Human rights in the People's Republic of China
Encyclopedia
Human rights in the People's Republic of China are a matter of dispute between the Chinese government, other countries, international NGOs, and dissidents inside the country. Organizations such as the U.S. State Department
, Amnesty International
, and Human Rights Watch
have accused the Chinese government of restricting the freedoms of speech
, movement
, and religion
of Chinese citizens. The Chinese government argues for a "wider" definition of human rights
, to include economic and social as well as political rights, all in relation to "national culture
" and the level of development
of the country. In this regard, China claims that human rights are being improved.
China also repeated many times that its constitution specifies not only citizenship rights but also the "Four Cardinal Principles
"; in legal respects the "Four Cardinal Principles" are higher than citizenship rights, meaning there was a legal basis according to the Chinese constitution when China arrested people who wanted, according to China, to overthrow these principles. Chinese people who obey these principles can enjoy all Chinese citizenship rights in principle.
However, numerous human rights organizations
maintain a litany of grievances against the Chinese government. Controversial human rights issues in China include policies such as capital punishment, the one-child policy
, the social status of Tibetans
, and lack of protections regarding freedom of press and religion. One of the foremost areas of concern is a lack of legal rights, for want of an independent judiciary, rule of law
, and due process
. Another prominent area of concern is lack of labor rights, which is related to the hukou system, the absence of independent unions, and discrimination against rural workers and ethnic minorities
. Yet another area of concern is the lack of religious freedom, highlighted by state clashes with Christian, Tibetan Buddhist
, and Falun Gong
groups. Some indigenous groups are trying to expand these freedoms; they include Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders
(CHRD), and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group
(CHRLCG).
As judges are appointed by the State and the judiciary as a whole does not have its own budget, this has led to corruption and the abuse of administrative power.
guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the subversion of state power
and the protection of state secret
clause to imprison those who are critical of the government. The government is also heavily involved in censoring news through the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China, even though no state law explicitly gives it such authority.
The Chinese government promised to issue permits allowing people to protest in 'protest parks' during the 2008 Summer Olympics
in Beijing, but 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 are blocked on the Internet
and in many publications. Chinese law forbids the advocacy of independence
for any part of its territory, as well as public challenge to CPC domination of the government of China. An unauthorized protest during the Olympics by seven foreign activists at the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park
, demanding Tibetan independence and blocking the park's entrance, was cleared and the protesters deported.
Foreign internet search engines including Microsoft Bing!, Yahoo!, Google Search China have come under criticism for aiding in these practices, including banning the word "democracy" from its chat rooms in China. Yahoo! in particular, stated that it will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its Chinese customers from the authorities. In 2005 reporter Shi Tao
was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for releasing an internal Communist Party document to an overseas Chinese democracy site after Yahoo! China provided his personal emails and IP addresses to the Chinese government. Skype president Josh Silverman said it was "common knowledge" that TOM had "established procedures to... block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities."
. Freedom House
ranked China "Not Free" in its annual press freedom survey. PRC journalist He Qinglian
says that PRC media controls rely on confidential guidance from the Communist Party propaganda department, intense monitoring, and punishment for violators rather than on pre-publication censorship. ITV News
reporter John Ray was arrested while covering a "Free Tibet" protest. Foreign journalists also reported that their access to certain websites, including those of human rights organisations, was restricted. International Olympic Committee
president Jacques Rogge
stated at the end of the 2008 Olympic Games that "The regulations might 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 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 centre on 25 July, and is checking at least 20 other reported incidents".
came to power in the late 1940s and instigated a command economy. In 1958, Mao set up a residency permit system defining where people could work, and classified an individual as a "rural" or "urban" worker. A worker seeking to move from the country to an urban area to take up non-agricultural work would have to apply through the relevant bureaucracies. People who worked outside their authorized domain or geographical area would not qualify for grain rations, employer-provided housing, or health care. There were controls over education, employment, marriage and so on. One reason cited for instituting this system was to prevent the possible chaos caused by the predictable large-scale urbanization. As a part of the one country, two systems
policy proposed by Deng Xiaoping
and accepted by the British and Portuguese governments, the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao retained separate border control and immigration policies with the rest of the PRC. Chinese citizens had to gain permission from the government before travelling to Hong Kong or Macau, but this requirement was abolished after the handover. Since then, restrictions imposed by the SAR governments have been the limiting factor on travel.
Urban dwellers enjoy a range of social, economic and cultural benefits while peasants, the majority of the Chinese population, are treated as second-class citizen
s, according to an academic at the University of Alberta. The Washington Times
reported in 2000 that although migrant labourers play an important part in spreading wealth in Chinese villages, they are treated "like second-class citizens by a system so discriminatory that it has been likened to apartheid." Anita Chan also posits that China's household registration and temporary residence permit system has created a situation analogous to the passbook system in South Africa which was designed to regulate the supply of cheap labor. In 2000, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy has 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 was proposed in 11 provinces, mainly along the developed eastern coast. The law has already been changed such that migrant workers no longer face summary arrest, after a widely publicised incident in 2003, when a university-educated migrant died in Guangdong province. The Beijing law lecturer who exposed the incident said it spelt the end of the hukou system: in most smaller cities, the system has been abandoned; it has "almost lost its function" in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
, said this 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 as second-class citizens".
The discrimination enforced by the hukou system became particularly onerous in the 1980s after hundreds of millions of migrant laborers were forced out of state corporations and co-operatives. The system classifies workers as "urban" or "rural", and attempts by workers classified as "rural" to move to urban centers were tightly controlled by the Chinese bureaucracy, which enforced its control by denying access to essential goods and services such as grain rations, housing, and health care, and by regularly closing down migrant workers' private schools. The hukou system also enforced pass laws
similar to those in South Africa, with "rural" workers requiring six passes to work in provinces other than their own, and periodic police raids which rounded up those without permits, placed them in detention centers, and deported them. 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, and suffering abusive consequences. Anita Chan furthers 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
justified these practices on the grounds that they assisted the police in tracking down criminals and maintaining public order, and provided demographic data for government planning and programs.
(1966–1976), particularly the Destruction of Four Olds
campaign, religious affairs of all types were persecuted and discouraged by the Communists with many religious buildings looted and destroyed. Since then, there have been efforts to repair, reconstruct and protect historical and cultural religious sites. The US department of state criticizes in its human rights report 2005 that not enough has been done to repair or restore damaged and destroyed sites.
The 1982 Constitution technically guarantees its citizens the right to believe in any religion. However this freedom differs from the general concept of "freedom of religion
" as recognised in the West, and is subject to restrictions.
Members of the Communist Party are officially required to be atheists. While many party members privately violate this rule, being openly religious can limit their economic prospects.
and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association
) are those under the Communist Party
control.
The "official Catholic" metropolitan bishop appointed in China in 2007 to replace the deceased Fu Tieshan was not made by the Pope as is customary. The Catholic Church in particular is viewed as a foreign power in a situation somewhat analogous to that in Post-Reformation England, and so the official church in China is state-controlled; accordingly this above-ground Chinese church is considered a schismatic group by the wider Church; there exists also an illegal and underground Catholic community loyal to the Pope and the wider Church.
who died in 1989, Beijing initiated its own search under the supervision of a senior Politburo member. The boy chosen by the Dalai Lama, and the abbot who helped with the choice, both vanished. The child is believed to have spent the years since then under house arrest; all calls for visitation or for his release have been ignored. The Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama is branded a fake by loyalists. Examples of the political controls exercised are:
Monks celebrating the reception of the US Congressional Gold Medal by the Dalai Lama have been detained; Drepung
, once a large temple for over 10,000 monks, is now home to only 600; Beijing now restricts total membership in any monastery to 700.
and all 'heterodox religions', and began a nationwide crackdown of the popular new religious movement
following a demonstration by 10,000 practitioners outside the leadership enclave at Zhongnanhai on 25 April. Protests in Beijing were frequent for the first few years following the 1999 edict, though these protests have largely been eradicated. Practitioners have occasionally hacked into state television channels to broadcast pro-Falun Gong materials. Outside of mainland China, practitioners are active in appealing to the governments, media, and people of their respective countries about the situation in China.
