[JPRT, 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ANNUAL REPORT
2010
=======================================================================
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 10, 2010
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ANNUAL REPORT
2010
=======================================================================
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 10, 2010
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
61-507 PDF WASHINGTON : 2010
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate
House
BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota, SANDER LEVIN, Michigan, Cochairman
Chairman MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
MAX BAUCUS, Montana MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
CARL LEVIN, Michigan TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California DAVID WU, Oregon
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BOB CORKER, Tennessee DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
GEORGE LeMIEUX, Florida
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Department of State, To Be Appointed
Department of Labor, To Be Appointed
Department of Commerce, To Be Appointed
At-Large, To Be Appointed
At-Large, To Be Appointed
Charlotte Oldham-Moore, Staff Director
Douglas Grob, Cochairman's Senior Staff Member
(ii)
CO N T E N T S
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Page
Preface.......................................................... 1
General Overview................................................. 2
I. Executive Summary............................................. 11
Findings and Recommendations................................. 11
Political Prisoner Database.................................. 53
II. Human Rights................................................. 57
Freedom of Expression........................................ 57
Worker Rights................................................ 71
Criminal Justice............................................. 86
Freedom of Religion.......................................... 99
Ethnic Minority Rights....................................... 113
Population Planning.......................................... 116
Freedom of Residence and Movement............................ 123
Status of Women.............................................. 129
Human Trafficking............................................ 135
North Korean Refugees in China............................... 140
Public Health................................................ 144
Climate Change and the Environment........................... 150
III. Development of the Rule of Law.............................. 160
Civil Society................................................ 160
Institutions of Democratic Governance........................ 166
Commercial Rule of Law....................................... 178
Access to Justice............................................ 190
IV. Xinjiang..................................................... 200
V. Tibet......................................................... 215
VI. Developments in Hong Kong and Macau.......................... 231
VII. Endnotes.................................................... 239
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
2010 ANNUAL REPORT
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, established by
the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 as China prepared to enter
the World Trade Organization, is mandated by law to monitor
human rights, including worker rights, and the development of
the rule of law in China. The Commission by mandate also
maintains a database of information on political prisoners in
China--individuals who have been imprisoned by the Chinese
government for exercising their civil and political rights
under China's Constitution and laws or under China's
international human rights obligations. All of the Commission's
reporting and its Political Prisoner Database are available to
the public online via the Commission's Web site, www.cecc.gov.
Preface
The findings of this Annual Report make clear that human
rights conditions in China over the last year have
deteriorated. This has occurred against the backdrop of China's
accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and
the Chinese government's years of preparation for accession,
which provided the impetus for many changes to Chinese law.
Those changes, some of which have been significant, have yet to
produce legal institutions in China that are consistently and
reliably transparent, accessible, and predictable. This has had
far-reaching implications for the protection of human rights
and the development of the rule of law in China.
The Chinese people have achieved success on many fronts,
for example in health, education, and in improved living
standards for large segments of the population, and they are
justifiably proud of their many successes. But the Chinese
government now must lead in protecting fundamental freedoms and
human rights, including the rights of workers, and in defending
the integrity of China's legal institutions with no less skill
and commitment than it displayed in implementing economic
reforms that allowed the industriousness of the Chinese people
to lift millions out of poverty.
Most importantly, the Chinese government must free its
political prisoners, who include some of the country's most
capable and socially committed citizens--scholar and writer Liu
Xiaobo, HIV/AIDS advocate Hu Jia, prominent attorney Gao
Zhisheng, journalist Gheyret Niyaz, Tibetan environmentalist
Karma Samdrub, and many others named in this Annual Report and
in the Commission's Political Prisoner Database. By engaging
rather than repressing human rights advocates, the Chinese
government would unleash constructive forces in Chinese society
that are poised to address the very social problems with which
the government and Party now find themselves overburdened:
corruption, poor working conditions, occupational safety and
health, environmental degradation, and police abuse among them.
Stability in China is in the national interest of the
United States. The Chinese government's full and firm
commitment to openness, transparency, the rule of law, and the
protection of human rights, including worker rights, marks a
stability-preserving path forward for China. Anything less than
the government's full and firm commitment to protect and
enforce these rights undermines stability in China.
Overview
Over the Commission's 2010 reporting year, across the areas
the Commission monitors, the following general themes emerged:
1. New trends in political imprisonment include an
increasingly harsh crackdown on lawyers and those who have a
track record of human rights advocacy, particularly those who
make use of the Internet and those from areas of the country
the government deems to be politically sensitive (e.g., Tibetan
areas and Xinjiang).
2. Nexus between human rights and commercial rule of law,
has become more evident particularly in connection with laws on
state secrets, the Internet, and worker rights.
3. Communist Party's intolerance of independent sources of
influence extends broadly across Chinese civil society,
including with respect to organized labor.
4. Chinese government's new rhetoric on compliance with
international human rights norms creates new challenges for
U.S.-China dialogue and exchange.
5. Global economic conditions have prompted the Chinese
government to expand state economic and social control in a
manner that impedes the development of the rule of law.
6. Misapplication of law as a means of control has become
more evident as the Communist Party has expanded and
strengthened the capacity of law and regulation to serve as a
means for the Party to control an increasing number of facets
of daily life.
7. Prospects for human rights and the rule of law in China
depend on decisions taken at the highest levels of the
Communist Party.
New Trends in Political Imprisonment
The Chinese government appears to be engaged in an
increasingly harsh crackdown on lawyers and human rights
defenders. The tightening of control over criminal lawyers,
human rights lawyers, and the legal profession more generally
has led some of China's leading legal experts to state that the
rule of law is in ``full retreat'' in China. Over the last two
years, several lawyers involved in human rights advocacy work--
including in legal cases involving house church members, public
health advocates, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, and
others deemed by the government to threaten ``social
stability''--have been harassed and abused by the government
based on who their clients are and the causes those clients
represent.
The Internet appears to have given rise to a new category
of
political prisoners in China. Many citizens who criticize the
government on blogs and comment boards face no severe
repercussions--at most their comments may be deleted. But
individuals who have a track record of human rights advocacy,
political activism, grassroots organizing, or opposition to the
Communist Party, and some from areas of the country the
government deems to be politically sensitive (e.g., Tibetan
areas and Xinjiang), have been targeted systematically. Among
the most common charges against these citizens are the crimes
of ``subverting state power'' or ``splittism,'' which carry a
sentence of up to life imprisonment, and inciting subversion or
``splittism,'' which carry a sentence of up to 15 years.
Individuals, including lawyers, writers, scholars, and
businesspeople, have been imprisoned on these charges for
posting online essays critical of the government, for exposing
corruption or environmental problems, or for trying to organize
political opposition online, without advocating violence.
