From this point onwards, there has been a sustained outpouring of secessionist and independence movements from China's autonomous regions. Currently, the largest independence struggle is being waged by the Muslim-Turkic population of Xinjiang, which shares minimal cultural, lingual, and historical similarities with the Han population in China. While the Chinese government under Deng Xiaoping promised to grant some advantages to the population of Xinjiang such as practising affirmative action in universities, greater liberties with regard to China's
one-child policy The term one-child policy () refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. That initiative was part of a much bro ...
, and increased government subsidies in the region, the government also discourages and restricts the Muslim-Turkic ethnic population from freely practising its religion, expressing its faith by wearing head scarves, fasting, growing facial hair, and building mosques freely. Furthermore, because of the advantages which the Chinese government grants to the people of Xinjiang, many Han Chinese are prejudiced against them, and their prejudice against the Uyghurs is bolstered by the widespread belief that the government unfairly grants preferential treatment to ethnic minorities in general. One noteworthy event is the Feb 1997 riots in
Yining YiningThe official spelling according to (), also known as Ghulja ( ug, غۇلجا) or Qulja ( kk, قۇلجا) and formerly Ningyuan (), is a county-level city in Northwestern Xinjiang, People's Republic of China and the seat of the Ili Kazakh A ...
, a county which is located between Kazakhstan and Xinjiang, during which 12 independence movement leaders were executed and 27 others were arrested and incarcerated. Moreover, almost 200 Uyghurs were killed and over 2,000 more Uyghurs were arrested. In
2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
riots broke out within Tibetan regions such as
Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhasa ...
, and anti-Han "pogroms" were committed in Ürümqi, Xinjiang in July 2009. In response to these riots, the Chinese government has increased its police presence in these regions and it has also sought to control offshore reporting and intimidate foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members.


Political abuse of psychiatry

Political abuse of psychiatry began to be practised in mainland China during the 1950s, shortly after Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China, and continues to be practised in different forms up to present day. Initially, under Mao Zedong, the practice of psychiatry in China saw legitimate improvements in the breadth and quality of treatments.Munro, Robin James. "A question of criminal madness: judicial psychiatry and political dissent in People's Republic of China" PhD. diss., School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), 2005. However, as time passed under the direction of Mao Zedong and the campaign of ideological reform was implemented, psychiatric diagnoses became used as a way to control and incarcerate Chinese citizens who didn't subscribe to
Maoist Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...
ideologies such as Marxism–Leninism. The main demographic of Chinese citizens being targeted and placed in mental asylums were academics, intellectuals, students, and religious groups for their capitalist tendencies and bourgeois worldview.Ann, Kent. 2003. "Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and Its Origins in the Mao Era Human Rights Watch and Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry." The China Quarterly no. 176: 1091. JSTOR Journals, EBSCOhost (accessed 2 October 2017). The justification for placing those who didn't comply with Maoist principles in mental institutions was the belief that non-Maoist political ideologies such as
capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
caused extreme
individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
and selfishness, which contributed to mental disabilities such as
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social w ...
and paranoid
psychosis Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavi ...
.  Maoists justified their claim that anti-Communist beliefs caused mental imbalances by making a positive correlation between the wealth and class of a particular group of people and the number of "mentally ill" people within that group.  Political abuse of psychiatry in mainland China peaked from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. During this time, Chinese counterrevolutionists and political dissidents were placed into mental asylums, where they were treated with psychotherapy (xinli zhiliao) resembling political indoctrination sessions. During this time, statistics indicate that there were more political activists being held in mental institutions than the number of rapists, murderers, arsonists, and other violent mentally ill people combined. The human rights activist
Wei Jingsheng Wei Jingsheng (; born 20 May 1950) is a Chinese human rights activist and dissident. He is best known for his involvement in the Chinese democracy movement. He is most prominent for having authored the essay "The Fifth Modernization", which w ...
was among the first to speak out about the misappropriation of psychiatry for political purposes in the winter of 1978; however, in response to his advocacy, he was imprisoned and subjected to involuntary drugging and beating by the Chinese government.  After the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s, the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes continually diminished until the 1990s, when there was a resurgence in politically motivated psychiatric diagnoses towards political dissidents and minority religious groups. During this more recent wave of Chinese forensic psychiatry, political dissidents and practicers of non-mainstream religions were sent to Ankang (meaning peace and health) hospitals. These hospitals, built to hold the criminally insane, are managed by Bureau No. 13 of China's Ministry of Public Security. Ankang hospitals have been the target of much scrutiny by human rights activists and organizations both inside and outside of China, and reports indicate inhumane treatment of patients inside these hospitals. Patients in these hospitals are forced to work at least 7 hours a day and are subjected to torture including acupuncture with electric currents, forced injection of drugs that are known to damage the central nervous system, and physical abuse with ropes and electric batons. Furthermore, reports by Chinese surgeons at these hospitals report on the use of
psychosurgery Psychosurgery, also called neurosurgery for mental disorder (NMD), is the neurosurgical treatment of mental disorder. Psychosurgery has always been a controversial medical field. The modern history of psychosurgery begins in the 1880s under t ...
on patients who were involuntarily placed in these hospitals to reduce "violent and impulsive behaviors". One of the most targeted groups of Chinese citizens to be placed in Ankang hospitals are the practicers of Falun Gong, who have what is termed "evil cult-induced mental disorder" or "xiejiao suo zhi jingshen zheng'ai" by Chinese psychiatry. Over 1000 practitioners have been incarcerated in mental asylums across 23 provinces, cities, and autonomous regions. One of the most famous cases of politically motivated psychiatric diagnoses took place in 1992, when Wang Wanxing was arrested for displaying a pro-democracy banner in Tiananmen Square. After Wang's arrest, his wife signed a statement confirming his mental instability, because police told her that doing so would ensure Wang's immediate release. However, Wang was instead placed in the Beijing Ankang hospital. He was exiled to Germany in 2005. The
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
is the only country which currently abuses psychiatry for political purposes in a systematic way, and despite international criticism, this abuse seems to be continuing as of 2010. Political abuse of psychiatry in the People's Republic of China is high on the agenda in the international psychiatric community, and has produced recurring disputes. The abuses there appear to be even more widespread than in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and involve the incarceration of petitioners, human rights workers, trade union activists, followers of the Falun Gong movement, and people complaining against injustices by local authorities. In August 2002, the General Assembly of the WPA was held during the WPA World Congress in
Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...
. The issue of Chinese political abuse of psychiatry was placed on the agenda of the General Assembly, and a decision was made to send an investigative mission to China. The visit was projected for the spring of 2003, in order to assure that a representative of the WPA could present a report during the Annual Meeting of the
American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are invo ...
in May 2003, as well as at the annual meeting of the British
Royal College of Psychiatrists The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom, and is responsible for representing psychiatrists, for psychiatric research and for providing public information about mental healt ...
in June and July of that year. The 2003 investigative mission never took place, and when the WPA did organize a visit to China, it was more a scientific exchange. In the meantime, the political abuse of psychiatry persists unabated.