According to Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ian Denis Johnson
, the government mobilized every aspect of society, including the media apparatus, police force, army, education system, families and workplaces, against Falun Gong. An extra-constitutional body, the "6–10 Office" was created to do what Forbes describes as "[overseeing] the terror campaign." The campaign was driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and internet. Human Rights Watch noted that families and workplaces were urged to cooperate with the government, while practitioners themselves were subject to various coercive measures to have them recant their beliefs. Amnesty International raised particular concerns over reports of torture, illegal imprisonment including forced labor, and psychiatric abuses.
In March 2006, Falun Gong and The Epoch Times
said that the Chinese government and its agencies, including the People's Liberation Army
, were conducting "widespread and systematic organ harvesting of living practitioners" specifically at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang
according to two eye-witness accounts that practitioners detained in the hospital's basement were being tissue-typed, and killed to order. In July 2006, David Kilgour
and David Matas
, sponsored by Falun Gong to investigate the allegations, published a report which they admitted the evidence was circumstantial, but which taken together supported the allegations that large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners were victims of systematic organ harvesting whilst still alive.
The Chinese government categorically denied any mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners, and a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman denounced the organ harvesting allegations as "absurd lies concocted by the Falun Gong cult followers". Dissident Harry Wu
said the two Epoch Times witnesses were "not reliable and most probably they had fabricated the story"; he rejected the totality of the allegations after sending in investigators. A Congressional Research Service
said that there was "insufficient evidence to support this specific allegation," without elaboration. David Ownby, a noted expert on Falun Gong, said "Organ harvesting is happening in China, but I see no evidence proving it is aimed particularly at Falun Gong practitioners." Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen
said "Depending on who you believe, the Kilgour-Matas report is either compelling evidence that proves the claims about Falun Gong... or a collection of conjecture and inductive reasoning that fails to support its own conclusions".
. This is now replaced by selective political repression of small groups of people who openly challenge the CPC's rule; this repression in implemented through the judicial system. The most recent mass movement for political freedom was crushed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre
in 1989, the estimated death toll of which ranges from about 200 to 10,000 depending on sources.
One of the most famous dissidents is Zhang Zhixin
, who is known for standing up against the ultra-left
. In October 2008, the government denounced the European Parliament
's decision to award the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought
to Hu Jia
, on grounds that it was "gross interference in China's domestic affairs" to give such an award to a "jailed criminal.. in disregard of our repeated representations."
On 8 December 2008, two days before the release of Charter 08, Liu Xiaobo
was arrested. He along with three hundred and two other Chinese citizens, signed Charter 08, a manifesto released on the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 2009), written in the style of the Czechoslovakian Charter 77 calling for greater freedom of expression, human rights, and free elections.[6] As of May 2009, the Charter has collected over 9,000 signatures from Chinese of various walks of life.
Although the Chinese government does not interfere with Chinese people's privacy as much as it used to, it still deems it necessary to keep tabs on what people say in public. Internet forums are strictly monitored, as is international postal mail (this is sometimes inexplicably "delayed" or simply "disappears") and e-mail.
Local officials are chosen by election, and 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.
China's birth control
policy, known widely as the one-child policy
, was implemented in 1979 by the Chinese government to alleviate the overpopulation problem. Having more than one child is illegal and punishable by fines. Voice of America
cites critics who argue that it contributes to forced abortions
, human rights violations, female infanticide, abandonment and sex-selective abortions, believed to be relatively commonplace in some areas of the country. This is thought to have been a significant contribution to the gender imbalance in mainland China, where there is a 118 to 100 ratio of male to female children reported. Forced abortions and sterilizations have also been reported.
It is also argued that the one-child policy is not effective enough to justify its costs, and that the dramatic decrease in Chinese fertility started before the program began in 1979 for unrelated factors. 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.
In 2002, the laws related to the One-child policy were amended to allow ethnic minorities and Chinese living in rural areas to have more than one child. The policy was generally not enforced in those areas of the country even before this. The policy has been relaxed in urban areas to allow people who have single children to have two children.
, between 1994 and 1999 China was ranked seventh in executions per capita, behind Singapore
, Saudi Arabia, Belarus
, Sierra Leone, Kyrgyzstan
, and Jordan
. Amnesty International claims that real figures are much higher than official ones, stating that in China the statistics are considered State secrets.
Figures from 2006 and 2007 are reported to have been 1,010 and 470 executions, respectively. In January 2007, China's state media announced that all death penalty cases will be reviewed by the Supreme People's Court
. Since 1983, China's highest court did not review all cases. This marks a return to China's pre-1983 policy. In light of these changes, figures from 2007 display a substantial reduction in executions with only 470 reported executions compared with figures from previous years. Amnesty International analysts argue that this drop is only temporary since the figure includes only confirmed executions and are likely to be much higher. As of 2008, China is still the country with the highest number of executions. 1,718 people have been executed in 2008 out of 2,390 worldwide.
A total of 68 crimes are punishable by death; capital offenses include non-violent, white-collar crime
s such as embezzlement
and tax fraud. Execution methods include lethal injections and shooting. The People's Armed Police
carries out the executions, usually at 10 am.
Also, China's definition of illegal torture – that it leaves physical marks – is so narrow that interrogators can employ a wide range of methods that contravene UN standards. Suspects are manacled in contorted positions, deprived of sleep and subjected to psychological torture.
In 2003 the Supreme People’s Procuratorate reported that 'forced confessions' had led to the deaths of 460 people and serious injuries for 117 others.
In 2005 Manfred Nowak
visited as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture
. After spending two weeks there, he observed that it was "on the decline, but still widespread." He also complained of Chinese officials interfering with his research, including intimidating people he sought to interview.
During the Chongqing gang trials
in 2009–2010, details were revealed of extensive and persistent torture of suspects held in police custody. Manifestations include regular beatings, sleep deprivation and being placed in or forced to hold agonising positions.
In May 2010, new regulations were issued that nullified evidence gathered through violence or intimidation. 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 supposed victim turned up alive and the defendant had spent 10 years in prison. International human rights groups gave the change a cautious welcome.
published the book Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and its Origins in the Mao Era written by Robin Munro
and based on the documents obtained by him. The British researcher Robin Munro, a sinologist who was writing his dissertation in London after a long sojourn in China, had travelled to China several times to survey libraries in provincial towns and had gathered a large amount of literature which bore the stamp ‘secret’ but at the same time was openly available. This literature included even historical analyses going back to the days of the Cultural Revolution
and concerned articles and reports on the number of people who were taken to mental hospitals because they complained of a series of issues. It was found, according to Munro, that the involuntary confinement of religious groups, political dissidents, and whistleblowers had a lengthy history in China. The abuse had begun in the 1950s and 1960s, and had grown extremely throughout the Cultural Revolution. During the period of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, it achieved its apogee, then under the reign of Mao Zedong
and the Gang of Four
, which established a very repressive and harsh regime. No deviance or opposition in thought or in practice was tolerated.
The documents told of a massive abuse of psychiatry for political purposes during the leadership of Mao Zedong, during which millions of people had been declared mentally sick. In the 1980s, according to the official documents, there was political connotation to fifteen percent of all forensic psychiatric cases. In the early 1990s, the numbers had dropped to five percent, but with beginning of the campaign against Falun Gong
, the percentage had again increased quite rapidly.
Chinese official psychiatric literature testifies distinctly that the Communist Party's notion of ‘political dangerousness’ was long since institutionally engrafted in the diagnostic armory of China's psychiatry and included in the main concept of psychiatric dangerousness.
The People’s Republic of China is the only country which appears to abuse psychiatry for political purposes in a systematic way, and despite international criticism, this seems to be continuing. Political abuse of psychiatry in the People’s Republic of China is high on the agenda and has produced recurring disputes in the international psychiatric community. 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.
It also seemed that, China had hardly known high security forensic institutions until 1989. However, since then, the Chinese authorities have constructed the entire network of special forensic mental hospitals called Ankang which in Chinese is for ‘Peace and Health.’ By that time, China had had 20 Ankang institutions with the staff employed by the Ministry of State Security. The psychiatrists who worked there were wearing uniforms under their white coats.
The political abuse of psychiatry in China seems to take place only in the institutions under the authority of the police and the Ministry of State Security but not in those belonging to other governmental sectors. Psychiatric care in China falls into four sectors that hardly connect up with each other. These are Ankang institutions of the Ministry of State Security; those belonging to the police; those that fall under the authority of the Ministry of Social Affairs; those belonging to the Ministry of Health. Both the sectors belonging to the police and the Ministry of State Security are the closed sectors, and, consequently, information hardly ever leaks out. In the hospitals belonging to the Ministry of Health, psychiatrists do not contact with the Ankang institutions and, actually, had no idea of what occurred there, and could, thereby, sincerely state that they were not informed of political abuse of psychiatry in China.