In the past year, government officials moved more
aggressively to diminish or end the public influence of Tibetan
civic and intellectual leaders, writers, and artists. Officials
imprisoned such Tibetans in past years, but the frequency of
using courts and the misapplication of criminal charges to
remove such figures from society has increased. As of early
September 2010, the Commission's Political Prisoner Database
had recorded more than 840 cases of political detention of
Tibetans on or after March 10, 2008, when Tibetan protests
began in Lhasa and then swept across the Tibetan plateau. The
true number of political detentions during the period is
certain to be far higher.
In the year since the government suppression of a
demonstration by Uyghurs and multi-ethnic riots in Xinjiang
starting July 5, 2009, human rights conditions in this far
western region of China have worsened, and cases of political
imprisonment remain of critical concern. At the same time that
authorities have punished people for violent crimes committed
in July 2009, they also have continued to conflate the right to
demonstrate peacefully or to express criticism over government
policy with criminal activity. In the past year, authorities
imprisoned Uyghur Webmasters and a Uyghur journalist in
connection with articles critical of conditions in Xinjiang and
in connection with Internet postings calling for the July 2009
demonstrations. In the aftermath of the July 2009 events,
authorities also carried out broad security sweeps resulting in
mass detentions of Uyghur men and boys, some of whom appear to
have had no connection to events in July 2009. The whereabouts
of many people detained since July 2009 remain unknown.
Nexus Between Human Rights and Commercial Rule of Law
Developments over the past year have shown how business
disputes and commercial issues can have real human rights
implications when the Communist Party perceives its interests
to be threatened. Under Chinese law, information relating to
``national economic development'' may be deemed a ``state
secret.'' Furthermore, officials sometimes deem information a
state secret ex post facto, that is, after an alleged ``crime''
of unauthorized disclosure, trafficking, or possession of a
``state secret'' has occurred. Many Chinese companies dealing
with foreign businesses are state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with
close links to the government, heightening the possibility that
such SOEs will press the government to classify commercial
information as a state secret or that the government will use
the charge of violating laws on state secrets to advantage
Chinese commercial interests.
The crime of supplying a state secret to a foreign
``organization'' (a category that includes corporations) is
punishable by up to life in prison. While it remains unclear
whether this risk to foreign businesses has increased, high-
profile cases in the last year illustrate that the risk remains
real. Among such cases is that of Xue Feng, a geologist and
U.S. citizen who helped his employer, an American firm,
purchase commercially available information on oil wells and
prospecting sites in China. The information was classified as a
state secret after the purchase took place. A Chinese court
then sentenced the geologist to eight years in prison. The case
shows that the risk of being charged with violating laws on
state secrets complicates the normal, legitimate gathering of
commercial information. The imposition of such a risk whenever
state ownership of industry is involved is contrary to standard
international business practice and undermines the rule of law.
The controversy between the Chinese government and Google,
Inc., over the last year highlighted the potential for Chinese
censorship practices to interfere with the free flow of
information among Chinese citizens and businesses, and between
people and organizations in China and the rest of the world.
The government appeared to single out Google in June 2009
during an anti-pornography campaign, saying Google was not
doing enough to filter banned content (much of which is
politically sensitive, not ``pornographic''). In January 2010,
Google announced that it had ``detected a highly sophisticated
and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating
from China'' that it said had ``resulted in the theft of
intellectual property from Google.'' Google also said it had
``evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was
accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights
activists.'' Google said that ``[t]hese attacks and the
surveillance they have uncovered--combined with attempts over
the past year to further limit free speech on the web'' led the
company ``to conclude that we should review the feasibility of
our business operations in China.'' The Google controversy
underscored what some business leaders have noted as the
Chinese government's long-growing impatience with private
companies that it perceives to have grown too large or become
too successful, or whose branding attracts too much loyalty
outside of government-approved parameters.
The nexus between human rights and commercial rule of law
also has been evident in the area of worker rights. High-
profile worker actions during this reporting year included
strikes calling for better wages and formal channels to submit
grievances. In a number of strikes at prominent foreign
manufacturing facilities in China, workers called for existing
All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU)-affiliated unions
to behave more independently within the confines of Chinese
law. Striking workers' demands for higher wages revealed that
they may have been emboldened not only by protections for
workers codified in labor laws that took effect in 2008, but
also by a tighter labor market. However, they stopped short of
calling for the formation of independent trade unions. The
limited demands of workers reflected in part the political
constraints imposed on the labor movement in China. Workers in
China still are not guaranteed, either by law or in practice,
full worker rights in accordance with international standards,
including the right to organize into independent unions. The
ACFTU, the official union under the direction of the Party, is
the only legal trade union organization in China. All lower
level unions must be affiliated with the ACFTU and must align
with its overarching political concerns of maintaining ``social
stability'' and economic growth.
Communist Party's Intolerance of Independent Sources of Influence
The Communist Party's determination to rein in independent
sources of influence remained evident across Chinese society
during this reporting year. For example, the Chinese government
denies workers the right to organize into independent unions in
part because the Party continues to regard organized labor as
it does citizen activism in other spheres of public concern: as
a threat to the Party's hold on power and a potentially
powerful competitor for allegiance. While legislative
developments over the last three years now make collective
bargaining a legal possibility in China, and efforts to develop
collective labor contracting in some locales have progressed in
limited respects (e.g., in Guangzhou and Shanghai), China's
leaders have made clear they will not tolerate an independent
trade union movement. They do not see such a development as
potentially helping to relieve the government of the burden of
social pressures.
Chinese citizens who sought to establish and operate civil
society organizations that focused on other issues deemed by
officials to be ``sensitive,'' including public health
advocacy, housing rights advocacy, and advocacy on behalf of
petitioners, ethnic minorities, or adherents of religious and
spiritual groups, faced intimidation, harassment, and
punishment. The government continued to tighten its control
over civil society groups through selective enforcement of
regulations and through new regulations that make it difficult
for some civil society organizations to accept tax deductible
contributions or contributions from overseas donors.
The government also punished citizens who waged independent
campaigns seeking greater government accountability. Activists
who criticized the government for not doing enough to
investigate the causes of school collapses in the May 2008
earthquake in Sichuan have been imprisoned. Tibetans engaged in
environmental protection activities with Party and government
encouragement found themselves facing imprisonment when their
popularity soared and they criticized local officials for
breaking laws that protect endangered animal species.
Petitioners in many areas of China were mistreated, harassed,
and detained for their involvement in advocating for housing
rights and for organizing to protest forced evictions and
relocations in which the government failed to meet its
obligations to compensate residents fairly and in accordance
with the law. Mistreatment of those advocating on behalf of
individuals who suffered abuse at the hands of population
planning officials continued.
Authorities also sought to tighten control over the
Internet, the influence of which continues to grow, with more
than 420 million users in China. Officials stepped up
monitoring and control of blogging, news, video, and social
networking sites; issued legal measures that could increase
pressure on Internet companies to censor political content; and
sought to impose greater legal requirements on those wishing to
post or host content on the Internet that could lead to self-
censorship of political content for fear of government
retribution. The government also continued to quash
attempts by Chinese media to test the boundaries of media
independence, as illustrated, for example, when an editorial
calling for reform of China's household registration system
jointly published in 13 newspapers was removed from the
Internet, and one of its co-authors was forced to resign his
position as editor of one of the papers.
