Human rights in China

[1] The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), their supporters, and other proponents claim that existing policies and enforcement measures are sufficient to guard against human rights abuses.

Independent NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as foreign governmental institutions such as the U.S. State Department, regularly present evidence of the PRC violating the freedoms of speech, movement, and religion of its citizens and of others within its jurisdiction.

[18] The report continues that police detained increasing numbers of human rights defenders outside of formal detention facilities, sometimes without access to a lawyer for long periods, exposing the detainees to the risk of torture and other ill-treatment.

[36] Skype president Josh Silverman said it was "common knowledge" that TOM Online had "established procedures to...block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities".

There are reports of detentions, assaults, torture, and disappearances of whistleblowers including activists, doctors, lawyers, students, and businessmen who created and uploaded videos of overburdened hospitals and high numbers of deaths.

[56] In 2012 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the Chinese government to lift restrictions on media access to the region and allow independent, impartial monitors to visit and assess conditions in Tibet.

It states that the PRC never stops enhancing its system of information hyper-control and persecution of dissident journalists and bloggers, and that further evidence of this came in February 2020, when two citizens were arrested for their coverage of the coronavirus crisis.

In 1958, Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, adopted a residency permit system defining where people could work, and classified workers as rural or urban.

In 2000, The Washington Times reported that although migrant labourers play a major role in spreading wealth in Chinese villages, they are treated "like second-class citizens by a system which is so discriminatory that it has been likened to apartheid.

[91] In November 2005, Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, said that the hukou system was one of the most strictly enforced apartheid structures in modern world history.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), particularly during the Destruction of the Four Olds campaign, religious affairs of all types were persecuted, renounced, and strongly discouraged by Chairman Mao Zedong's government and its ideological allies.

Since 2017, reports have surfaced that around a million Muslims (Uyghur Chinese citizens and some Central Asian nationals) were detained in internment camps throughout Xinjiang without trial or access to a lawyer.

[153] Also in 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to assimilation, and to watch for frowned-upon religious or cultural practices.

According to a report published then by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from the region of Xinjiang and used for forced labor in at least twenty-seven corporate factories.

[157] According to the Business and Human Rights resource center, corporations such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Amazon, Apple, BMW, Fila, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Nike, North Face, Puma, PVH, Samsung, and UNIQLO have sourced from these factories prior to the publication of the ASPI report.

[158] On 10 October 2020, the UK shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy urged Britain to block China's seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council over the country's treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

[164] On 16 August 2021, a young Chinese woman, named Wu Huan, told the Associated Press in her testimony that she was allegedly held for eight days at a Chinese-run secret detention facility in the United Arab Emirates, along with two other Uyghurs.

An FCDO spokesperson said, "It is clear that the Chinese authorities did not provide the full, unfettered access to Xinjiang for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that we and our international partners have long called for.

[181] Foreign observers estimate that hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in "re-education through labor" camps, prisons, and other detention facilities for refusing to renounce the spiritual practice.

[186][194][195] The Kilgour-Matas report[180][196][197] stated, "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six-year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and "we believe that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners".

Despite minor legal improvements regarding the death penalty and urban property confiscation, the government stalled or even reversed previous reforms related to the rule of law, while security forces resorted to extralegal forms of repression.

The party responded by committing more resources to internal security forces and intelligence agencies, engaging in the systematic enforced disappearance of dozens of human rights lawyers and bloggers, and enhancing controls over online social media.

[218] The main demographic of Chinese citizens being targeted and placed in mental asylums were academics, intellectuals, students, and religious groups for their capitalist tendencies and bourgeois worldview.

[218] The human rights activist Wei Jingsheng was among the first to speak out about the misappropriation of psychiatry for political purposes in the winter of 1978; however, in response to his advocacy, he was imprisoned and subjected to involuntary drugging and beating by the Chinese government.

[230] Tan Zuoren was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to 5 years in prison after publicly speaking about government corruption as well as the poorly constructed school buildings that collapsed and led to the deaths of thousands of children during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.

Xang has commented on the punishment he received for protesting, claiming that he was interrogated while shackled onto a metal chair, forced to sit in stressful positions for a set amount of time, and tortured physically and mentally.

[249] In Communist philosophy, Vladimir Lenin urged the retention of the death penalty, while Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels claimed that the practice was feudal and a symbol of capitalist oppression.

[260] Running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton sharply criticized his predecessor George H. W. Bush for prioritizing profitable trade relationships over human rights issues in mainland China.

Although the People's Republic of China outlawed torture in 1996, human rights groups say brutality and degradation are common in Chinese arbitrary detention centers, Laojiao prisons, and black jails.

One such report was released by the International Labor Rights Fund in October 2006; it documented minimum wage violations, long work hours, and inappropriate actions toward workers by management.