In China, the structure of forensic psychiatry was to a great extent identical to that in the USSR. On its own, it is not so strange, since psychiatrists of the Moscow Serbsky Institute
visited Beijing in 1957 to help their Chinese ‘brethren’, the same psychiatrists who promoted the system of political abuse of psychiatry in their own USSR. As a consequence, diagnostics were not much different than in the Soviet Union. The only difference was that the Soviets preferred ‘sluggish schizophrenia’ as a diagnosis, and the Chinese generally cleaved to the diagnosis ‘paranoia
’ or ‘paranoid schizophrenia’. However, the results were the same: long hospitalization in a mental hospital, involuntary treatment with neuroleptics, torture, abuse, all aimed at breaking the victim’s will.
The World Psychiatric Association
(WPA) attempted to confine the problem by presenting it as Falun Gong issue and, at the same time, make the impression that the members of the movement were likely not mentally sound, that it was a sect which likely brainwashed its members, etc. There was even a diagnosis of ‘qigong syndrome’ which was used reflecting on the exercises practiced by Falung Gong. It was the unfair game aiming to avoid the political abuse of psychiatry from dominating the WPA agenda.
In August 2002, the General Assembly was to take place during the next WPA World Congress in Yokohama
. The issue of Chinese political abuse of psychiatry had been placed as one of the final items on the agenda of the General Assembly. When the issue was broached during the General Assembly, the exact nature of compromise came to light. In order to investigate the political abuse of psychiatry, the WPA would send an investigative mission to China. The visit was projected for the spring of 2003 in order to assure that one could present a report during the annual meeting of the British Royal College of Psychiatrists
in June/July of that year and the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association
in May of the same year. After the 2002 World Congress, the WPA Executive Committee’s half-hearted attitude in Yokohama came to light: it was an omen of a longstanding policy of diversion and postponement. The 2003 investigative mission never took place, and when finally a visit to China did take place, this visit was more of scientific exchange. In the meantime, the political abuse of psychiatry persisted unabatedly, nevertheless the WPA did not seem to care.
Some policies cause reverse racism
, where Han Chinese or even ethnic minorities from other regions are treated as second-class citizens in the ethnic region. In the same line, there are wide-ranging preferential policies (i.e. affirmative action
s) in place to promote social and economic developments for ethnic minorities, including preferential employments, political appointments, and business loans. Universities typically have quota reserved for ethnic minorities despite having lower admission test scores. Ethnic minorities are also exempt from the one-child policy
which is aimed toward Han Chinese.
Stern punishments towards independence-seeking demonstrators, rioters, or terrorists have led to mistreatment of the Tibetan
and Uyghur
minorities in Western China. The United States in 2007 refused to help repatriate five Chinese Uyghur Guantanamo Bay detainees because of the "past treatment of the Uigur minority". On the other hand, China has many border regions with large minority populations, including Guangxi
with 16 million Zhuang people, and other concentrated Muslim populations such as the Hui people
, with some even poorer than the Uyghurs, such as the Dongxiang
, Bonan
, and the Salar, among whom there have been "no reports of separatism, violence, or even Islamic radicalism". The fellow Muslim Kazakhs, who live with the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang
area under similar laws and conditions, have not organized rebellions against the state or aligned themselves with Kazakhstan
.
has been a concern since the founding of the PRC. Tibetans who opposed the diversion of irrigation water by Chinese authorities to the China Gold International Resources mining operations were detained, tortured and murdered.
Judicial mutilation against Tibetans by the Dalai Lama
's government, and the serfdom controversy
have been cited by the PRC as reasons to interfere for the welfare of Tibetans. Conflicting reports about Tibetan human rights have evolved since then. The PRC claims a Tibetan cultural revival since the 1950s, while the Dalai Lama says "whether intentionally or unintentionally, somewhere cultural genocide
is taking place".
Following the Chinese economic reform
, businesspeople from other parts of China have traveled to Tibet to do business, although most do not stay in region. The New York Times has cited this ethnic diversity in Tibet as a cause of "ethnic tensions". It has also criticized China's promotion of home ownership among nomadic Tibetans. Western politicians often level the charge that the Tibetan languages are at risk of extinction in Tibet. However, academics point out that for the vast majority of Tibetans, who live in rural areas, the Chinese language is merely introduced as a second language in secondary.
magazine, despite the National People's Congress
enacting a law in 2007 to protect private property with the exception of land, local Chinese authorities have used brutal means to expropriate property, in a bid to profit from the construction boom.
in October 2006 documenting minimum wage violations, long work hours, and inappropriate actions towards workers by management. Workers cannot form their own unions in the workplace, only being able to join State-sanctioned ones. The extent to which these organizations can fight for the rights of Chinese workers is disputed.
The issue of refugees from North Korea
is a recurring one. It is official policy to repatriate them to North Korea, but the policy is not evenly enforced and a considerable number of them stay in the People's Republic (some move on to other countries). 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. Some of them are tricked into marriage or prostitution.
African students in China have complained about their treatment in China, that was largely ignored until 1988-9, when "students rose up in protest against what they called 'Chinese apartheid'". African officials took notice of the issue, and the Organization of African Unity issued an official protest. The organization's chairman, Mali
's president Moussa Traoré
, went on a fact-finding mission to China. According to a Guardian
1989 Third World Report titled "Chinese apartheid" threatens links with Africa, these practices could threaten Peking's entire relationship with the continent."
has argued that idea of "Asian values" means that the "welfare" of the collective should always be put ahead of the rights of any individual whenever conflicts between these arise. It argues that there is a responsibility of the government to create a "harmonious society", and that in some cases it is necessary to persuade or force individuals to make sacrifices in their rights for the wider needs of society. It argues that a strong and stable authority is required in order to regulate the potentially conflicting interests of the public and enforce a compromise and that Governments with curtailed authority would fail to take on such a responsibility.
The Chinese government points towards an alleged rapid social 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. They believe these are a direct result of an excess of individual freedom, saying that “Too much freedom is dangerous.”
China argues that these actions in Western Nations are all violations of human rights. China believes that these should be taken into account when assessing a country's human right records. Furthermore, the government criticizes the United States, which publishes human rights reports annually, by insisting that the United States has also caused human rights abuses such as the invasion of Iraq.
The PRC government also argues that the notion of human rights should include economic standards of living and measures of health and economic prosperity. On cultural grounds they argue that as the economic, cultural and political situations differ substantially between countries, a universal 'one-size-fits-all' definition of human rights should not apply internationally.
, stating "The State respects and preserves human rights." In addition, China was dropped from a list of top 10 human rights violators in the annual human rights report released by the U.S. State Department in 2008, while the report indicated that there were still widespread problems in China.
Since 1988, the Chinese government 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
–which enjoys the highest per capita GDP in China– was selected for experimentation, and over 70% of the government officials on the district level are to be directly elected. However, in keeping with Communist Party philosophy, candidates must be selected from a pre-approved list.
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, and Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
have accused the Chinese government of restricting the freedoms of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
, movement
Freedom of movement
Freedom of movement, mobility rights or the right to travel is a human right concept that the constitutions of numerous states respect...
, and religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
of Chinese citizens. The Chinese government argues for a "wider" definition of human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
, to include economic and social as well as political rights, all in relation to "national culture
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and...
" and the level of development
Developing country
A developing country, also known as a less-developed country, is a nation with a low level of material well-being. Since no single definition of the term developing country is recognized internationally, the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries...
of the country. In this regard, China claims that human rights are being improved.
China also repeated many times that its constitution specifies not only citizenship rights but also the "Four Cardinal Principles
Four Cardinal Principles
The Four Cardinal Principles were stated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 and are the four issues for which debate was not allowed within the People's Republic of China...
"; in legal respects the "Four Cardinal Principles" are higher than citizenship rights, meaning there was a legal basis according to the Chinese constitution when China arrested people who wanted, according to China, to overthrow these principles. Chinese people who obey these principles can enjoy all Chinese citizenship rights in principle.