A further example of the Chinese leadership's determination
to rein in independent sources of influence is the continuing
ban on Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a spiritual movement
established in China in the early 1990s based on Chinese
meditative exercises called qigong. By 1999, the Falun Gong
movement reportedly had grown to include an estimated 70 to 100
million followers (also called ``practitioners''). The group
flourished during the decade following the suppression of the
Tiananmen democracy movement in June 1989, which many viewed as
a hopeful development, showing that it was possible, even in
the wake of the events of June 1989, to build a non-state-
affiliated popular organization in China on a massive scale
without state support. In 1999, however, the Party announced a
total ban on Falun Gong, the implementation of which has
resulted in the harassment, detention, and mental and physical
abuse of large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners in official
custody, and in some cases torture and death. The ban remains
in force today, and authorities regularly intensify crackdowns
on the Falun Gong movement around events the government deems
to be sensitive, such as the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
Chinese Government's New Rhetoric on Compliance With International
Human Rights Norms
Chinese officials appear to have adopted a new rhetorical
strategy with respect to China's compliance with international
norms. In the past, Chinese officials often argued that it was
necessary to carve out exceptions and waivers to the
application of international norms to China. While stating
their embrace of international norms in the abstract, for
example, on free expression and the environment, they sought to
make the case that, in practice, China deserved to be treated
as an exception, due, for instance, to its status as a
developing country. Now, however, official statements
increasingly tend to declare the Chinese government's
compliance with international norms, even in the face of
documented noncompliance. For example, in June 2010, the State
Council Information Office released a white paper presenting
``the true situation of the development and regulation of the
Internet in China'' to Chinese citizens and the international
community. The white paper claims the government ``guarantees
citizens' freedom of speech on the Internet'' and that its
model for regulating the Internet is ``consistent with
international practices.'' One implication of this new
rhetorical tactic is that it seemingly relieves Chinese
officials of the burden of arguing from the outset for
exceptions and waivers to the application of international
norms to China. Simply declaring compliance shifts the burden
of persuasion to those who point out the Chinese government's
noncompliance, placing them in the position of critics of
China, subject to accusations by Chinese officials of ``finger-
pointing,'' ``China bashing,'' and ``poisoning the atmosphere''
for good relations with China. By adopting this new rhetorical
approach, Chinese officials make respectful, open, and frank
dialogue with China more difficult, and the approach itself
underscores how important it is that Members of the U.S.
Congress and Administration officials not uncritically accept
Chinese officials' declarations of compliance.
Chinese officials in the last year also increasingly have
sought to portray the ``Chinese model'' (zhongguo moshi) as
consistent with international human rights standards. In an
April 2010 speech before the National People's Congress
Standing Committee, for example, State Council Information
Office Director Wang Chen said the government is campaigning to
gain global acceptance for its model of Internet control,
having ``engaged in dialogue and exchanges with more than 70
countries and international organizations,'' ``countered
Western enemy forces' smears against us, and enhanced the
international community's acceptance and understanding of our
model of managing the Internet.'' This new approach seeks to
redefine the substance of international human rights standards
in a manner that legitimizes the Chinese government's
noncompliance. This new approach appears to be connected with
debates going on now within China over whether China should
sign on to, or try to change, the rules of the international
system.
Global Economic Conditions and the Expansion of State Control
The Communist Party is motivated to deliver employment and
prosperity to inland and rural areas, and not just to coastal
regions that already have benefited disproportionately from
economic development, in part in order to demonstrate the
Party's ability to govern. The global economic downturn has
dampened demand for Chinese exports, and that has made the
delivery of employment and prosperity to inland and rural areas
more challenging for the Party. In these areas, grievances over
lax enforcement of health and safety standards and of
environmental and worker rights protections have fueled
discontent. The corruption and collusion
between local businesses and local regulatory authorities that
are associated with lax enforcement have undermined the
reputation of the Party in these areas. In response, the
leadership has resorted to expanded state economic and social
control.
In the economic sphere, state-owned companies acquired
private companies at a faster clip in the past year than
previously. Flush with capital from an economic stimulus
program of unprecedented magnitude and favored in the awarding
of infrastructure projects, China's state-owned enterprises
have expanded easily and squeezed out private firms in some
sectors. The need to address corruption and collusion between
private firms and local regulatory officials, however, has
allowed officials to cast expansion of state control as a
method for improving accountability and the rule of law. In
part because corruption and lax enforcement of health and
safety standards and environmental and worker rights
protections are the problems that fuel local discontent,
Chinese citizens have not widely contested the Party's
justification of expanded state control in these terms.
At the same time, many Chinese firms, especially state-
owned enterprises, continue to benefit from the Chinese
government's industrial policies that provide government
subsidies, preferences, and other benefits. The government also
has promoted ``indigenous innovation,'' a massive government
campaign to decrease reliance on foreign technology through
industrial policies and to enhance China's economy and national
security, with the stated purpose of enabling China to become a
global leader in technology by mid-century. Such policies have
further facilitated the expansion of state control of the
economy.
In the social sphere, China's leaders over the last year
sought to expand control by establishing or strengthening
existing Party ``branches'' in non-governmental organizations,
academic institutions, and residential communities. Local
governments, charged with ``maintaining social stability,''
established or strengthened existing ``stability preservation
offices'' and established new ``stability preservation funds''
(weiwen jijin) from which they make payments to people with
grievances in order to preempt their escalating disputes. Large
numbers of petitioners availing themselves of China's xinfang
(``letters and visits'') system for filing grievances against
the government were harassed, abused, detained illegally, and
involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals or sent to
``reeducation through labor'' facilities. Officials continued
to use license suspension and disbarment as methods to control
human rights lawyers who sought to represent clients in cases
deemed by authorities to be politically sensitive.
Misapplication of Law as a Means of Control
The Communist Party and Chinese government are expanding
and strengthening the capacity of law and regulation to serve
as a means to control an increasing number of facets of life in
China. Officials this past year sought to increase monitoring
of communication technologies--the Internet and cell phones--
that play a significant role in the daily lives of large
numbers of Chinese citizens. Officials sought to make it easier
for the government to identify the source of online content, by
barring anonymous
commenting, for example, and passed legal measures that add
pressure on Internet companies to police the Internet for state
secrets and for content that authorities allege may ``infringe
on the rights of others.'' While such moves may be aimed partly
at legitimate targets of concern, including spam and defamatory
content, in the Chinese context they also provide opportunities
and incentives for officials and private companies to censor
politically sensitive content.
Authorities increasingly have used the Law on the Control
of the Exit and Entry of Citizens to manage dissent. Article 8
of the law allows the government to ban ``persons whose exit
from the country, in the opinion of the competent department .
