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Con r sWan I ties ar h Service
infon Hg I K I ive d We 1914
Updated October 8, 2024
China Primer: Human Rights
Overy e
The nongovernmental human rights organization Freedom
House describes China's party-state as an authoritarian
regime that has become increasingly repressive in recent
years. Some analysts argue China has moved in a
totalitarian direction. The party-state is dominated by one
person, Xi Jinping, who became Communist Party of China
(CPC) General Secretary in 2012. Xi has attempted to
enforce greater ideological and cultural conformity and ever
tighter control over society, aided 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.
Amid the apparent deepening repression in the People's
Republic of China (PRC or China)-and in the broader
context of an increasingly competitive bilateral
relationship-U.S. policymakers have imposed measures
intended to deter PRC human rights abuses, prevent U.S.
complicity in such abuses, and/or hold perpetrators
accountable. Since 2020, U.S. actions have focused in
particular on responding to reports of mass detentions and
forced labor of ethnic Uyghur and other Muslim minority
groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
(XUAR) and elsewhere in China. The U.S. State
Department has assessed that PRC policies and practices in
the XUAR constitute crimes against humanity and
genocide.
Selected Hurnan Rights Issues
Under Xi's leadership, China has further restricted and
suppressed civil society, religious and ethnic minority
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
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. According to the Department of
State, [PRC] 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 and
adherents, rights lawyers and activists, independent
journalists, and dissidents and their family members for
arbitrary detention or arrest. The nonprofit Dui Hua
Foundation has compiled a list of over 7,300 cases of
political and religious prisoners in China. 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.
Popular protests have continued under Xi Jinping's rule,
often focused on economic grievances. Despite the
government's efforts to silence negative public opinion
during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022), localized
protests against lockdown conditions and the government's
suppression of information and speech emerged in the
spring of 2022 and culminated in widespread
demonstrations led by university students in November of
that year. The November demonstrations were highly
unusual in China for being national in character and scope,
directly challenging the CPC and top leaders, galvanizing a
relatively broad swath of society, and partially achieving
their aims. Following the demonstrations, various PRC
cities began to loosen COVID-19 lockdown measures while
the CPC cracked down on the budding protest movement.
I ous and Ethnic Minority Policies
In 2016, Xi Jinping launched a policy known as
Sinicization, by which the CPC requires religious and
ethnic minorities to assimilate or conform to majority
Han Chinese culture as defined by the CPC and adhere to
core socialist values. The PRC government has
mandated, for example, that schools in minority regions
teach most courses 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 clergy in a national database. The
government enacted regulations in 2022 that restrict
internet use and online worship among religious groups.
The government has continued to arrest and to persecute
practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual exercise. The State
Department has consistently designated China as a
Country of Particular Concern for particularly severe
violations of religious freedom under the International
Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (P.L. 105-292).
T Ibetans
Human rights issues in Tibetan areas of China include
religious and political repression and forced assimilation.
Since 2018, the PRC government has required Tibetan
monks and nuns to undergo education in CPC ideology and
to demonstrate political reliability. Authorities have
arbitrarily detained and imprisoned hundreds of Tibetan
writers, intellectuals, and cultural figures on broad charges
of splittism or separatism. PRC assimilation policies in
Tibetan areas have included resettling and urbanizing
nomads and farmers, which have elements of forced labor,
according to some reports. The International Tibet Network](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/goveqym0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)