However, numerous human rights organizations
China Human Rights Organizations
This is an incomplete list of organisations which campaign on human rights in China.- Organisations with central focus on human rights in China :*Human Rights in China*Chinese Human Rights Defenders*China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group...
maintain a litany of grievances against the Chinese government. Controversial human rights issues in China include policies such as capital punishment, the one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
, the social status of Tibetans
Tibetan people
The Tibetan people are an ethnic group that is native to Tibet, which is mostly in the People's Republic of China. They number 5.4 million and are the 10th largest ethnic group in the country. Significant Tibetan minorities also live in India, Nepal, and Bhutan...
, and lack of protections regarding freedom of press and religion. One of the foremost areas of concern is a lack of legal rights, for want of an independent judiciary, rule of law
Rule of law
The rule of law, sometimes called supremacy of law, is a legal maxim that says that governmental decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws with minimal discretion in their application...
, and due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
. Another prominent area of concern is lack of labor rights, which is related to the hukou system, the absence of independent unions, and discrimination against rural workers and ethnic minorities
Ethnic minorities in China
Ethnic minorities in China are the non-Han Chinese population in the People's Republic of China. The People's Republic of China officially recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups within China in addition to the Han majority. As of 2010, the combined population of officially recognised minority...
. Yet another area of concern is the lack of religious freedom, highlighted by state clashes with Christian, Tibetan Buddhist
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
, and Falun Gong
Falun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
groups. Some indigenous groups are trying to expand these freedoms; they include Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders
Chinese Human Rights Defenders
China Human Rights Defenders is a network of domestic and overseas Chinese human rights activists and groups.The group issues statements on human rights issues and its website provides news and background information....
(CHRD), and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group
China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group
China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group is a non-profit organization whose stated objective is to advocate for the protection of human rights lawyers and legal rights defenders in China...
(CHRLCG).
Legal system
The Chinese government recognizes that there are problems with the current legal system, such as:- A lack of laws in general, not just ones to protect civil rights.
- A lack of due processDue processDue process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
. - Conflicts of law.
As judges are appointed by the State and the judiciary as a whole does not have its own budget, this has led to corruption and the abuse of administrative power.
Freedom of speech
Although the 1982 constitutionConstitution of the People's Republic of China
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China is the highest law within the People's Republic of China. The current version was adopted by the 5th National People's Congress on December 4, 1982 with further revisions in 1988, 1993, 1999, and 2004. Three previous state constitutions—those of...
guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the subversion of state power
Inciting subversion of state power
Inciting subversion of state power is a crime under the law of the People's Republic of China. It is article 105, paragraph 2 of the 1997 revision of the People's Republic of China's Penal Code....
and the protection of state secret
State Secret
State Secret is a 1950 British drama film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Jack Hawkins, Glynis Johns and Herbert Lom. It was released in the United States under the title The Great Manhunt.-Cast:...
clause to imprison those who are critical of the government. The government is also heavily involved in censoring news through the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China, even though no state law explicitly gives it such authority.
The Chinese government promised to issue permits allowing people to protest in 'protest parks' during the 2008 Summer Olympics
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees competed in 28 sports and 302 events...
in Beijing, but 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 are blocked on the Internet
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...
and in many publications. Chinese law forbids the advocacy of independence
Independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
for any part of its territory, as well as public challenge to CPC domination of the government of China. An unauthorized protest during the Olympics by seven foreign activists at the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park
China Nationalities Museum
The China Ethnic Museum is a museum in Beijing, China, located just to the west of the Olympic Green...
, demanding Tibetan independence and blocking the park's entrance, was cleared and the protesters deported.
Foreign internet search engines including Microsoft Bing!, Yahoo!, Google Search China have come under criticism for aiding in these practices, including banning the word "democracy" from its chat rooms in China. Yahoo! in particular, stated that it will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its Chinese customers from the authorities. In 2005 reporter Shi Tao
Shi Tao
Shi Tao is a mainland Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site after Yahoo! China provided his personal details to the Chinese government.-Brief history:Shi Tao...
was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for releasing an internal Communist Party document to an overseas Chinese democracy site after Yahoo! China provided his personal emails and IP addresses to the Chinese government. Skype president Josh Silverman said it was "common knowledge" that TOM had "established procedures to... block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities."
Freedom of the press
Critics also argue that the Chinese authorities failed to live up to their promises on press freedomFreedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
. Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
ranked China "Not Free" in its annual press freedom survey. PRC journalist He Qinglian
He Qinglian
He Qinglian is a Chinese author and economist, most prominently known for her critical view of Chinese society and media controls in China.-Biography:...
says that PRC media controls rely on confidential guidance from the Communist Party propaganda department, intense monitoring, and punishment for violators rather than on pre-publication censorship. ITV News
ITV News
ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British television network ITV. Since 1955, ITV's news bulletins have been produced by Independent Television News . The channel's news coverage has won awards from the Royal Television Society, Emmy Awards and BAFTAs. Between 2004 and 2008, the...
reporter John Ray was arrested while covering a "Free Tibet" protest. Foreign journalists also reported that their access to certain websites, including those of human rights organisations, was restricted. International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
president Jacques Rogge
Jacques Rogge
Jacques Rogge, Count Rogge , is a Belgian sports bureaucrat. He is the eighth and current President of the International Olympic Committee .-Life and career:...
stated at the end of the 2008 Olympic Games that "The regulations might 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 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 centre on 25 July, and is checking at least 20 other reported incidents".
Freedom of movement
The Communist PartyCommunist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
came to power in the late 1940s and instigated a command economy. In 1958, Mao set up a residency permit system defining where people could work, and classified an individual as a "rural" or "urban" worker. A worker seeking to move from the country to an urban area to take up non-agricultural work would have to apply through the relevant bureaucracies. People who worked outside their authorized domain or geographical area would not qualify for grain rations, employer-provided housing, or health care. There were controls over education, employment, marriage and so on. One reason cited for instituting this system was to prevent the possible chaos caused by the predictable large-scale urbanization. As a part of the one country, two systems
One country, two systems
"One country, two systems" is an idea originally proposed by Deng Xiaoping, then Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China , for the reunification of China during the early 1980s...
policy proposed by Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
and accepted by the British and Portuguese governments, the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao retained separate border control and immigration policies with the rest of the PRC. Chinese citizens had to gain permission from the government before travelling to Hong Kong or Macau, but this requirement was abolished after the handover. Since then, restrictions imposed by the SAR governments have been the limiting factor on travel.
Urban dwellers enjoy a range of social, economic and cultural benefits while peasants, the majority of the Chinese population, are treated as second-class citizen
Second-class citizen
Second-class citizen is an informal term used to describe a person who is systematically discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there...
s, according to an academic at the University of Alberta. The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
reported in 2000 that although migrant labourers play an important part in spreading wealth in Chinese villages, they are treated "like second-class citizens by a system so discriminatory that it has been likened to apartheid." Anita Chan also posits that China's household registration and temporary residence permit system has created a situation analogous to the passbook system in South Africa which was designed to regulate the supply of cheap labor. In 2000, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy has alleged that people of Han descent
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
in Tibet have a far easier time acquiring the necessary permits to live in urban areas than ethnic Tibetans do.
Abolition of this policy was proposed in 11 provinces, mainly along the developed eastern coast. The law has already been changed such that migrant workers no longer face summary arrest, after a widely publicised incident in 2003, when a university-educated migrant died in Guangdong province. The Beijing law lecturer who exposed the incident said it spelt the end of the hukou system: in most smaller cities, the system has been abandoned; it has "almost lost its function" in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Treatment of rural workers
In November 2005 Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of AlbertaUniversity of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...
, said this 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 as second-class citizens".
The discrimination enforced by the hukou system became particularly onerous in the 1980s after hundreds of millions of migrant laborers were forced out of state corporations and co-operatives. The system classifies workers as "urban" or "rural", and attempts by workers classified as "rural" to move to urban centers were tightly controlled by the Chinese bureaucracy, which enforced its control by denying access to essential goods and services such as grain rations, housing, and health care, and by regularly closing down migrant workers' private schools. The hukou system also enforced pass laws
Pass laws
Pass laws in South Africa were designed to segregate the population and limit severely the movements of the non-white populace. This legislation was one of the dominant features of the country's apartheid system. The Black population were required to carry these pass books with them when outside...
similar to those in South Africa, with "rural" workers requiring six passes to work in provinces other than their own, and periodic police raids which rounded up those without permits, placed them in detention centers, and deported them. 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, and suffering abusive consequences. Anita Chan furthers 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
Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
The Ministry of Public Security , is the principal police and security authority of the mainland of the People's Republic of China and the government agency that exercises oversight over and is ultimately responsible for day-to-day law enforcement...
justified these practices on the grounds that they assisted the police in tracking down criminals and maintaining public order, and provided demographic data for government planning and programs.