. . [would] be harmful to state security or cause a major loss
to national interest.'' During this reporting year, authorities
increasingly cited this provision to prevent rights defenders
and advocates who are critical of the government from leaving
China.
The Party and government also continued to use law to
entrench a policy framework of state control over religion, as
well as to exclude some religious communities from the limited
but important protections afforded to state-sanctioned
religious groups. In the past year, authorities made use of
laws concerning property and financial assets to restrict the
religious freedom of unregistered religious groups. President
Hu Jintao used the powerful Fifth Tibet Work Forum platform to
emphasize the Party's role in controlling Tibetan Buddhism and
the important role of law as a tool to enforce what the Party
deems to be the ``normal order'' for the religion. The
government and Party created increasing restraints on the
exercise of freedom of religion for Tibetan Buddhists by
strengthening the push to use policy and legal measures to
shape and control the ``normal order'' for Tibetan Buddhism.
During this reporting year, China's security and judicial
institutions' use of laws on ``endangering state security''--a
category of crimes that includes ``subversion,'' ``splittism,''
``leaking state
secrets,'' and ``inciting'' subversion or splittism--infringed
upon Chinese citizens' constitutionally protected freedoms of
speech, religious belief, association, and assembly. For
example, the government has used the law on splittism to punish
Tibetans who criticized or peacefully protested government
policies and then used the law on ``leaking state secrets'' to
punish Tibetans who attempted to share with other Tibetans
information about incidents of repression and punishment.
Authorities also issued regulations in the past year in
Xinjiang to impose state-defined notions of ``ethnic unity''
and to tighten controls over online speech. The imprisonment of
Uyghur Webmasters and a Uyghur journalist on charges of
endangering state security, in connection with online postings
and articles critical of conditions in Xinjiang, underscored
authorities' use of the Criminal Law to quell free expression.
The imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo and other activists on inciting
subversion and leaking state secrets charges after they
peacefully criticized officials and the Party further
underscored authorities' use of the Criminal Law to quell free
expression.
Prospects for the Rule of Law in China
Prospects for human rights and the rule of law in China
depend not only on decisions taken by officials responsible for
implementing law and protecting rights at the grassroots, but
also on decisions taken at the highest levels of the Communist
Party. The Party, with over 75 million members (roughly 5.7
percent of China's total population), strives to maintain
unchallenged rule over a country of more than 1.3 billion
people. The Party stakes the legitimacy of its claim to rule
China on its ability to provide both
stability and prosperity to the Chinese people, and to ``unify
the country'' (tongyi guojia). The Party leadership regards
developments that could adversely affect China's one-party
system as potential threats to stability, prosperity, or unity.
The rule of law, if implemented faithfully and fairly, should
benefit not just those the Party favors. Some of China's
leaders, therefore, regard implementation of the rule of law as
potentially diminishing the capacity of the Party to maintain
control.
Three decades ago, the challenge that reformers within the
Party faced was to find a way to advance market-oriented
reforms while ensuring that economic development still bore the
imprimatur of the Party. They succeeded. The economy boomed,
and the Party received enough of the credit to enable it to
maintain its hold on power. The challenge that reformers within
the Party perceive today is in finding a way to advance the
rule of law in a manner that results in the law still bearing
the imprimatur of the Party. Over the last year, senior leaders
have reiterated positions emphasizing the leading role of the
Party, the need to adhere to the Party's formulation of
``socialist democracy,'' and the impossibility of implementing
``Western-style'' legal and political institutions.
Motivated by China's dependence on foreign investment,
China's leaders have appeared to be more nimble in the
commercial context to accept concepts and practices associated
with so-called Western-style rule of law. Whether a decrease in
China's reliance on foreign investment ultimately will be
associated with change or continuity in this regard remains to
be seen. The findings of this Annual
Report suggest, however, as the Commission reported in its last
Annual Report, that the Party still ``rejects the notion that
the imperative to uphold the rule of law should preempt the
Party's role in guiding the functions of the state.'' Chinese
leaders' actions over the coming months will shed light on
whether their stated commitment to the rule of law is real. The
Commission and those who pay close attention to these issues in
China will watch developments carefully.
In 2009, the Chinese government issued the 2009-2010
National Human Rights Action Plan that uses the language of
human rights to cast an ambitious program for promoting the
rights of Chinese citizens. The Action Plan has been described
by some human rights advocates as signifying ``remarkable
progress'' because in it the Chinese government articulates a
clearly defined time period (2009-2010) for implementing a
number of commitments to civil and political rights. The
findings of this Annual Report document how the Party thus far
has prioritized strengthening its grip on society over the
implementation of the commitments to human rights and the rule
of law set forth in the Chinese government's own Action Plan.
The Commission urges Members of the U.S. Congress and
Administration officials to continue to inquire about the
Chinese government's progress in translating words into action
and in securing for its citizens the improvements it has set
forth in its Action Plan. To that end, this Annual Report and
the information available on the Commission's Web site may
serve as useful resources.
I. Executive Summary
Findings and Recommendations
A summary of specific findings follows below for each
section of this Annual Report, covering each area that the
Commission monitors. In each area, the Commission has
identified a set of issues that merit attention over the next
year, and, in accordance with the Commission's legislative
mandate, submits for each a set of recommendations to the
President and the Congress for legislative or executive action.
Freedom of Expression
Findings
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year,
Chinese authorities continued to maintain a wide range
of restrictions that deny Chinese citizens their right
to freedom of speech as guaranteed under China's
Constitution. Chinese officials continued to justify
such restrictions on grounds such as protecting state
security, minors, or public order. They also
asserted that freedom of expression is protected in
China, and that restrictions on free expression imposed
by the Chinese government meet international standards.
In practice, however, authorities continued to misuse
vague criminal laws intended to protect state security
to instead target peaceful speech critical of the
Communist Party or Chinese government. In December
2009, a Beijing court sentenced prominent intellectual
Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for ``inciting
subversion of state power,'' the longest known sentence
for this crime. Liu's offenses were to publish essays
online critical of the Communist Party and to help
draft and circulate Charter 08, a treatise advocating
political reform and human rights circulated online for
signatures. Following demonstrations and riots in
Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), in
2009, authorities this past year used state security
crimes to imprison a journalist and Web site
administrators for expressing or failing to censor
views critical of government policies in the region.
While Chinese citizens now have unprecedented
opportunities to express themselves through the
Internet and other communication technologies, Chinese
officials and private companies, as required by law,
continued arbitrarily to remove or block political and
religious content. They did so nontransparently and
without clearly articulated standards. During the
reporting year, Internet users and foreign media in
China frequently found that politically sensitive news
articles and discussions, including a domestic
editorial cartoon that referred to the 1989 Tiananmen
protests, had been removed or blocked from the
Internet. Despite its noncompliance with international
human rights standards, the Chinese government is
waging a campaign to gain global acceptance for its
model of Internet control.