Political prisoners

The Chinese government has a history of imprisoning citizens for political reasons. Article 73 of China's
Criminal Procedure Criminal procedure is the adjudication process of the criminal law. While criminal procedure differs dramatically by jurisdiction, the process generally begins with a formal criminal charge with the person on trial either being free on bail o ...
Law was adopted in 2012 and allow the authorities to detain people for reasons of "state security" or "
terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
". In this regard, detainees can be held for as long as six months in “designated locations” such as secret prisons. The number of political prisoners peaked during the Mao era and it has been decreasing ever since. From 1953 to 1975, around 26 to 39 per cent of prisoners were incarcerated for political reasons. By 1980, the percentage of prisoners incarcerated for political reasons was only 13 per cent, and this figure decreased to 0.5 per cent in 1989 and 0.46 per cent in 1997. 1997 is also the year that the Chinese Criminal Law was amended to replace counterrevolutionary crime with crimes endangering national security. During the Mao era, one notorious labour camp called Xingkaihu which was located in the northeastern
Heilongjiang Province Heilongjiang () formerly romanized as Heilungkiang, is a province in northeast China. The standard one-character abbreviation for the province is (). It was formerly romanized as "Heilungkiang". It is the northernmost and easternmost provinc ...
was operated from 1955 to 1969. During this time, over 20,000 inmates were forced to work on irrigation, infrastructure construction, and agricultural projects for the government while being subjected to ideological reform; a significant percentage of these inmates were incarcerated for being counterrevolutionaries and political dissidents. The conditions in Xingkaihu were so poor that many inmates eventually died due to
malnutrition Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues ...
and
disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...
. More recently, since the spring of 2008, the Chinese government has detained 831 Tibetans as political prisoners; of these 831 prisoners, 12 are serving life sentences and 9 were sentenced to death. In 2009 Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned for advocating democratic reforms and increased freedom of speech in Charter 08. In 2017 he died in prison from late stage
liver cancer Liver cancer (also known as hepatic cancer, primary hepatic cancer, or primary hepatic malignancy) is cancer that starts in the liver. Liver cancer can be primary (starts in liver) or secondary (meaning cancer which has spread from elsewhere to th ...
at the age of 61. Other political prisoners include journalist
Tan Zuoren Tan Zuoren (born 15 May 1954), from Chengdu, Sichuan province, People's Republic of China, is an environmentalist, writer and former editor of ''Literati'' magazine (文化人).Chinadigitaltimes.com.Chinadigitaltimes.com" ''Cui Weiping (崔卫平 ...
, human rights activist
Xu Zhiyong Xu Zhiyong (; born March 2, 1973) is a Chinese civil rights activist and formerly a lecturer at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. He was one of the founders of the NGO Open Constitution Initiative and an active rights lawyer ...
, and journalist Shi Tao. Tan Zuoren was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to 5 years in prison after publicly speaking about government corruption as well as the poorly constructed school buildings that collapsed and led to the deaths of thousands of children during the 2008 earthquake in
Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of t ...
. Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to four years in prison in 2014 after gaining a significant social media following and using it as a platform to express his sociopolitical opinions. Shi Tao was sentenced to 8 years after publicizing the list of instructions that the Communist Party sent journalists regarding how to report the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. On 30 June 2020, Sun Qia, a Chinese-born woman who immigrated to
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
and was a Falun Gong practitioner, was sentenced to eight years in jail for belonging to a spiritual movement that
Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...
calls a “cult.” Ms. Sun told a lawyer that she was mentally tortured in the prison and pepper-sprayed while restrained. Cheng Lei, an Australian TV host working at China's state broadcaster, was detained by the Chinese authorities. On 14 August 2020, the
Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Governmen ...
received a "formal notification" of her detention. Australia's minister for foreign affairs,
Marise Payne Marise Ann Payne (born 29 July 1964) is an Australian politician who served in the Morrison Government as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2018 to 2022 and as Minister for Women from 2019 to 2022. She has been a Senator for New South Wales s ...
, said that Lei had been detained without any charges and could be held for months. The arrest came as tensions between both the countries grew over investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing followed by trade suspension to Australia.


Pro-democracy movements

Some people have campaigned against the one-party
Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
rule in Mainland China over the years.


Freedom of assembly and association

The freedom of assembly is provided by the Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution. The Article 51, however, restricts its exercise: such right «''may not infringe upon the interests of the state''». Human rights activists such as Xie Xang fight for the rights of Chinese people by protesting, slandering the governments' names on social media, and by filing lawsuits. Xang has commented on the punishment he received for protesting, claiming that he was interrogated while shackled onto a metal chair, forced to sit in stressful positions for a set amount of time, and tortured physically and mentally. He also quoted his interrogators stating that he was told that "I could torture you to death and no one could help you."


Freedom of movement, Privacy

In 2010 in response to Chunyun (increase in traffic movements due to
Chinese New Year Chinese New Year is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar and solar Chinese calendar. In Chinese and other East Asian cultures, the festival is commonly referred to as the Spring Festival () a ...
), which has caused various problems with tickets prices (due to resale by speculative traders), a system similar to blogs-related real-name identification system was introduced on nine railroad stations. It requires the transport companies to demand far-travelers to provide a real name for their tickets. Several critics and media have raised concerns about its possible privacy violations and freedom of movement rights restrictions risks.