Religious freedom
During the Cultural RevolutionCultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
(1966–1976), particularly the Destruction of Four Olds
Four Olds
The Four Olds or the Four Old Things were Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. One of the stated goals of the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China was to bring an end to the Four Olds...
campaign, religious affairs of all types were persecuted and discouraged by the Communists with many religious buildings looted and destroyed. Since then, there have been efforts to repair, reconstruct and protect historical and cultural religious sites. The US department of state criticizes in its human rights report 2005 that not enough has been done to repair or restore damaged and destroyed sites.
The 1982 Constitution technically guarantees its citizens the right to believe in any religion. However this freedom differs from the general concept of "freedom of religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
" as recognised in the West, and is subject to restrictions.
Members of the Communist Party are officially required to be atheists. While many party members privately violate this rule, being openly religious can limit their economic prospects.
Christianity
The government tries to maintain tight control over all religions, so the only legal Christian groups (Three-Self Patriotic MovementThree-Self Patriotic Movement
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement or TSPM is a state-controlled Protestant church in the People's Republic of China...
and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association
Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association
The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association , abbreviated CPA, CPCA, or CCPA, is an association of people, established in 1957 by the People's Republic of China's Religious Affairs Bureau to exercise state supervision over mainland China's Catholics...
) are those under the Communist Party
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
control.
The "official Catholic" metropolitan bishop appointed in China in 2007 to replace the deceased Fu Tieshan was not made by the Pope as is customary. The Catholic Church in particular is viewed as a foreign power in a situation somewhat analogous to that in Post-Reformation England, and so the official church in China is state-controlled; accordingly this above-ground Chinese church is considered a schismatic group by the wider Church; there exists also an illegal and underground Catholic community loyal to the Pope and the wider Church.
Tibetan Buddhism
The government now claims the power to ensure that no new 'living Buddha' can be identified: the State Administration for Religious Affairs issued a 14-part regulation to limit the influence of the Dalai Lama. It declared that after 1 September 2007, "[no] living Buddha [may be reincarnated] without government approval, since Qing dynasty, when the live Buddha system was established.". When the Dalai Lama announced in May 1995 that a search inside Tibet had identified the eleventh reincarnation of the Panchen LamaPanchen Lama
The Panchen Lama , or Bainqên Erdê'ni , is the highest ranking Lama after the Dalai Lama in the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism...
who died in 1989, Beijing initiated its own search under the supervision of a senior Politburo member. The boy chosen by the Dalai Lama, and the abbot who helped with the choice, both vanished. The child is believed to have spent the years since then under house arrest; all calls for visitation or for his release have been ignored. The Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama is branded a fake by loyalists. Examples of the political controls exercised are:
- quotas on the number of monks to reduce the spiritual population
- forced denunciation of the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader
- unapproved monks' expulsion 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; Drepung
Drepung Monastery
Drepung Monastery ,, located at the foot of Mount Gephel, is one of the "great three" Gelukpa university monasteries of Tibet...
, once a large temple for over 10,000 monks, is now home to only 600; Beijing now restricts total membership in any monastery to 700.
Falun Gong
On 20 July 1999, the government banned Falun GongFalun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
and all 'heterodox religions', and began a nationwide crackdown of the popular new religious movement
New religious movement
A new religious movement is a religious community or ethical, spiritual, or philosophical group of modern origin, which has a peripheral place within the dominant religious culture. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may be part of a wider religion, such as Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism, in...
following a demonstration by 10,000 practitioners outside the leadership enclave at Zhongnanhai on 25 April. Protests in Beijing were frequent for the first few years following the 1999 edict, though these protests have largely been eradicated. Practitioners have occasionally hacked into state television channels to broadcast pro-Falun Gong materials. Outside of mainland China, practitioners are active in appealing to the governments, media, and people of their respective countries about the situation in China.
According to Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ian Denis Johnson
Ian Denis Johnson
Ian Johnson is a writer and journalist, working primarily in China and Germany.A reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Johnson won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China...
, the government mobilized every aspect of society, including the media apparatus, police force, army, education system, families and workplaces, against Falun Gong. An extra-constitutional body, the "6–10 Office" was created to do what Forbes describes as "
In March 2006, Falun Gong and The Epoch Times
The Epoch Times
The Epoch Times is a multi-language, international media organisation. As a newspaper, the Times has been publishing in Chinese since May 2000. It was founded in 1999 by supporters of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline....
said that the Chinese government and its agencies, including the People's Liberation Army
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army is the unified military organization of all land, sea, strategic missile and air forces of the People's Republic of China. The PLA was established on August 1, 1927 — celebrated annually as "PLA Day" — as the military arm of the Communist Party of China...
, were conducting "widespread and systematic organ harvesting of living practitioners" specifically at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang
Shenyang
Shenyang , or Mukden , is the capital and largest city of Liaoning Province in Northeast China. Currently holding sub-provincial administrative status, the city was once known as Shengjing or Fengtianfu...
according to two eye-witness accounts that practitioners detained in the hospital's basement were being tissue-typed, and killed to order. In July 2006, David Kilgour
David Kilgour
David Kilgour, PC is a former Canadian politician.Kilgour graduated from the University of Manitoba in economics in 1962 and the University of Toronto law school in 1966. From crown attorney in northern Alberta to Canadian Cabinet minister, Kilgour ended his 27 year tenure in the Canadian House of...
and David Matas
David Matas
David Matas is the senior legal counsel of B'nai Brith Canada. He has maintained a private practice in refugee, immigration and human rights law since 1979. He has published various books and manuscripts and currently resides in Winnipeg....
, sponsored by Falun Gong to investigate the allegations, published a report which they admitted the evidence was circumstantial, but which taken together supported the allegations that large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners were victims of systematic organ harvesting whilst still alive.
The Chinese government categorically denied any mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners, and a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman denounced the organ harvesting allegations as "absurd lies concocted by the Falun Gong cult followers". Dissident Harry Wu
Harry Wu
Harry Wu is an activist for human rights in the People's Republic of China. Now a resident and citizen of the United States, Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps. In 1992, he founded the Laogai Research Foundation. In 1996 the Columbia Human Rights Law Review awarded Wu its second Award for...
said the two Epoch Times witnesses were "not reliable and most probably they had fabricated the story"; he rejected the totality of the allegations after sending in investigators. A Congressional Research Service
Congressional Research Service
The Congressional Research Service , known as "Congress's think tank", is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a...
said that there was "insufficient evidence to support this specific allegation," without elaboration. David Ownby, a noted expert on Falun Gong, said "Organ harvesting is happening in China, but I see no evidence proving it is aimed particularly at Falun Gong practitioners." Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa Citizen
The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Canada. According to the Canadian Newspaper Association, the paper had a 2008 weekly circulation of 900,197.- History :...
said "Depending on who you believe, the Kilgour-Matas report is either compelling evidence that proves the claims about Falun Gong... or a collection of conjecture and inductive reasoning that fails to support its own conclusions".
Political freedom
In Maoist era China, there was massive political repressionPolitical repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
. This is now replaced by selective political repression of small groups of people who openly challenge the CPC's rule; this repression in implemented through the judicial system. The most recent mass movement for political freedom was crushed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
in 1989, the estimated death toll of which ranges from about 200 to 10,000 depending on sources.
One of the most famous dissidents is Zhang Zhixin
Zhang Zhixin
Zhang Zhixin was a dissident during the Cultural Revolution who became famous for criticizing the idolization of Mao Zedong and the ultra-left...
, who is known for standing up against the ultra-left
Left Communism in China
In the People's Republic of China since 1967, the terms "Ultra-Left" and "left communist" refers to political theory and practice self-defined as further "left" than that of the central Maoist leaders at the height of the GPCR . The terms are also used retroactively to describe some early 20th...
. In October 2008, the government denounced the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
's decision to award the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought
Sakharov Prize
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was established in December 1988 by the European Parliament as a means to honour individuals or organisations who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought...
to Hu Jia
Hu Jia (activist)
Hu Jia is an activist and dissident in the People's Republic of China. His work has focused on the Chinese democracy movement, Chinese environmentalist movement, and HIV/AIDS in the People's Republic of China...