This past year, the controversy between the
Chinese government and the U.S. company Google
highlighted the potential for China's censorship
requirements to serve as a trade barrier and to cause
companies to stop providing services to Chinese
citizens, further limiting the free flow of
information.
In the XUAR, China's maintenance of broad
restrictions on the Internet, text messages, and
international phone calls, put in place following the
July 2009 demonstrations and riots in Urumqi and only
gradually lifted starting in December 2009, illustrated
the overbroad scope of China's restrictions on free
expression.
The Communist Party continued to view the news
media as a tool to serve the Party's interests, in
practice denying citizens their right to freedom of the
press as guaranteed under China's Constitution.
Throughout the reporting year, the Commission observed
numerous instances of officials reportedly prohibiting
news media from publishing certain stories, such as a
local media interview with U.S. President Barack Obama
during his November 2009 trip to China, or punishing
news media for publishing certain stories, such as a
Chinese domestic joint media editorial criticizing and
calling for reform of China's household registration
system.
The government further strengthened its system
of ``prior restraints,'' by which the government may
deny a person or group the use of a forum for
expression in advance of the actual expression. Under
this system, any person or group who wishes to publish
a newspaper, host a Web site, or work as a journalist
must receive permission from the government in the form
of license or registration, and may also be required to
meet other conditions, including political loyalty or
financial requirements. In March 2010, an official
announced the government would be tightening entry
requirements for journalists by requiring them to pass
a qualification exam for which knowledge of ``Chinese
Communist Party journalism'' and ``Marxist views'' of
news will be required.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Raise concerns over the Chinese government's
efforts to gain global acceptance for its model of
Internet control and the Chinese government's blanket
defense of restrictions on freedom of expression as
being in line with international practice, without
differentiating between restrictions for legitimate
purposes, such as to protect minors, and restrictions
for impermissible purposes, such as to silence dissent.
Emphasize that such arguments undermine international
human rights standards for free expression,
particularly those contained in Article 19 of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
Engage in dialogue and exchanges with Chinese
officials on the question of how governments can best
ensure that restrictions on freedom of expression are
not abused and do not exceed the scope necessary to
protect state security, minors, and public order.
Emphasize the importance of procedural protections such
as public participation in formulation of restrictions
on free expression, transparency regarding
implementation of such restrictions, and independent
judicial review of such restrictions. Reiterate Chinese
officials' own calls for greater transparency and
public participation in lawmaking. Such discussions may
be part of a broader discussion on how both the U.S.
and Chinese governments can work together to ensure the
protection of common interests, including protecting
minors, computer security, and privacy with regard to
the Internet.
Support the research and development of
technologies that enable Chinese citizens to access and
share political and religious content that they are
entitled to access and share under international human
rights standards but that is blocked by Chinese
officials. Support tools and practices that enable
Chinese citizens to access and share such content in a
way that ensures their security and privacy.
Call for the release of Liu Xiaobo and other
political prisoners imprisoned on charges of
endangering state security and other crimes but whose
only offenses were to peacefully express support for
political reform or criticism of government policies,
including: Tan Zuoren (sentenced in February 2010 to
five years in prison after using the Internet to
organize an independent investigation into school
collapses in an earthquake) and Huang Qi (sentenced in
November 2009 to three years in prison for using his
human rights Web site to advocate for parents of
earthquake victims).
Worker Rights
Findings
Workers in China still are not guaranteed,
either by law or in practice, full worker rights in
accordance with international standards, including the
right to organize into independent unions. The All-
China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the official
union under the direction of the Communist Party, is
the only legal trade union organization in China. All
lower level unions must be affiliated with the ACFTU
and must align with its overarching political concerns
of maintaining ``social stability'' and economic
growth.
Labor disputes and officials' concern with
maintaining ``social stability'' intensified over this
reporting year as layoffs, wage arrears, and poor and
unsafe working conditions persisted. Growing concern on
the part of local governments to maintain economic
growth and employment continued to prompt some
localities to respond to labor laws that took effect in
2008 (the Labor Contract Law, Employment Promotion Law,
and Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law) with
local opinions and regulations of their own that
weakened some employee-friendly aspects of these laws.
Interpretation of these laws across localities has not
been consistent, leading to their ``regionalization''
and ``loopholization.''
During the spring and summer of 2010, Chinese
and international media and non-governmental
organizations reported on a spate of worker actions--
from a succession of strikes to suicides at a factory
compound--at various enterprises in China, mostly
foreign invested, that garnered attention in China and
around the world. Unofficial reports suggest that the
striking workers' primary demand was higher wages. In a
number of strikes workers called for existing All-China
Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU)-affiliated unions to
behave more independently within the confines of
Chinese law. Some of the strikes and demands for higher
wages during 2010 may not be a sign of continued
weakness on the part of workers vis-a-vis management.
Rather, they may reveal that workers in some cases have
been emboldened not only by worker rights codified in
labor laws that took effect in 2008, but also by a
tighter labor market.
In response to collective labor action that
was organized and large-scale, the Chinese government
continued to redirect labor disputes away from the
formal channels of arbitration and litigation toward
more ``flexible'' and ``grassroots-level'' negotiation
and mediation. These forms of dispute resolution often
relied on coordination among levels of local government
(e.g., provincial, city, town, etc.), involving local
government and Party units, the official trade union,
and the police and security apparatus.
Backlogs in the handling of labor dispute
cases continued to exceed time limits mandated by law.
In addition to large increases in arbitrated cases,
labor dispute cases also continued to deluge Chinese
courts. In some cases, these disputes were the result
of strong dissatisfaction with arbitration proceedings,
as most arbitrated cases can be reviewed in a court if
either side is dissatisfied. In other cases, the
increase reflected the strong and growing rights
consciousness of Chinese workers who turned to new
protections offered in labor laws that took effect in
2008.
Migrant workers continued to face
discrimination in urban areas, and their children still
faced difficulties accessing city schools. Employment
discrimination more generally continued to be a serious
problem, and plaintiffs brought a growing number of
anti-discrimination suits under China's Employment
Promotion Law.
During the 2010 reporting year, enforcement of
China's Labor Contract Law continued to be uneven or
selective. Even as reported statistics show increases
in the number of labor contracts signed, formal
employment in China continues to erode, especially for
unskilled urban workers and rural
migrants. There have been reports of employers
concluding multiple contracts per worker in order to
avoid payment of overtime; replacing older workers with
younger workers to avoid longer-term contracts; using
contract expiration as a method for laying off formal
employees during economic slowdowns; and refusing to
hire employees who insist on exercising their right to
conclude a labor contract. Studies by Chinese
researchers suggest that substantial numbers of Chinese
workers report that their actual work hours are
different from the hours specified in their labor
contracts.
The ACFTU during the reporting year has
appeared to be more willing to address the issue of
worker representation. One ACFTU official stated that,
``in mitigating labour disputes, the fundamental issue
is to establish a collective bargaining system that
would allow labour disputes to be managed and resolved
within the enterprise.'' Following worker strikes at a
number of foreign-invested manufacturing facilities
during this reporting year, officials in the southern
Chinese province of Guangdong accelerated action on
draft Regulations on Enterprise Democratic Management.
