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Updated January 6, 2023
China Primer: Human Rights
Overview
The U.S. Department of State describes the People's
Republic of China (PRC, or China) as an authoritarian
state in which the Communist Party of China [CPC] is the
paramount authority. Some analysts argue China has been
moving in a totalitarian direction, as it is characterized by a
leadership that is dominated by one person, CPC General
Secretary Xi Jinping, increasing enforcement of ideological
conformity, and greater party-state control over society
enhanced by the use of digital technologies. In October
2022, the 20th Central Committee of the CPC selected Xi to
serve a norm-breaking, third, five-year term.
The U.S. government employs various policy tools to
support human rights in China, and has increasingly
imposed relevant visa, economic, and trade-related
sanctions and restrictions, particularly in response to reports
of mass detentions and forced labor of ethnic Uyghur and
other Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
(XUAR). Recent legislation includes the Uyghur Forced
Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA; P.L. 117-78), which
restricts XUAR-related imports. The United States and
some other countries have condemned China's policies and
actions in Xinjiang, stating that they constitute crimes
against humanity and genocide.
AntW~overnmnent Protests
Sporadic protests related to Xi Jinping's stringent
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) policies emerged in
spring 2022. For several days beginning on November 26,
2022, Chinese university students and others participated in
demonstrations in Shanghai, Beijing, and over a dozen
other cities in China. The gatherings apparently were
triggered by a deadly apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang
that demonstrators blamed on zero-COVID measures,
including the blocking of entrances and exits of residential
buildings. Many participants demanded the government
loosen COVID-19 controls. Some articulated broader
political demands around issues such as free expression and
democracy.
The demonstrations were highly unusual in China for being
national in character and scope, directly challenging the
CPC and Xi Jinping, and galvanizing a relatively broad
swath of society. Some observers compared them to the
1989 democracy movement, which ended in a violent
military crackdown. The government deployed police
patrols, detained and interrogated some protesters (possibly
with the aid of cell phone location data and facial
recognition cameras), spot-checked people's phones for
politically-related content and unapproved apps, and
censored social media except for commentary critical of the
demonstrations. The CPC vowed to resolutely crack down
on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces,
while abandoning strict COVID-19 control measures.
Selected Hum.an Rights Issues
Under Xi's leadership, China has further restricted and
suppressed civil society, religious groups, human rights
defenders, speech, the press, and academic discourse. The
party-state has closed much of the space that had previously
existed for limited social activism. The PRC oversees one
of the most extensive and stringent internet censorship
systems in the world, which includes blocking major
foreign news and social media sites, censoring domestic
social media platforms, and banning foreign messaging
apps. A locally-produced online video (Voices of April)
depicting the 2022 COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai
circulated widely before authorities blocked it.
According to the Department of State, [PRCJ law grants
public security officers broad administrative detention
powers and the ability to detain individuals for extended
periods without formal arrest or criminal charges and
police target religious leaders, rights lawyers and activists,
independent journalists, and former political prisoners and
their family members for arbitrary detention or arrest. The
nonprofit Dui Hua Foundation compiled a list of over 7,600
cases of political and religious prisoners in China in 2022.
PRC leaders long have asserted that human rights standards
vary by country, that economic development is a key
human right, and that a country's human rights policies are
an internal affair.
Religious and Ethnic M inority Policies
In 2016, Xi Jinping launched a policy known as
Sinicization, by which China's religious and ethnic
minorities are required to assimilate or conform to
majority Han Chinese culture as defined by the CPC and
adhere to core socialist values. The PRC government has
implemented policies in Tibetan areas, Xinjiang, and Inner
Mongolia requiring that nearly all primary school courses
be taught in Mandarin rather than in minority languages.
Since 2018, new regulations require religious organizations
to obtain government permission for nearly every aspect of
their operations, submit to greater state supervision, and
register all clergy in a national database. The government
has continued to pressure unofficial Christian congregations
to register with the state and to persecute practitioners of
the Falun Gong spiritual exercise. The State Department
has consistently designated China as a Country of](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/govekdb0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)