, on grounds that it was "gross interference in China's domestic affairs" to give such an award to a "jailed criminal.. in disregard of our repeated representations."
On 8 December 2008, two days before the release of Charter 08, Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist who called for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule in China...
was arrested. He along with three hundred and two other Chinese citizens, signed Charter 08, a manifesto released on the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 2009), written in the style of the Czechoslovakian Charter 77 calling for greater freedom of expression, human rights, and free elections.[6] As of May 2009, the Charter has collected over 9,000 signatures from Chinese of various walks of life.
Although the Chinese government does not interfere with Chinese people's privacy as much as it used to, it still deems it necessary to keep tabs on what people say in public. Internet forums are strictly monitored, as is international postal mail (this is sometimes inexplicably "delayed" or simply "disappears") and e-mail.
Local officials are chosen by election, and 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.
One-child policy
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
policy, known widely as the one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
, was implemented in 1979 by the Chinese government to alleviate the overpopulation problem. Having more than one child is illegal and punishable by fines. Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
cites critics who argue that it contributes to forced abortions
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, human rights violations, female infanticide, abandonment and sex-selective abortions, believed to be relatively commonplace in some areas of the country. This is thought to have been a significant contribution to the gender imbalance in mainland China, where there is a 118 to 100 ratio of male to female children reported. Forced abortions and sterilizations have also been reported.
It is also argued that the one-child policy is not effective enough to justify its costs, and that the dramatic decrease in Chinese fertility started before the program began in 1979 for unrelated factors. 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.
In 2002, the laws related to the One-child policy were amended to allow ethnic minorities and Chinese living in rural areas to have more than one child. The policy was generally not enforced in those areas of the country even before this. The policy has been relaxed in urban areas to allow people who have single children to have two children.
Capital punishment
China executes more people each year than the rest of the world combined. According to the United Nations Secretary-GeneralUnited Nations Secretary-General
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the Secretariat of the United Nations, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General also acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations....
, between 1994 and 1999 China was ranked seventh in executions per capita, behind Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Saudi Arabia, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
, Sierra Leone, Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...
, and Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
. Amnesty International claims that real figures are much higher than official ones, stating that in China the statistics are considered State secrets.
Figures from 2006 and 2007 are reported to have been 1,010 and 470 executions, respectively. In January 2007, China's state media announced that all death penalty cases will be reviewed by the Supreme People's Court
Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China
The Supreme People's Court is the highest court in the mainland area of the People's Republic of China...
. Since 1983, China's highest court did not review all cases. This marks a return to China's pre-1983 policy. In light of these changes, figures from 2007 display a substantial reduction in executions with only 470 reported executions compared with figures from previous years. Amnesty International analysts argue that this drop is only temporary since the figure includes only confirmed executions and are likely to be much higher. As of 2008, China is still the country with the highest number of executions. 1,718 people have been executed in 2008 out of 2,390 worldwide.
A total of 68 crimes are punishable by death; capital offenses include non-violent, white-collar crime
White-collar crime
Within the field of criminology, white-collar crime has been defined by Edwin Sutherland as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation" . Sutherland was a proponent of Symbolic Interactionism, and believed that criminal behavior was...
s such as embezzlement
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
and tax fraud. Execution methods include lethal injections and shooting. The People's Armed Police
People's Armed Police
The People's Armed Police , officially Chinese People's Armed Police Force is a paramilitary or gendarmerie force primarily responsible for civilian policing and fire rescue duties in the People's Republic of China, as well as provide support to PLA during wartime.In contrast to public security...
carries out the executions, usually at 10 am.
Torture
Although China outlawed torture in 1996, human rights groups say brutality and degradation are common in Chinese detention centres.Also, China's definition of illegal torture – that it leaves physical marks – is so narrow that interrogators can employ a wide range of methods that contravene UN standards. Suspects are manacled in contorted positions, deprived of sleep and subjected to psychological torture.
In 2003 the Supreme People’s Procuratorate reported that 'forced confessions' had led to the deaths of 460 people and serious injuries for 117 others.
In 2005 Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak is an Austrian human rights lawyer.Nowak was a student of Felix Ermacora, and cooperated with him until Ermacora's death in 1995. They co-founded the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Menschenrechte in 1992...
visited as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. After spending two weeks there, he observed that it was "on the decline, but still widespread." He also complained of Chinese officials interfering with his research, including intimidating people he sought to interview.
During the Chongqing gang trials
Chongqing gang trials
The Chongqing gang trials were a series of triad-busting trials in the city of Chongqing that began in October 2009 and is ongoing as of July 2010...
in 2009–2010, details were revealed of extensive and persistent torture of suspects held in police custody. Manifestations include regular beatings, sleep deprivation and being placed in or forced to hold agonising positions.
In May 2010, new regulations were issued that nullified evidence gathered through violence or intimidation. 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 supposed victim turned up alive and the defendant had spent 10 years in prison. International human rights groups gave the change a cautious welcome.
Political abuse of psychiatry
In 2002, Human Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
published the book Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and its Origins in the Mao Era written by Robin Munro
Robin Munro
Robin Munro is a British legal scholar, author, and human rights advocate. He received his PhD from the Department of Law, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London....
and based on the documents obtained by him. The British researcher Robin Munro, a sinologist who was writing his dissertation in London after a long sojourn in China, had travelled to China several times to survey libraries in provincial towns and had gathered a large amount of literature which bore the stamp ‘secret’ but at the same time was openly available. This literature included even historical analyses going back to the days of the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
and concerned articles and reports on the number of people who were taken to mental hospitals because they complained of a series of issues. It was found, according to Munro, that the involuntary confinement of religious groups, political dissidents, and whistleblowers had a lengthy history in China. The abuse had begun in the 1950s and 1960s, and had grown extremely throughout the Cultural Revolution. During the period of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, it achieved its apogee, then under the reign of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and the Gang of Four
Gang of Four
The Gang of Four was the name given to a political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and were subsequently charged with a series of treasonous crimes...
, which established a very repressive and harsh regime. No deviance or opposition in thought or in practice was tolerated.
The documents told of a massive abuse of psychiatry for political purposes during the leadership of Mao Zedong, during which millions of people had been declared mentally sick. In the 1980s, according to the official documents, there was political connotation to fifteen percent of all forensic psychiatric cases. In the early 1990s, the numbers had dropped to five percent, but with beginning of the campaign against Falun Gong
Falun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
, the percentage had again increased quite rapidly.
Chinese official psychiatric literature testifies distinctly that the Communist Party's notion of ‘political dangerousness’ was long since institutionally engrafted in the diagnostic armory of China's psychiatry and included in the main concept of psychiatric dangerousness.
The People’s Republic of China is the only country which appears to abuse psychiatry for political purposes in a systematic way, and despite international criticism, this seems to be continuing. Political abuse of psychiatry in the People’s Republic of China is high on the agenda and has produced recurring disputes in the international psychiatric community. 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.
It also seemed that, China had hardly known high security forensic institutions until 1989. However, since then, the Chinese authorities have constructed the entire network of special forensic mental hospitals called Ankang which in Chinese is for ‘Peace and Health.’ By that time, China had had 20 Ankang institutions with the staff employed by the Ministry of State Security. The psychiatrists who worked there were wearing uniforms under their white coats.
The political abuse of psychiatry in China seems to take place only in the institutions under the authority of the police and the Ministry of State Security but not in those belonging to other governmental sectors. Psychiatric care in China falls into four sectors that hardly connect up with each other. These are Ankang institutions of the Ministry of State Security; those belonging to the police; those that fall under the authority of the Ministry of Social Affairs; those belonging to the Ministry of Health. Both the sectors belonging to the police and the Ministry of State Security are the closed sectors, and, consequently, information hardly ever leaks out. In the hospitals belonging to the Ministry of Health, psychiatrists do not contact with the Ankang institutions and, actually, had no idea of what occurred there, and could, thereby, sincerely state that they were not informed of political abuse of psychiatry in China.