In September, the Guangdong People's Congress Standing
Committee reportedly delayed further deliberation of
the draft. Heavy lobbying by members of the Hong Kong
industrial community, many of whom own and operate
factories in Southern China, reportedly played a role
in the Standing Committee's decision. However,
Guangdong's draft regulations are particularly
noteworthy in that they specifically grant workers the
right to demand the initiation of collective wage
consultations--a right that typically has been reserved
for unions. Guangdong and other localities, including
Beijing, Hainan, and Tianjin, also have issued guidance
notices and regulations specifying the legal rights of
parties involved in collective consultations.
The Chinese government's complicated and time-
consuming work-related injury compensation procedure
continued to be a major problem for China's injured
workers. The process is further complicated for migrant
workers who may already have left their jobs and moved
to another location by the time clinical symptoms
surface. Workers more generally also continued to face
persistent occupational safety issues. Collusion
between mine operators and local government officials
reportedly remains widespread, leading to lax
enforcement of health and safety standards.
Prohibitions on independent organizing limit workers'
ability to promote safer working conditions.
China's new generation of migrant workers,
unlike their parents, have higher expectations with
regard to wages and labor rights. Younger workers, born
in the 1980s and 1990s, reportedly were at the
forefront of worker strikes that took place this past
year across China. Together, they make up about 100
million of China's total pool of migrant workers. In an
essay describing the characteristics of the new
generation of migrant workers, China's Agricultural
Minister Han Changfu pointed out that many of these
young workers have never laid down roots, are better
educated, are the only child in the family, and are
more likely to ``demand, like their urban peers, equal
employment, equal access to social services, and even
the obtainment of equal political rights.''
In 2010, the Commission followed several
reports alleging that Chinese state-owned enterprises
utilized prison labor sent from China at their overseas
worksites. Chinese prisoners reportedly have worked on
housing and other infrastructure projects such as ports
and railroads outside of China. One report indicated
that transporting workers from China is standard
practice for some Chinese companies operating outside
of China and sometimes includes prisoners and those who
are on parole. China's Law on the Control of the Exit
and Entry of Citizens states that ``approval to exit
from the country shall not be granted to . . .
convicted persons serving their sentences.''
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Support projects promoting legal reform intended
to ensure that labor laws and regulations reflect
internationally recognized labor principles. Prioritize
projects that do not focus only on legislative drafting
and regulatory development, but that analyze
implementation and measure progress in terms of
compliance with internationally recognized labor
principles at the grassroots.
Support multi-year pilot projects that showcase
the experience of collective bargaining in action for
both Chinese workers and trade union officials; and
identify local trade union offices found to be more
open to collective bargaining and focus pilot projects
in their locales. Where possible, prioritize programs
that demonstrate the ability to conduct collective
bargaining pilot projects even in factories that do not
have an official union presence. Encourage the
expansion of exchanges between Chinese labor rights
advocates in NGOs, the bar, academia, and the official
trade union, and U.S. collective bargaining
practitioners. Prioritize exchanges that emphasize
face-to-face meetings with hands-on practitioners and
trainers.
Encourage research that identifies factors
underlying inconsistency in enforcement of labor laws
and regulations. This includes projects that prioritize
the large-scale compilation and analysis of Chinese
labor dispute litigation and arbitration cases, and
guidance documents issued by and to courts at the
provincial level and below, leading ultimately to the
publication and dissemination of Chinese language
casebooks that may be used as a common reference
resource by workers, arbitrators, judges, lawyers,
employers, union officials, and law schools in China.
Support capacity-building programs to strengthen
Chinese labor and legal aid organizations involved in
defending the rights of workers. Encourage Chinese
officials at local levels to develop, maintain, and
deepen relationships with labor organizations based in
Hong Kong and elsewhere, and to invite these groups to
increase the number of training programs on the
mainland. Support programs that train workers in ways
to identify problems at the factory floor level,
equipping them with skills and problem-solving training
so they can relate their concerns to employers
effectively.
Where appropriate, share the United States'
ongoing experience and efforts in protecting worker
rights--via legal, regulatory, or non-governmental
means--with Chinese officials. Facilitate site visits
and other exchanges for Chinese officials to observe
and share ideas with U.S. labor rights groups, lawyers,
the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL), and other
regulatory agencies at all levels of government that
work on labor issues. Encourage discussion on the value
of constructive interactions among labor non-
governmental organizations, workers, employers, and
government agencies; encourage exchanges that emphasize
the importance of government transparency in developing
stable labor relations and in ensuring full and fair
enforcement of labor laws. Support USDOL's exchanges
with China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social
Security (MOHRSS) regarding setting and enforcing
minimum wage standards, strengthening social insurance,
improving employment statistics, and promoting social
dialogue. Support the annual labor dialogue with China
that USDOL started this year and plans for further
progress in bilateral labor relations.
Criminal Justice
Findings
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year,
the Chinese government took steps to limit the
prevalence of coerced confessions and illegally
obtained evidence within the judicial system. In May
2010, five Chinese law enforcement agencies
announced two new regulations that intend to limit the
use of torture by police and prosecutors in criminal,
particularly death penalty, cases. Over the 2010
reporting year, police torture and coerced confessions
continued to be widely reported by international and
domestic organizations.
Citing concerns over social tensions, Chinese
authorities have promoted local and nationwide anti-
crime campaigns to stem reported rising crime rates. In
June 2010, China launched the fourth round of its
national ``strike hard'' campaign in a massive seven-
month crackdown on violent crimes and escalating social
conflicts. ``Strike hard'' campaigns and anti-crime
crackdowns have been tied to unusually harsh law
enforcement tactics, quick trials, and violations of
China's own criminal procedure laws and regulations.
During this reporting year, Chinese judicial
officials contravened provisions in China's Criminal
Procedure Law that require courts to provide access to
criminal trials for any observer, regardless of
citizenship, except where the law specifically
prohibits an open trial.
Harassment and intimidation of human rights
advocates by Chinese government officials continued
during this reporting year. Public security authorities
and unofficial personnel unlawfully monitored rights
defenders, petitioners, religious adherents, human
rights lawyers, and their family members, and subjected
them to periodic illegal home confinement. Such
mistreatment and abuse was evident particularly in the
leadup to sensitive dates and events, such as U.S.
President Barack Obama's visit in November 2009 and the
Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
Chinese officials continued to use various
forms of extralegal detention against Chinese citizens,
including petitioners, peaceful protesters, and other
individuals considered to be ``involved in issues
deemed sensitive by authorities.'' Some of those
arbitrarily detained were held in psychiatric hospitals
or extralegal detention facilities, such as ``black
jails,'' and subjected to treatment inconsistent with
international standards and protections found under
China's Constitution and Criminal Procedure Law.