Previous one-child policy

The Chinese government's birth control policy, known widely as the one-child policy, was implemented in 1979 by chairman Deng Xiaoping's government to alleviate the overpopulation problem. Having more than one child was illegal and punishable by fines. This policy has begun to be phased out, beginning in 2015.
Voice of America Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is the State media, state-owned news network and International broadcasting, international radio broadcaster of the United States, United States of America. It is the largest and oldest U.S.-funded international br ...
cites critics who argue that the policy contributes to forced abortions, human rights violations, female infanticide, abandonment and sex-selective abortions, which are believed to be relatively commonplace in some areas of the country. Sex-selective abortions are thought to have been a significant contribution to the gender imbalance in mainland China, where there is a 118:100 ratio of male to female children reported. Forced abortions and sterilizations have also been reported. It has also been argued that the one-child policy is not effective enough to justify its costs, and that external factors caused a dramatic decrease in Chinese fertility rates to begin even before 1979. The policy seems to have had little impact on rural areas (home to about 80% of the population), where birth rates never dropped below 2.5 children per female. Nevertheless, the Chinese government and others estimate that at least 250 million births have been prevented by the policy. The policy was generally not enforced in rural areas of the country even before this amendment. It has also been relaxed in urban areas, allowing people to have two children. Chinese state-run media reported on 3 June 2013 that the city of
Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the ninth-most populous Chinese city a ...
is considering legislation to fine women who have children out of wedlock, or with men married to other women. The fine is considered a 'social compensation fee', and has been sharply criticized for potentially exacerbating the problem of abandoned children. All the families are allowed to have two children since 1 January 2016.


Capital punishment

According to Amnesty International, throughout the 1990s more people were executed or sentenced to death in China than in the rest of the world put together. Officially, the death penalty in mainland China is only administered to offenders who commit serious and violent crimes, such as
aggravated murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the c ...
, but China retains in law a number of nonviolent death penalty offences such as
drug trafficking A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalati ...
. The People's Republic of China administers more official
death penalties Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
than any other country, though other countries (such as Iran and Singapore) have higher official execution rates. Reliable NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights in China have informed the public that the total execution numbers, with unofficial death penalties included, greatly exceed officially recorded executions; in 2009, the Dui Hua Foundation estimated that 5,000 people were executed in China – far more than all other nations combined.Dui Hua Foundation
'Reducing Death Penalty Crimes in China More Symbol Than Substance'
, Dialogue, Issue 40, Fall 2010.
The precise number of executions is regarded as a state secret. PRC authorities have recently been pursuing measures to reduce the official number of crimes punishable by death and limit how much they officially utilize the death penalty. In 2011, the
National People's Congress Standing Committee The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPCSC) is the permanent body of the National People's Congress (NPC) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which is the highest organ of state ...
adopted an amendment to reduce the number of capital crimes from 68 to 55. Later the same year, the Supreme People's Court ordered lower courts to suspend death sentences for two years and to 'ensure that it only applies to a very small minority of criminals committing extremely serious crimes.'International Business Times
'China suspends executions for two years'
25 May 2011.
The death penalty is one of the classical Five Punishments of the
Chinese Dynasties Dynasties in Chinese history, or Chinese dynasties, were hereditary monarchical regimes that ruled over China during much of its history. From the legendary inauguration of dynastic rule by Yu the Great circa 2070 BC to the abdication of t ...
. In
Chinese philosophy Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period () and Warring States period (), during a period known as the " Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural develop ...
, the death penalty was supported by the Legalists, but its application was tempered by the Confucianists, who preferred rehabilitation over punishment of any sort, including capital punishment. In Communist philosophy,
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
urged the retention of the death penalty, whilst
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and
Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' counterrevolutionaries A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...
. The market reformer Deng Xiaoping after him stressed that the practice must not be abolished, and advocated its wider use against recidivists and corrupt officials. Leaders of the PRC's minor, non-communist parties have also advocated for greater use of the death penalty. Both Deng and Mao viewed the death penalty as having tremendous popular support, and portrayed the practice as a means to 'assuage the people's anger'. The death penalty has widespread support in mainland China, especially for violent crimes, and no group in government or civil society vocally advocates for its abolition. Surveys conducted by the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) is a Chinese research institute and think tank. The institution is the premier comprehensive national academic research organization in the People's Republic of China for the study in the fields of ...
in 1995, for instance, found that 95 per cent of the Chinese population supported the death penalty, and these results were mirrored in other studies. Polling conducted in 2007 in Beijing,
Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangx ...
and
Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020 ...
found a more moderate 58 per cent in favour of the death penalty, and further found that a majority (63.8 per cent) believed that the government should release execution statistics to the public. A total of 46 crimes are punishable by death, including some non-violent,
white-collar crime The term "white-collar crime" refers to financially motivated, nonviolent or non-directly violent crime committed by individuals, businesses and government professionals. It was first defined by the sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as "a ...
s such as
embezzlement Embezzlement is a crime that consists of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion of such assets, by one or more persons to whom the assets were entrusted, either to be held or to be used for specific purposes. Embezzlement is a type ...
and tax fraud. Execution methods include lethal injections and shooting. The
People's Armed Police ) , abbreviation = PAP ("People's Armed Police") CAPF ("Chinese Armed Police Force"), formerly abbreviated''Wujing'' ( zh , s = 武警 , p = Wǔjǐng , l = Armed Police , labels = no ), or WJ as on vehicle license plates , patch ...
carries out the executions, usually at 10:00 am. Death sentences in post-
Maoist Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...
mainland China can be politically or socially influenced. In 2003, a local court sentenced the leader of a triad society to a death sentence with two years of probation. However, the public opinion was that the sentence was too light. Under public pressure, the supreme court of Communist China took the case and retried the leader, resulting in a death sentence, which was carried out immediately.