In China, the structure of forensic psychiatry was to a great extent identical to that in the USSR. On its own, it is not so strange, since psychiatrists of the Moscow Serbsky Institute
Moscow Serbsky Institute
The Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry is a psychiatric hospital and the main center for the forensic psychiatry of the Soviet Union and Russia. The institution was briefly called the Serbsky Institute in the past and is briefly called the Serbsky Center now...
visited Beijing in 1957 to help their Chinese ‘brethren’, the same psychiatrists who promoted the system of political abuse of psychiatry in their own USSR. As a consequence, diagnostics were not much different than in the Soviet Union. The only difference was that the Soviets preferred ‘sluggish schizophrenia’ as a diagnosis, and the Chinese generally cleaved to the diagnosis ‘paranoia
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
’ or ‘paranoid schizophrenia’. However, the results were the same: long hospitalization in a mental hospital, involuntary treatment with neuroleptics, torture, abuse, all aimed at breaking the victim’s will.
The World Psychiatric Association
World Psychiatric Association
The World Psychiatric Association is an international umbrella organisation of psychiatric societies.-Objectives and goals:Originally created to produce world psychiatric congresses, it has evolved to hold regional meetings, to promote professional education and to set ethical, scientific and...
(WPA) attempted to confine the problem by presenting it as Falun Gong issue and, at the same time, make the impression that the members of the movement were likely not mentally sound, that it was a sect which likely brainwashed its members, etc. There was even a diagnosis of ‘qigong syndrome’ which was used reflecting on the exercises practiced by Falung Gong. It was the unfair game aiming to avoid the political abuse of psychiatry from dominating the WPA agenda.
In August 2002, the General Assembly was to take place during the next WPA World Congress in Yokohama
Yokohama
is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...
. The issue of Chinese political abuse of psychiatry had been placed as one of the final items on the agenda of the General Assembly. When the issue was broached during the General Assembly, the exact nature of compromise came to light. In order to investigate the political abuse of psychiatry, the WPA would send an investigative mission to China. The visit was projected for the spring of 2003 in order to assure that one could present a report during the annual meeting of the British Royal College of Psychiatrists
Royal College of Psychiatrists
The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom responsible for representing psychiatrists, psychiatric research and providing public information about mental health problems...
in June/July of that year and the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
in May of the same year. After the 2002 World Congress, the WPA Executive Committee’s half-hearted attitude in Yokohama came to light: it was an omen of a longstanding policy of diversion and postponement. The 2003 investigative mission never took place, and when finally a visit to China did take place, this visit was more of scientific exchange. In the meantime, the political abuse of psychiatry persisted unabatedly, nevertheless the WPA did not seem to care.
Ethnic minorities
There are 55 recognized 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 policies cause reverse racism
Reverse racism
Reverse racism is a controversial term which refers to racial prejudice or discrimination directed against the traditionally dominant racial group in a society. It is sometimes used as a pejorative description of systems which discriminate in favour of members of racial minorities, more formally...
, where Han Chinese or even ethnic minorities from other regions are treated as second-class citizens in the ethnic region. In the same line, there are wide-ranging preferential policies (i.e. affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
s) in place to promote social and economic developments for ethnic minorities, including preferential employments, political appointments, and business loans. Universities typically have quota reserved for ethnic minorities despite having lower admission test scores. Ethnic minorities are also exempt from the one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
which is aimed toward Han Chinese.
Stern punishments towards independence-seeking demonstrators, rioters, or terrorists have led to mistreatment of the Tibetan
Tibetan people
The Tibetan people are an ethnic group that is native to Tibet, which is mostly in the People's Republic of China. They number 5.4 million and are the 10th largest ethnic group in the country. Significant Tibetan minorities also live in India, Nepal, and Bhutan...
and Uyghur
Uyghur people
The Uyghur are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China...
minorities in Western China. The United States in 2007 refused to help repatriate five Chinese Uyghur Guantanamo Bay detainees because of the "past treatment of the Uigur minority". On the other hand, China has many border regions with large minority populations, including Guangxi
Guangxi
Guangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...
with 16 million Zhuang people, and other concentrated Muslim populations such as the Hui people
Hui people
The Hui people are an ethnic group in China, defined as Chinese speaking people descended from foreign Muslims. They are typically distinguished by their practice of Islam, however some also practice other religions, and many are direct descendants of Silk Road travelers.In modern People's...
, with some even poorer than the Uyghurs, such as the Dongxiang
Dongxiang people
The Dongxiang people are one of 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China...
, Bonan
Bonan
The Bonan people are an ethnic group living in Gansu and Qinghai provinces in northwestern China...
, and the Salar, among whom there have been "no reports of separatism, violence, or even Islamic radicalism". The fellow Muslim Kazakhs, who live with the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
area under similar laws and conditions, have not organized rebellions against the state or aligned themselves with Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
.
Tibetans
The human rights of TibetansTibetan people
The Tibetan people are an ethnic group that is native to Tibet, which is mostly in the People's Republic of China. They number 5.4 million and are the 10th largest ethnic group in the country. Significant Tibetan minorities also live in India, Nepal, and Bhutan...
has been a concern since the founding of the PRC. Tibetans who opposed the diversion of irrigation water by Chinese authorities to the China Gold International Resources mining operations were detained, tortured and murdered.
Judicial mutilation against Tibetans by the Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
's government, and the serfdom controversy
Serfdom in Tibet controversy
The serfdom in Tibet controversy rests on both a political and an academic debate. In the political debate, Chinese sources claim moral authority for governing Tibet, based on narratives that portray Tibet as a "feudal serfdom" and a "hell on earth" prior to the invasion of Tibet in 1950...
have been cited by the PRC as reasons to interfere for the welfare of Tibetans. Conflicting reports about Tibetan human rights have evolved since then. The PRC claims a Tibetan cultural revival since the 1950s, while the Dalai Lama says "whether intentionally or unintentionally, somewhere cultural genocide
Cultural genocide
Cultural genocide is a term that lawyer Raphael Lemkin proposed in 1933 as a component to genocide. The term was considered in the 1948 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples juxtaposed next to the term ethnocide, but it was removed in the final document, replaced with...
is taking place".
Following the Chinese economic reform
Chinese economic reform
The Chinese economic reform refers to the program of economic reforms called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China that were started in December 1978 by reformists within the Communist Party of China led by Deng Xiaoping.China had one of the world's largest...
, businesspeople from other parts of China have traveled to Tibet to do business, although most do not stay in region. The New York Times has cited this ethnic diversity in Tibet as a cause of "ethnic tensions". It has also criticized China's promotion of home ownership among nomadic Tibetans. Western politicians often level the charge that the Tibetan languages are at risk of extinction in Tibet. However, academics point out that for the vast majority of Tibetans, who live in rural areas, the Chinese language is merely introduced as a second language in secondary.
Economic and property rights
According to the Der SpiegelDer Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
magazine, despite the National People's Congress
National People's Congress
The National People's Congress , abbreviated NPC , is the highest state body and the only legislative house in the People's Republic of China. The National People's Congress is held in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, capital of the People's Republic of China; with 2,987 members, it is the...
enacting a law in 2007 to protect private property with the exception of land, local Chinese authorities have used brutal means to expropriate property, in a bid to profit from the construction boom.
HIV/AIDS and rights on sexuality
Other human rights issues
Worker's rights and privacy are other contentious human rights issues in China. There have been several reports of core International Labor Organization conventions being denied to workers. One such report was released by the International Labor Rights FundInternational Labor Rights Fund
The International Labor Rights Forum is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, DC that describes itself as "an advocate for and with the working poor around the world". ILRF, formerly the International Labor Rights Education & Research Fund, was founded in 1986...
in October 2006 documenting minimum wage violations, long work hours, and inappropriate actions towards workers by management. Workers cannot form their own unions in the workplace, only being able to join State-sanctioned ones. The extent to which these organizations can fight for the rights of Chinese workers is disputed.
The issue of refugees from North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
is a recurring one. It is official policy to repatriate them to North Korea, but the policy is not evenly enforced and a considerable number of them stay in the People's Republic (some move on to other countries). 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. Some of them are tricked into marriage or prostitution.
African students in China have complained about their treatment in China, that was largely ignored until 1988-9, when "students rose up in protest against what they called 'Chinese apartheid'". African officials took notice of the issue, and the Organization of African Unity issued an official protest. The organization's chairman, Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
's president Moussa Traoré
Moussa Traoré
General Moussa Traoré is a Malian soldier and politician. As a Lieutenant, he led the military ouster of President Modibo Keïta in 1968. Thereafter he served as Head of State from 1968-1979, and President of Mali from 1979 to 1991, when he was overthrown by popular protests and military coup...
, went on a fact-finding mission to China. According to a Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
1989 Third World Report titled "Chinese apartheid" threatens links with Africa, these practices could threaten Peking's entire relationship with the continent."