Chinese criminal defense lawyers continue to
confront obstacles to practicing law without judicial
interference or fear of prosecution. In politically
sensitive cases throughout China, criminal defense
attorneys routinely faced harassment and abuse. Some
suspects and defendants in sensitive cases were not
able to have counsel of their own choosing; some were
compelled to accept government-appointed defense
counsel. Abuses of Article 306 of the Criminal Law,
which assigns criminal liability to lawyers that force
or induce a witness to change his or her testimony or
falsify evidence, continue to hamper the effectiveness
of criminal defense.
In August 2010, the National People's Congress
reviewed the first draft of the proposed eighth
amendment to China's Criminal Law, which reportedly
calls for reducing the current 68 crimes punishable by
death to 55 crimes. The reduction would signal the
first time the Chinese government has reduced the
number of crimes punishable by capital punishment since
the Criminal Law was enacted in 1979.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Press the Chinese government to adopt the
recommendation of the UN Committee against Torture to
investigate and disclose the existence of black jails
and other secret detention
facilities, as a first step toward abolishing such
forms of extralegal detention. Ask the Chinese
government to extend an invitation to the UN Working
Group on Arbitrary Detention to visit China.
Call on the Chinese government to guarantee the
rights of criminal suspects and defendants in
accordance with international human rights standards
and provide the international community with a specific
timetable for its ratification of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the
Chinese government signed in 1998, but has not
ratified. Press the Chinese government to adhere to
protections for criminal suspects and defendants
asserted in its 2009-2010 National Human Rights Action
Plan, and encourage the publication and broad
dissemination of fully detailed reports and updates on
local government implementation of the Action Plan.
Urge the Chinese government to amend its Criminal
Procedure Law to reflect the enhanced protections and
rights for lawyers and detained suspects contained in
the 2008 revision of the Lawyers Law. Encourage Chinese
officials to commit to a specific timetable for
revision and implementation of the revised Criminal
Procedure Law.
Make clear that the international community
regards as laudable the commitments to fair trial
rights and detainee rights the Chinese government made
in its 2009-2010 National Human Rights Action Plan.
Request information on the formalization of those
commitments into laws and regulations and on what
further steps it will take to ensure their successful
implementation, and support bilateral and multilateral
cooperation and dialogue to support such efforts.
Freedom of Religion
Findings
China's Constitution guarantees ``freedom of
religious belief'' but protects only ``normal religious
activities,'' and the government's restrictive
framework toward religion continued in the past year to
prevent Chinese citizens from exercising their right to
freedom of religion in line with international human
rights standards.
Some Chinese citizens had space to practice
their religion, but the Chinese government continued to
exert tight control over the affairs of state-
sanctioned religious communities and to repress
religious and spiritual activities falling outside the
scope of Communist Party-sanctioned practice. The
government maintained requirements that religious
organizations register with the government and submit
to the leadership of ``patriotic religious
associations'' created by the Party to lead China's
five recognized religions: Buddhism, Catholicism,
Taoism, Islam, and Protestantism.
Unregistered groups risked harassment,
detention, imprisonment, and other abuses, as did
members of registered groups deemed to deviate from
state-sanctioned activities. Variations in
implementation allowed some unregistered groups to
function in China, but such tolerance was arbitrary and
did not amount to the full protection of these groups'
rights.
As leadership in the State Administration for
Religious Affairs changed in the past year, authorities
continued to affirm policies of control over religion.
Despite articulating a ``positive role'' for religious
communities in China, officials did not then use the
notion of this ``positive role'' to promote religious
freedom, but rather used the sentiment to bolster
support for state economic and social goals.
The government continued to use law to control
religious practice rather than protect the religious
freedom of all Chinese citizens. The government
continued to pass legal measures that provide some
legal protections for registered religious communities,
but condition many activities on government oversight
or approval and exclude unregistered groups from
limited state protections.
China's diverse religious communities faced
various state controls over their affairs, and in some
cases, harassment, detention, and other abuses.
Authorities continued to control Buddhist institutions
and practices and take steps to curb ``unauthorized''
Buddhist temples. The government and Party placed
increasing restraints on the exercise of freedom of
religion for Tibetan Buddhists and continued to punish
Tibetan Buddhists for openly expressing their devotion
to the Dalai Lama. The government and Party continued
to deny members of the registered Catholic church the
freedom to recognize the authority of the Holy See to
select Chinese bishops, while authorities continued to
harass and hold some unregistered priests and bishops
under surveillance or in detention. Authorities across
the country used the specter of ``extremism'' to
bolster state interference in how Muslims interpreted
and practiced their religion. Conditions for religious
freedom for Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region continued to worsen as authorities integrated
controls over Muslims' religious freedom into far-
reaching security crackdowns. Chinese authorities
continued to impose state-defined interpretations of
theology on registered Protestant communities and to
harass and, in some cases, detain and imprison members
of unregistered Protestant churches, while also razing
church property. Authorities maintained controls over
Taoist activities and took steps to curb ``feudal
superstitious activities.''
During this reporting year, the Chinese
government maintained a ``strike hard'' campaign that
it has carried out against Falun Gong practitioners for
more than a decade, continuing its harassment and
intimidation of Falun Gong practitioners and lawyers
who defend Falun Gong clients. Local governments
throughout the Shanghai municipal area and surrounding
provinces reported mobilizing security forces to target
Falun Gong practitioners in preparation for the
Shanghai 2010 World Expo, and the 6-10 Office, whose
activities continued to expand during this reporting
year, spearheaded the Shanghai Expo crackdown.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Call on the Chinese government to guarantee to
all citizens freedom of religion in accordance with
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and to remove its framework for recognizing only select
religious communities for
limited state protections. Stress to Chinese
authorities that all citizens are entitled to enjoy
freedom of religion as a fundamental human right,
regardless of whether they practice religion in a way
deemed to contribute to state economic and social
goals.
Call for the release of Chinese citizens
confined, detained, or imprisoned in retaliation for
pursuing their right to freedom of religion (including
the right to hold and exercise spiritual beliefs). Such
prisoners include: Sonam Lhatso (Tibetan Buddhist nun
sentenced in 2009 to 10 years' imprisonment after she
and other nuns staged a protest calling for Tibetan
independence and the Dalai Lama's long life and return
to Tibet); Su Zhimin (an unregistered Catholic bishop
who ``disappeared'' after being taken into police
custody in 1996); Wang Zhiwen (Falun Gong practitioner
serving a 16-year sentence for organizing peaceful
protests by Falun Gong practitioners in 1999); Yusufjan
and Memetjan (university students who are members of a
Muslim religious group and were detained in May 2009
when members of the group met on a university campus);
Yang Rongli and Wang Xiaoguang (house church pastors
sentenced to 7 and 3 years, respectively, in 2009 in
connection to their activities leading an unregistered
congregation), as well as other prisoners mentioned in
this report and in the Commission's Political Prisoner
Database.