Execution protocol

The execution protocol is defined in criminal procedure law, under article 212:
:Before a people's court executes a death sentence, it shall notify the people's procuratorate at the same level to send personnel to supervise the execution. :Death sentences shall be executed by means of shooting or injection. :Death sentences may be executed at the execution ground or in designated places of custody. :The judicial personnel directing the execution shall verify the identity of the criminal offender, ask him if he has any last words or letters, and then deliver him to the executioner for the death sentence. If, before the execution, it is found that there may be an error, the execution shall be suspended and the matter shall be reported to the Supreme People's Court for decision. :Execution of death sentences shall be announced to the public, but shall not be held in public. :The attending court clerk shall, after an execution, make a written record thereon. The people's court that caused the death sentence to be executed shall submit a report on the execution to the Supreme People's Court. :The people's court that caused the death sentence to be executed shall, after the execution, notify the family of the criminal offender.
In some areas of mainland China, there is no specific execution ground. A scout team chooses a place in advance to serve as the execution ground. In such a case, the execution ground normally will have three perimeters: the innermost 50meters is the responsibility of the execution team; the 200-meter radius from the center is the responsibility of the
People's Armed Police ) , abbreviation = PAP ("People's Armed Police") CAPF ("Chinese Armed Police Force"), formerly abbreviated''Wujing'' ( zh , s = 武警 , p = Wǔjǐng , l = Armed Police , labels = no ), or WJ as on vehicle license plates , patch ...
; and the 2-kilometer alert line is the responsibility of the local police. The public is generally not allowed to view the execution. The role of the executioner was fulfilled in the past by the People's Armed Police. In recent times, the legal police force () assumed this role. Since 1949, the most common method of execution has been
execution by firing squad Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are u ...
. This method has been largely superseded by
lethal injection Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution) for the express purpose of causing rapid death. The main application for this procedure is capital puni ...
, using the same three-drug cocktail pioneered by
the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, introduced in 1996. Execution vans are unique to mainland China, however. Lethal injection is more commonly used for 'economic crimes' such as corruption, while firing squads are used for more common crimes like murder. In 2010, Chinese authorities moved to have lethal injection become the dominant form of execution; in some provinces and municipalities, it is now the only legal form of capital punishment. The Dui Hua foundation notes that it is impossible to ascertain whether these guidelines are closely followed, as the method of execution is rarely specified in published reports.


Criticism

Human rights groups and foreign governments have heavily criticized the PRC's use of the death penalty for a variety of reasons, including its application for non-violent offences, allegations of the use of torture to extract confessions, legal proceedings that do not meet international standards, and the government's failure to publish statistics on the death penalty. However, as acknowledged by both the Chinese Supreme Court and the
United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...
, the vast majority of death sentences are given for violent, nonpolitical crimes which would be considered serious in other countries. The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong has accused Chinese hospitals of using the organs of executed prisoners for commercial transplantation. Under Chinese law, condemned prisoners must give written consent to become organ donors, but because of this and other legal restrictions on organ donation, an international
black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the ...
in organs and cadavers from China has developed. In 2009, Chinese authorities acknowledged that two-thirds of organ transplants in the country could be traced back to executed prisoners and announced a crackdown on the practice.


United States

Running for president in 1992,
Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
sharply criticized his predecessor George H. W. Bush for prioritizing profitable trade relationships over human rights issues in mainland China. As president, 1993–2001, however, Clinton backed away from his position. He did articulate a desired set of goals for mainland China. They included free emigration, no exportation of goods made with prison labour, release of peaceful protesters, treatment of prisoners in terms of international standards, recognition of the distinct regional culture of Tibet, permitting international television and radio coverage, and observation of human rights specified by United Nations resolutions. China refused to comply, and by summer 1994 Clinton admitted defeat and called for a renewal of normalized trade relations. However congressional pressure, especially from Republicans, forced Clinton to approve arms sales to Taiwan, despite the strong displeasure voiced by Beijing. In 2020, president
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
praised China's use of the death penalty.


Wrongful executions

An estimate of over 1000 people are executed every year in mainland China. Most of these executions are due to crimes that are seen as intolerable to the society within mainland China and the People's Republic of China. There are some cases that have been held wrongly.York, Geoffrey. 2005. "Death-penalty debate grips China after wrongful execution." ''Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada)'', 2005. ''Biography in Context'', EBSCO''host'' (accessed 24 October 2017). At least four people have been considered wrongfully executed by PRC courts. Wei Qing'an (, circa 1951 1984) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for the rape of Liu, a woman who had disappeared. The execution was carried out on 3 May 1984 by the Intermediate People's Court. In the next month, Tian Yuxiu () was arrested and admitted that he had committed the rape. Three years later, Wei was officially declared innocent. Teng Xingshan (, ? 1989) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for having raped, robbed and murdered Shi Xiaorong (), a woman who had disappeared. An old man found a dismembered body, and police forensics claimed to have matched the body to the photo of the missing Shi Xiaorong. The execution was carried out on 28 January 1989 by the
Huaihua Huaihua () is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Hunan province, China. It covers and is bordered by Xiangxi to the northwest, Zhangjiajie and Changde to the north, Yiyang, Loudi and Shaoyang to the east, Guilin and Liuzhou of Guang ...
Intermediate People's Court. In 1993, the missing woman returned to the village, saying she had been kidnapped to Shandong. The absolute innocence of the executed Teng was not admitted until 2005. Nie Shubin (, 1974 1995) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for the rape and murder of Kang Juhua (), a woman in her thirties. The execution was carried out on 27 April 1995 by the
Shijiazhuang Shijiazhuang (; ; Mandarin: ), formerly known as Shimen and romanized as Shihkiachwang, is the capital and most populous city of China’s North China's Hebei Province. Administratively a prefecture-level city, it is about southwest of Beijin ...
Intermediate People's Court. In 2005, ten years after the execution, Wang Shujin () admitted to the police that he had committed the murder. Therefore, it has been indicated that Nie Shubin had been innocent all along.