Counterargument by the PRC government
The Government of the People's Republic of ChinaGovernment of the People's Republic of China
All power within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the People's Republic of China, State Council, and the People's Liberation Army . This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities...
has argued that idea of "Asian values" means that the "welfare" of the collective should always be put ahead of the rights of any individual whenever conflicts between these arise. It argues that there is a responsibility of the government to create a "harmonious society", and that in some cases it is necessary to persuade or force individuals to make sacrifices in their rights for the wider needs of society. It argues that a strong and stable authority is required in order to regulate the potentially conflicting interests of the public and enforce a compromise and that Governments with curtailed authority would fail to take on such a responsibility.
The Chinese government points towards an alleged rapid social 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. They believe these are a direct result of an excess of individual freedom, saying that “Too much freedom is dangerous.”
China argues that these actions in Western Nations are all violations of human rights. China believes that these should be taken into account when assessing a country's human right records. Furthermore, the government criticizes the United States, which publishes human rights reports annually, by insisting that the United States has also caused human rights abuses such as the invasion of Iraq.
The PRC government also argues that the notion of human rights should include economic standards of living and measures of health and economic prosperity. On cultural grounds they argue that as the economic, cultural and political situations differ substantially between countries, a universal 'one-size-fits-all' definition of human rights should not apply internationally.
Reform
In March 2003, an amendment was made to the Constitution of the People's Republic of ChinaConstitution of the People's Republic of China
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China is the highest law within the People's Republic of China. The current version was adopted by the 5th National People's Congress on December 4, 1982 with further revisions in 1988, 1993, 1999, and 2004. Three previous state constitutions—those of...
, stating "The State respects and preserves human rights." In addition, China was dropped from a list of top 10 human rights violators in the annual human rights report released by the U.S. State Department in 2008, while the report indicated that there were still widespread problems in China.
Since 1988, the Chinese government 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
Shenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China's Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful—Special Economic Zones...
–which enjoys the highest per capita GDP in China– was selected for experimentation, and over 70% of the government officials on the district level are to be directly elected. However, in keeping with Communist Party philosophy, candidates must be selected from a pre-approved list.
See also
- Political repression in the People's Republic of China
- Human rights in Hong KongHuman rights in Hong KongHuman rights in Hong Kong occasionally comes under the spotlight of the international community because of its world city status. This is occasionally used as a yardstick by commentators to judge whether the People's Republic of China has kept its end of the bargain of the "One Country, Two...
- Human rights in MacauHuman rights in MacauHuman rights in Macau refers to the basic rights of citizens of Macau, a former Portuguese colony that reverted to Chinese administration in 1999. As a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China , Macau enjoys a high degree of autonomy, except in defense and foreign affairs,...
- Human rights in TibetHuman rights in TibetHuman rights in Tibet are a contentious political issue.Pre-1950 Tibet has been described as a society in which the concept of human rights was unknown: it was ruled by a theocracy, beset by serfdorm and a form of slavery, had a caste-like social hierarchy, lacked a proper judicial system, enforced...
- Human rights in Taiwan
- Tiananmen Square protests of 1989Tiananmen Square protests of 1989The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
- Ecological migrationEcological migrationEcological migration is a policy adopted in 2001 by the Chinese government to relocate a large number of herders, in particular Mongolian herders of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, from their traditional grazing lands to agricultural and urban areas as part of the government's initiative to...
- Empowerment and Rights InstituteEmpowerment and Rights InstituteThe Empowerment and Rights Institute is a Chinese non-governmental organization . The organization has worked with Human Rights issues in the People's Republic of China since 2003...
- The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China
- Internet censorship in the People's Republic of ChinaInternet censorship in the People's Republic of ChinaInternet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...
- Human Rights in China (organization)
- Tangshan ProtestTangshan ProtestIn 2004 more than 11,000 farmers in Hebei Province of China signed a petition calling for the removal of Communist Party officials who were allegedly involved in corruption...
- LaogaiLaogaiLaogai , the abbreviation for Láodòng Gǎizào , which means "reform through labor," is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of prison labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China . It is estimated that in the last fifty years more than...
- Re-education through labor
- Charter 08Charter 08Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by over 350 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in...
- Black jailsBlack jailsBlack jails are a network of extralegal detention centers established by Chinese security forces across the People's Republic of China in recent years. They are used mainly to detain, without trial, petitioners , who travel to seek redress for grievances unresolved at the local level...
- Xinfang
- Open Constitution Initiative
- Yan Xiaoling - Fan Yanqiong Case
Further reading
- Cheng, Lucie, Rossett, Arthur and Woo, Lucie, East Asian Law: Universal Norms and Local Cultures, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, ISBN 0-415-29735-4
- Edwards, Catherine, China's Abuses Ignored for Profit, Insight on the News, Vol. 15, 20 December 1999.
- Foot, Rosemary, Rights beyond Borders: The Global Community and the Struggle over Human Rights in China, Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-198-29776-9
- Jones, Carol A.G., Capitalism, Globalization and Rule of Law: An Alternative Trajectory of Legal Change in China, Social and Legal Studies, vol. 3 (1994) pp. 195–220
- Klotz, Audie, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid, Cornell University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-801-43106-9
- Knight, J. and Song, L., The Rural-Urban Divide: Economic Disparities and Interactions in China, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-198-29330-5
- Martin III, Matthew D., "The Dysfunctional Progeny of Eugenics: Autonomy Gone AWOL", Cardozo Journal of International Law, Vol. 15, No. 2, Fall 2007, pp. 371–421, ISSN 1069-3181
- Seymour, James, Human Rights in Chinese Foreign Relations, in, Kim, Samuel S., China and the World: Chinese Foreign Policy Faces the New Millennium Westview Press, 1984. ISBN 0-813-33414-4
- 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, ISBN 0-700-71212-7
- Wang, Fei-Ling, Organizing through Division and Exclusion: China's Hukou System, Stanford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-804-75039-4
- Zweig, David, Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era, M. E. Sharpe, 1997, ISBN 1-563-24838-7
- The silent majority; China. (Life in a Chinese village), The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, April 2005
External links
- Review of China by the United Nations Human Rights CouncilUnited Nations Human Rights CouncilThe United Nations Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations System. The UNHRC is the successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights , and is a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly...
's Universal Periodic Review, 7 February 2009 - MacLeod, Calum, China reviews 'apartheid' for 900 m peasants, 10 Jun 2001, The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, London - Human Rights in China by China Internet Information CenterChina Internet Information CenterChina Internet Information Center is a web portal authorized by the People's Republic of China.Its current president is Huang Youyi.- Localization :...
, under theadministration of the China State Council Information OfficeState Council of the People's Republic of ChinaThe State Council of the People's Republic of China , which is largely synonymous with the Central People's Government after 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the People's Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency...
. - Human rights can be manifested differently by XinhuaNet
- UN Human Development Report 2003 on China by the United Nations Development ProgrammeUnited Nations Development ProgrammeThe United Nations Development Programme is the United Nations' global development network. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP operates in 177 countries, working with nations on their own solutions to...
- 2004 Human Rights Report on China by the United States Department of StateUnited States Department of StateThe United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
- Olympic Watch: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008 – Campaign for human rights improvements in China before the 2008 Olympic Games
- Human Rights In China – International NGO based in New York and Hong Kong
- Freedom House: Freedom in the World 2011 Country Report: China
- Freedom House: Freedom of the Press Survey: China
- Freedom House: Freedom on the Net 2011 Country Report: China
- Human Rights Watch: China and Tibet
- International Federation for Justice in China
- International Freedom of Expression eXchangeInternational Freedom of Expression ExchangeThe International Freedom of Expression eXchange , founded in 1992, is a global network of around 90 non-governmental organisations that promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression....
– monitors freedom of expression in China - The China Support Network
- Support Democracy in China
- Status of Chinese People
- China Human Rights
- Wei Jingshen Foundation
- Who shows more respect for human rights? – Editorial published by the People's DailyPeople's DailyThe People's Daily is a daily newspaper in the People's Republic of China. The paper is an organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China , published worldwide with a circulation of 3 to 4 million. In addition to its main Chinese-language edition, it has editions in English,...
- Progress in China's Human Rights in 2009 Information Office of the State Council, The People's Republic of China, September 2010, Beijing, accessed 27 September 2010
- China, Human Rights and the Role of Washington – video debate by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...