Torture

Although the People's Republic of China outlawed torture in 1996, human rights groups say brutality and degradation are common in Chinese arbitrary detention centers, Laojiao prisons and black jails. People who are imprisoned for their political views, human rights activities or religious beliefs have a high risk of being tortured. Strategies of torture inside black jail include deprivation of sleep, food, and medication. The strategies are all quite inhumane conditions. In a specific case, a woman named Huang Yan was imprisoned for her political views and included the deprivation of medication. She had diabetes and ovarian cancer which required her to take medication. Tests have shown that the ovarian cancer have spread throughout her body. While the existence of black jails is acknowledged by at least part of the government, the CCP strongly denies facilitating the operation of such jails and officially cracks down on them, leading to at least one trial. In May 2010, the PRC authorities officially passed new regulations in an attempt to nullify evidence gathered through violence or intimidation in their official judicial procedures, and to reduce the level of torture administered to prisoners already in jails. Little is known, however, about whether or how procedures were modified in black jails, which are not officially part of the judicial system. The move came after a public outcry following the revelation that a farmer, convicted for murder based on his confession under torture, was in fact innocent. The case came to light only when his alleged victim was found alive, after the defendant had spent ten years in prison. International human rights groups gave the change a cautious welcome.China Bans Court Evidence Gained Through Torture
''The New York Times'', 31 May 2010
Torture is reportedly used as part of the indoctrination process at the
Xinjiang internment camps The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers ( zh, 职业技能教育培训中心, Zhíyè jìnéng jiàoyù péixùn zhōngxīn) by the government of China, are internment camps operated ...
. The torture is alleged to include
waterboarding Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboard ...
and
sexual violence Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, act to traffic a person, or act directed against a person's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim.World Health Organization., World re ...
.


Ethnic minorities

There are 55 officially recognized native ethnic minorities in China. Article 4 of the Chinese constitution states 'All nationalities in the People's Republic of China are equal', and the government argues that it has made efforts to improve ethnic education and increased ethnic representation in local government. Some groups are still fighting for recognition as minorities. In the 1964 Census, there were 183 nationalities registered, of which the government recognized 54. Some policies cause reverse racism, in which Han Chinese or even ethnic minorities from other regions are treated as second-class citizens in the ethnic region. Similarly, there are wide-ranging preferential policies ( affirmative action programs) in place to promote social and economic development for ethnic minorities, including preferential employment, political appointments, and business loans. Universities typically have quotas reserved for ethnic minorities, even if they have lower admission test scores. Ethnic minorities are also more often exempt from the one-child policy, which targets the Han Chinese. Stern punishments of independence-seeking demonstrators, rioters, or terrorists have led to mistreatment of the
Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken diale ...
and Uyghur minorities in Western China. The United States in 2007 refused to help repatriate five Chinese Uyghur
Guantanamo Bay detainees As of October 29, 2022, This list of Guantánamo prisoners has the known identities of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, but is compiled from various sources and is incomplete. In official documents, the United States Dep ...
because of 'past treatment of the Uigur minority'. In its 2007 annual report to the U.S. Congress, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said the Chinese government "provides incentives for migration to the region from elsewhere in China." Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (
paramount leader Paramount leader () is an informal term for the most important political figure in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The paramount leader typically controls the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), often hol ...
), said in April 2014 that China faces increasing threats to national security and the government could impose tougher controls on its ethnic minorities due to terrorist attacks like the 2014 Kunming attack. In Xinjiang, the Ürümqi Motorized Vehicle Licensing and Testing Department has begun requiring all ethnic Uyghur and Kazakh individuals to undergo a
background check A background check is a process a person or company uses to verify that an individual is who they claim to be, and this provides an opportunity to check and confirm the validity of someone's criminal record, education, employment history, and oth ...
before registering a vehicle. In March 2019, the United States Department of State criticized mainland China for its human rights violations, saying the sort of abuses it had inflicted on its Muslim minorities had not been witnessed “since the 1930s”. The department's annual
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are annual publications on the human rights conditions in countries and regions outside the United States, mandated by U.S. law to be submitted annually by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor ...
stated that the PRC was “in a league of its own when it comes to human rights violations”.


Forcible biometrics collection

PRC authorities in western Xinjiang province are collecting DNA samples, fingerprints, eye scans and blood types of millions of people aged 12 to 65. Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch's China director, said "the mandatory databanking of a whole population’s biodata, including DNA, is a gross violation of international human rights norms, and it’s even more disturbing if it is done surreptitiously, under the guise of a free health care program." For the ethnic minority Uyghur people, it is mandatory to undergo the biometrics collection, disguised under physical examination. Coercion to give blood sample is gross violation of the human rights and individual privacy.


Tibetans

Tibetans who opposed the diversion of irrigation water by Chinese authorities to the China Gold International Resources mining operations were detained, tortured and murdered. Allegations of what the PRC officially labelled 'judicial mutilation' against Tibetans by the
Dalai Lama Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current D ...
's government, and the serfdom controversy, have been cited by the PRC as reasons to interfere for what they claim was the welfare of Tibetans, although their claims of 'judicial mutilation' are controversial and subject to scepticism and dispute by foreign countries and international organizations. Conflicting reports about Tibetan human rights have been produced since then. The PRC claims that Tibet has been enjoying a cultural revival since the 1950s, whereas the Dalai Lama says 'whether intentionally or unintentionally, somewhere cultural genocide is taking place'. Following the
Chinese economic reform The Chinese economic reform or reform and opening-up (), known in the West as the opening of China, is the program of economic reforms termed " Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and " socialist market economy" in the People's Republic of ...
, businesspeople from other parts of China have made many business trips to Tibet, although most do not stay in region. The ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' has cited this ethnic diversity in Tibet as a cause of "ethnic tensions". It has also disagreed significantly with the promotion by PRC authorities of home ownership in nomadic Tibetan societies. Western politicians often level the charge that the
Tibetan languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descripti ...
are at risk of extinction in Tibet. Others, however, both inside and outside China and Tibet, claim that for a vast majority of Tibetans, who live in rural areas, the Chinese language is merely introduced as a second language in secondary school.


Uyghurs

Reportedly, the People's Republic of China is holding one million ethnic Uyghurs in internment camps in Xinjiang. In July 2019, ambassadors of 22 countries wrote a letter to the United Nations human rights officials condemning China's treatment towards the minority groups. Various human rights groups and former inmates have described the camps as “concentration camps”, where Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities have been forcibly assimilated into China's majority ethnic Han society. The letter urged China to “refrain from the arbitrary detention and restrictions on freedom of movement of Uighurs, and other Muslim and minority communities in Xinjiang.” A leaked document known as "The China Cables" details the conditions in the aforementioned internment camps. These documents describe guidelines on a variety of things: preventing escapes, monitoring the Uyghurs, disciplining the Uyghurs, and much more. They are taught Mandarin and about Chinese culture. However, some claim this is renouncing their culture to conform to the communist party. Many Chinese officials have already dismissed the claims of breaching human rights and the contents of these documents. They refer to these camps as voluntary education centers where the Uyghurs are reeducated. The goal of these camps, according to former Chinese ambassador
Liu Xiaoming / ( or ) is an East Asian surname. pinyin: in Mandarin Chinese, in Cantonese. It is the family name of the Han dynasty emperors. The character originally meant 'kill', but is now used only as a surname. It is listed 252nd in the classic text ...
, is to prevent terrorism. A
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
assessment of
human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
regarding the
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...
Uyghurs stated it is “reasonable to conclude that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred in ocational education and training centrefacilities, at least during 2017 to 2019,” negating previous
Chinese Government The Government of the People's Republic of China () is an authoritarian political system in the People's Republic of China under the exclusive political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It consists of legislative, executive, m ...
claims that the facilities were schools or training centres where participants were free to join and leave. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) gave statement on China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang, following a visit to the region by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. An FCDO spokesperson said, “It is clear that the Chinese authorities did not provide the full, unfettered access to Xinjiang for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that we and our international partners have long called for. China’s failure to grant such access only serves to highlight their determination to hide the truth.”


Economic and property rights

The
National People's Congress The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPC; ), or simply the National People's Congress, is constitutionally the supreme state authority and the national legislature of the People's Republic of China. With 2,9 ...
enacted a law in 2007 to protect private property, with the exception of land. Nevertheless, according to ''
Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'' magazine, local Chinese authorities have used brutal means to expropriate property, in a bid to profit from the construction boom.


Rights related to sexuality

In 2001, homosexuality was removed from the official list of mental illnesses in China. China recognizes neither
same-sex marriage Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same sex or gender. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 33 countries, with the most recent being Mexico, constituting ...
nor
civil union A civil union (also known as a civil partnership) is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to provide recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant some or all of the rights of marriage ...
s. According to the criminal law of the PRC, only females can be victims of rape, a man who has been raped cannot accuse the rapists (who can be men or women) of rape. However, the criminal law of the PRC's constitution in mainland China had been amended in August 2015. Thus, males can be victims of indecency, but the articles on the criminal law which are related to rape still remain unrevised, so male rape victims can only accuse the rapists of indecency.


Intersex rights

Intersex Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical b ...
people in China suffer discrimination, lack of access to health care and coercive genital surgeries.


COVID-19 pandemic

During the
COVID-19 pandemic in China The COVID-19 pandemic in China is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). China was the first country to experience an outbreak of the di ...
, the Chinese government has censored online criticism of its response to the pandemic, including criticism of its
lockdown A lockdown is a restriction policy for people, community or a country to stay where they are, usually due to specific risks (such as COVID-19) that could possibly harm the people if they move and interact freely. The term is used for a prison ...
measures.


Other human rights issues

Workers' rights and privacy are contentious human rights issues in China. There have been several reports of core
International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...
conventions being denied to workers. One such report was released by the
International Labor Rights Fund The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., U.S., that describes itself as "an advocate for and with the working poor around the world." ILRF, formerly the "International La ...
in October 2006; it documented
minimum wage A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. B ...
violations, long work hours, and inappropriate actions towards workers by management. Workers cannot form their own unions in the workplace; they may only join state-sanctioned ones. The extent to which these organizations can fight for the rights of Chinese workers is disputed. The policy toward refugees from North Korea is a recurring human rights issue. It is official policy to repatriate these refugees to North Korea, but the policy is not evenly enforced and a considerable number of them stay in the People's Republic. Though it is in contravention of international law to deport political refugees, as illegal immigrants their situation is precarious. Their rights are not always protected, and some are tricked into marriage, forced to engage in cybersex or prostitution, allegedly linked to criminal networks generating an estimated annual revenue of $105,000,000 US. African students in China have complained about their treatment in China. Their complaints largely ignored until 19889, when 'students rose up in protest against what they called "Chinese apartheid.Robinson, Thomas W. & Shambaugh, David L. ''Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice'', Oxford University Press, p. 315. African officials took notice of the issue, and the
Organization of African Unity The Organisation of African Unity (OAU; french: Organisation de l'unité africaine, OUA) was an intergovernmental organization established on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with 32 signatory governments. One of the main heads for OAU's ...
issued an official protest. The organization's chairman, President
Moussa Traoré Moussa Traoré (25 September 1936 – 15 September 2020) was a Malian soldier, politician, and dictator who was President of Mali from 1968 to 1991. As a Lieutenant, he led the military ousting of President Modibo Keïta in 1968. Thereafter ...
of Mali, went on a fact-finding mission to China. A 1989 report in ''
Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unit ...
'' stated: 'these practices could threaten Peking's entire relationship with the continent.'Snow, Phillip. "Third World Report: 'Chinese apartheid' threatens links with Africa", ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'', 20 January 1989.
The United Nations reports that it has had difficulty in arranging official visits to China by UN Special Rapporteurs on various human rights issues. On 29 June 2020,
HRW Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ri ...
urged the United Nation member countries to act upon the call by UN human rights experts to examine the Chinese government's human rights record. On 3 July 2020, a 13-ton shipment of beauty products made out of human hair was seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The shipment, originating in Xinjiang, China, was seized at the Port of New York, signalling potential human rights abuses of forced labour and imprisonment. On 9 September 2020, a global coalition of 321 civil society groups, including ''
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...
'', urged
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
to urgently create an independent international mechanism to address the Chinese government's human rights violations. In an open letter, the organizations highlighted China's rights violations worldwide, including the targeting of human rights defenders, global censorship and surveillance, and rights-free development that caused environmental degradation. On 6 October 2020, 39
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
member countries expressed deep concerns over China's human rights violations in
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...
,
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
, and
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...
. The call was made by Germany, supported by Britain, Canada, the United States, many European Union member states, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Haiti, Honduras, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. A report published by
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
in August 2021 documents the economic, social, and cultural rights violations resulting from the China-financed hydroelectric dam construction in northeaster Cambodia. Nearly 5,000 people have been displaced due to the dam's construction. The World report 2022 by ''
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
'' stated that the
Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...
under the leadership of
Xi Jinping Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, ...
celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2021 amid crimes against humanity in
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...
and the devastation of civil liberties in
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
. In 2021 the Chinese government tightened ideological control and increasingly cracked down on free speech. The Chinese government also moved quickly to offer support to
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
’s abusive Taliban-controlled government.


Position of the government

The
Government of the People's Republic of China The Government of the People's Republic of China () is an authoritarian political system in the People's Republic of China under the exclusive political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It consists of legislative, executive, mili ...
has argued that its concept of ' Asian values' requires that the welfare of the collective should always be put ahead of the rights of any individual whenever conflicts between these arise. Its position is that the government has the responsibility to design, implement and enforce a ' harmonious socialist society'. The People's Republic of China emphasizes state sovereignty, which at times conflicts with the international norms or standards of human rights. However, its concept of human rights has developed radically over the years. From 1949 to the late 1970s, the CCP focused on promoting the rights of the masses: collective rights rather than individual human rights. Deng Xiaoping said that the right of a nation, or sovereignty (''guoquan'') is more important than human rights (''renquan''), and right of subsistence (''shengcun quan'') is more fundamental than political freedom. However, from the beginning of economic reforms in 1978 to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the CCP raised concerns for human rights in their domestic and international policies. In 1991, China officially accepted the idea that human rights were compatible with Chinese socialism, and in 1993 the state created the China Society for Human Rights Studies, which has represented Chinese positions on human rights in international forums, conferences, and media. China went on to sign two treaties – the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (GA) on 16 December 1966 through GA. Resolution 2200A (XXI), and came in force from 3 January 197 ...
(ICESCR) and the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a multilateral treaty that commits nations to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, fre ...
(ICCPR) in 1997 and 1998, respectively. The ICESCR was ratified by the National People's Congress in 2001, but as of 2016, the ICCPR has not yet been ratified. , the PRC had signed more than 20 international treaties on human rights.


Western human rights

Those who agree with the Chinese Communist Party point towards what they call rapid deterioration in Western societies, claiming that there has been an increase in geographic, religious and racial segregation, rising crime rates, family breakdown, industrial action, vandalism, and political extremism within Western societies. The European Union and the United Nations claim to be stopping these types of human rights violations, save for a few violations committed by some Western governments (e.g. the CIA's
extraordinary rendition Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpos ...
programme). The PRC holds the opinion, though, that many alleged negatives about democratic society are a direct result of an excess of individual freedom, saying that too much freedom is dangerous. The PRC holds that these actions in Western nations are all violations of human rights. They say that these should be taken into account when assessing a country's human rights record. On occasion they have criticized the United States policies, especially the human rights reports published by its State Department. They cite the opinion that the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, has also violated human rights laws, for example during the invasion of Iraq.


Chinese definition

Chinese
state media State media or government media are media outlets that are under financial and/or editorial control of the state or government, directly or indirectly. There are different types of state and government media. State-controlled or state-run medi ...
has stated that human rights should encompass what its officials have labelled as "
economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...
standards of living and measures of health and economic prosperity".


Measures taken

In March 2003, an amendment was officially made to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, officially stating that 'The State respects and preserves human rights.' In addition, China was dropped from a list of top ten human rights violators in the annual human rights report released by the U.S. State Department in 2008, though the report indicated that there were still widespread human rights-related issues in the PRC. In 1988, the People's Republic of China began direct village elections to help maintain social and political order whilst facing rapid economic change. Elections now occur in about 650,000 villages across China, reaching 75% of the nation's 1.3 billion people, according to the Carter Center. In 2008,
Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern provi ...
, which enjoys the highest per capita GDP in mainland China, was selected for experimentation, and over 70% of the government officials on the district level are to be directly elected (as of 2008). However, in keeping with Communist Party philosophy, candidates must be selected from a pre-approved list.


See also

* Human rights in Hong Kong * Human rights in Macau * Human rights in Tibet *
Human rights in Taiwan Taiwan is a multi-party democracy. The 2000 presidential victory of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Chen Shui-bian followed more than 50 years of rule by the Kuomintang (KMT) and marked the first transition from one political party ...
*
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Four ...
* Concerning the Situation in the Ideological Sphere * Ecological migration * Empowerment and Rights Institute * Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China *
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) affects both publishing and viewing online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of th ...
*
Human Rights in China (organization) Human Rights in China () is a New York-based international, Chinese, non-governmental organization with intentions to promote international human rights and facilitate the institutional protection of these rights in the People's Republic of Chi ...
* Tangshan protest * Dongzhou protests *
Penal system in China The penal system in China is mostly composed of an administrative detention system and a judicial incarceration system. As of 2020, it is estimated that 1.7 million people had been incarcerated in China, which is the second-highest prison populat ...
*
Laogai ''Laogai'' (), short for ''laodong gaizao'' (), which means reform through labor, is a criminal justice system involving the use of penal labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and North Korea (DPRK). ''Láogǎi'' i ...
, "reform through orcedlabor" * Re-education through labour * List of prisons in the Tibet Autonomous Region * Xinjiang re-education camps * List of concentration and internment camps * Beijing Municipal Prison *
Qincheng Prison The Ministry of Public Security Qincheng Prison () is a maximum-security prison located in Qincheng Village, Xingshou, Changping District, Beijing in the People's Republic of China. The prison was built in 1958 with aid from the Soviet Unio ...
* Black jails * Xinfang * Open Constitution Initiative * Yan Xiaoling - Fan Yanqiong Case *
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
* Sinocentrism * Han chauvinism *
Sinicization Sinicization, sinofication, sinification, or sinonization (from the prefix , 'Chinese, relating to China') is the process by which non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture, particularly the language, societal norms, cul ...
* Sinicization of Tibet * Boycotts of Chinese products may use some of the arguments in this article as their basis * Ethnic issues in China * Lop Nur Nuclear Weapons Test Base * List of Chinese nuclear tests * 1987–1989 Tibetan unrest *
2008 Lhasa violence The 2008 Lhasa riots, also referred to as the March 14 riots or March 14 incident ( zh, c=三·一四事件) in Chinese media,
*
2010 Tibetan language protest The 2010 Tibetan language protest was a series of protests in Tongren County, Gonghe County and Maqên County, in Qinghai Province; Minzu University of China in Beijing; and Xiahe County in Gansu Province, People's Republic of China by ethnic Tib ...
* Drapchi Prison * International reactions to 2008 Tibetan protests *
Protests and uprisings in Tibet since 1950 Protests and uprisings in Tibet against the government of the People's Republic of China have occurred since 1950, and include the 1959 uprising, the 2008 uprising, and the subsequent self-immolation protests. Over the years the Tibetan governme ...


References


Citations


Sources

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The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...
'', 8 April 2000.
"Dalai Lama honours Tintin and Tutu"
''
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...
'', 2 June 2006. * "From politics to health policies: why they're in trouble", ''
The Star ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'', 6 February 2007. * "Online encyclopedia Wikipedia founder raps firms aiding China censorship", ''
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...
'' Financial Wire, 8 March 2007.
"Profile: The Dalai Lama"
''
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...
'', 25 April 2006.
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Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy a ...
'', March / April 1997. * Ching, Frank. ''China: The Truth About Its Human Rights Record'', Rider Books, 2008. * Elliott, Mark C. ''The Manchu Way: The 8 Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China'', Stanford University Press, 2001. * Goble, Paul. "China: Analysis From Washington – A Breakthrough For Tibet", ''World Tibet Network News'', Canada Tibet Committee, 31 August 2001. * Laquian, Aprodicio A. ''Beyond Metropolis: The Planning and Governance of Asia's Mega-Urban Regions'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. * Lasater, Martin L. & Conboy, Kenneth J. "Why the World Is Watching Beijing's Treatment of Tibet",
The Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presi ...
, 9 October 1987. * Luard, Tim. "China rethinks peasant 'apartheid'", ''
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'', 10 November 2005. * Macleod, Calum. "China reviews 'apartheid' for 900 m peasants", ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'', 10 June 2001. * Neville-Hadley, Peter. '' Frommer's China'', Frommers.com, 2003. * Robinson, Thomas W. & Shambaugh, David L. ''Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice'', Oxford University Press. * Rosenthal, A.M. "China's 'Apartheid' Taiwan Policy." ''
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'', 4 December 1995. * Snow, Phillip. "Third World Report: 'Chinese apartheid' threatens links with Africa", ''
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'', 20 January 1989. * von Senger, Harro. "Chinese culture and human rights" (online available: pdf). In: Wolfgang Schmale (Hrsg.): "Human rights and cultural diversity: Europe, Arabic-Islamic world, Africa, China". Goldbach: Keip, 1993, pp. 281–333 * Waddington, Jeremy. ''Globalization and Patterns of Labour Resistance'', Routledge, 1999. * Whitehouse, David. "Chinese workers and peasants in three phases of accumulation", Paper delivered at the Colloquium on Economy, Society and Nature, sponsored by the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2 March 2006. Retrieved 1 August 2007. * Wildasin, David E. "Factor mobility, risk, inequality, and redistribution" in David Pines, Efraim Sadka, Itzhak Zilcha, ''Topics in Public Economics: Theoretical and Applied Analysis'', Cambridge University Press, 1998. * Yao, Shunli. "China's WTO Revolution", ''
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Further reading

* Cheng, Lucie, Rossett, Arthur and Woo, Lucie, ''East Asian Law: Universal Norms and Local Cultures'', RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, * Edwards, Catherine, ''China's Abuses Ignored for Profit'',
Insight on the News ''Insight on the News'' (also called ''Insight'') was an American conservative print and online news magazine. It was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate founded by Unification movement founder Sun Myung Mo ...
, Vol. 15, 20 December 1999. * * * * * * * Sitaraman, Srini, Explaining China's Continued Resistance Towards Human Rights Norms: A Historical Legal Analysis, ACDIS ''Occasional Paper'', Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security, University of Illinois, June 2008. * Svensson, Marina, ''The Chinese Debate on Asian Values and Human Rights: Some Reflections on Relativism, Nationalism and Orientalism'', in Brun, Ole. ''Human Rights and Asian Values: Contesting National Identities and Cultural Representations in Asia'', Ole Bruun, Michael Jacobsen; Curzon, 2000, * Wang, Fei-Ling, ''Organizing through Division and Exclusion: China's Hukou System'', Stanford University Press, 2005, * Zweig, David, ''Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era'', M. E. Sharpe, 1997, * ''The silent majority; China.'' (Life in a Chinese village),
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...
, April 2005 * China's Geography: Globalization and the Dynamics of Political, Economic, and Social Change * Anwar Rahman. Sinicization Beyond the Great Wall: China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region


External links


Review of China
by the
United Nations Human Rights Council The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), CDH is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. ...
's
Universal Periodic Review The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a mechanism of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) that emerged from the 2005 UN reform process.resolution 60/251of 3 April 2006, the UPR periodically examines the human rights performance of al ...
, 7 February 2009
UN Human Development Report 2003 on China
by the
United Nations Development Programme The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

2004 Human Rights Report on China
by the
United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...

Freedom House: ChinaAmnesty.org – ChinaHuman Rights in China (hrchina.org)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Human Rights In China Political controversies in China Political repression in China Political abuses of psychiatry Torture in China