Call on the Chinese government to end
interference in the internal affairs of religious
communities and stress to the Chinese government that
freedom of religion includes: the freedom of Buddhists
to carry out activities in temples independent of state
controls over religion, and the freedom of Tibetan
Buddhists to express openly their respect or devotion
to Tibetan Buddhist teachers, including the Dalai Lama;
the freedom of Catholics to recognize the authority of
the Pope to make bishop appointments; the freedom of
Taoists to interpret their faith free from state
efforts to ban practices deemed as ``feudal
superstitions''; the right of Falun Gong practitioners
to freely practice Falun Gong inside China; the right
of Muslims to interpret theology free from state
interference and not face curbs on their
internationally protected right to freedom of religion
in the name of upholding ``stability''; and the right
of Protestants to worship free from state controls over
doctrine and to worship in unregistered house churches,
free from harassment, detention, and other abuses.
Support initiatives to provide technical
assistance to the Chinese government in drafting legal
provisions that protect, rather than restrain, freedom
of religion for all Chinese citizens. Support training
classes for Chinese officials on international human
rights standards for the protection of freedom of
religion.
Support non-governmental organizations that
collect information on conditions for religious freedom
in China and that inform Chinese citizens of how to
defend their right to freedom of religion against
Chinese government abuses.
Ethnic Minority Rights
Findings
Chinese law provides for a system of
``regional ethnic autonomy'' in designated areas with
ethnic minority populations, but shortcomings in the
substance and implementation of this system have
prevented ethnic minorities from enjoying meaningful
autonomy in practice. The Chinese government maintained
policies in the past year that prevented ethnic
minorities from ``administering their internal
affairs'' as guaranteed in Chinese law and from
enjoying their rights in line with international human
rights standards. While the Chinese government
maintained some protections in law and practice for
ethnic minority rights, it continued to impose the
fundamental terms upon which Chinese citizens could
express their ethnicity and to prevent ethnic
minorities from enjoying their cultures, religions, and
languages free from state interference, in violation of
international human rights standards.
Among the 55 groups the Chinese government
designates as minority ethnic groups, state repression
was harshest toward groups deemed to challenge state
authority, especially in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Tibet
Autonomous Region and other Tibetan autonomous areas.
The Chinese government continued in the past
year to assert the effectiveness of state laws and
policies in upholding the rights of ethnic minorities,
following domestic protests and international criticism
of the government's treatment of ethnic minorities. The
Chinese government and Communist Party strengthened
``ethnic unity'' campaigns as a vehicle for spreading
state policy on ethnic issues throughout Chinese
society and for imposing state-defined interpretations
of the history, relations, and current conditions of
ethnic groups in China.
Chinese leaders pledged to refine and improve
conditions for ethnic minorities, within the parameters
of existing Party policy, issuing some policy documents
in the past year which may bring mixed results in the
protection of ethnic minorities' rights. The Chinese
government's 2009-2010 National Human Rights Action
Plan issued in April 2009 outlined measures to support
ethnic minority populations in China.
The Chinese government maintained economic
development policies that prioritize state economic
goals over the protection of ethnic minorities' rights.
Despite bringing some benefits to ethnic minority areas
and residents, such policies also have conflicted with
ethnic minorities' rights to maintain traditional
livelihoods, spurred migration to ethnic minority
regions, promoted unequal allocation of resources
favoring Han Chinese, intensified linguistic and
assimilation pressures on local communities, and
resulted in environmental damage.
Authorities in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous
Region continued in the past year to restrict
independent expressions of ethnic identity among
Mongols and to interfere with their preservation of
traditional livelihoods, while enforcing campaigns to
promote stability and ethnic unity.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Fund rule-of-law programs and exchange programs
that raise awareness among Chinese leaders of different
models for governance that protect ethnic minorities'
rights and allow them to exercise meaningful autonomy
over their affairs, in line with both domestic Chinese
law and international human rights standards. Fund
programs that promote models for sustainable
development that draw on participation from ethnic
minority communities.
Support non-governmental organizations that
address human rights conditions for ethnic minorities
in China to enable them to continue their research and
develop programs to help ethnic minorities increase
their capacity to protect their rights. Encourage such
organizations to develop training programs to promote
sustainable development among ethnic minorities,
programs to protect ethnic minority languages and
cultures, and programs that research rights abuses in
the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Encourage broader
human rights and rule-of-law programs that operate in
China to develop programs to address issues affecting
ethnic minorities in China.
Call on the Chinese government to release people
detained or imprisoned for advocating for the rights of
ethnic minority citizens, including Mongol rights
advocate Hada (serving a 15-year sentence after
pursuing activities to promote Mongols' rights and
democracy) and other prisoners mentioned in this report
and in the Commission's Political Prisoner Database.
Support organizations that can monitor the
Chinese government's compliance with stated commitments
to protect ethnic minorities' rights, including as
articulated in the government's 2009-2010 National
Human Rights Action Plan and in international law that
the Chinese government is bound to uphold. Provide
support for organizations that can provide assistance
in implementing programs in a manner that draws on
participation from communities involved and ensures the
protection of their rights.
Population Planning
Findings
Chinese authorities continued to implement
population planning policies that interfere with and
control the reproductive lives of women, employing
various methods including fines, cancellation of state
benefits and permits, forced sterilization, forced
abortion, arbitrary detention, and other abuses.
Human rights abuses by officials charged with
implementing population planning policies continue
despite provisions in Chinese law that prohibit such
abuses. China's 2002 Population and Family Planning Law
(PFPL) states in Article 4 that officials ``shall
perform their administrative duties strictly in
accordance with the law, and enforce the law in a civil
manner, and they may not infringe upon the legitimate
rights and interests of citizens.'' The PFPL also
states in Article 39 that ``any functionary of a State
organ who commits one of the following acts in the work
of family planning, if the act constitutes a crime,
shall be investigated for criminal liability in
accordance with the law; if it does not constitute a
crime, he shall be given an administrative sanction
with law; his unlawful gains, if any, shall be
confiscated: (1) infringing on a citizen's personal
rights, property rights, or other legitimate rights and
interests; (2) abusing his power, neglecting his duty,
or engaging in malpractices for personal gain . . . .''
The Commission observed in 2010 a greater
number of reports confirming its 2009 finding that some
local governments are specifically targeting migrant
workers for forced abortions.
The Commission noted that increased public
awareness of the demographic and social consequences of
the Chinese government's population planning policy in
the 2010 reporting year led to public debate among
Chinese experts and government officials regarding the
need for policy reform. However, top Communist Party
and government leaders continue to publicly defend the
policy and rule out reform in the near term.
The Chinese government's population planning
policies continue to exacerbate the country's highly
skewed sex ratio. Reports in the last year, however,
emphasized how population planning policies exacerbate
other demographic challenges as well, including a
rapidly aging population and a decline in working age
population.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Urge the Chinese government to vigorously enforce
provisions under Chinese law that provide for
punishments of officials and other individuals who
violate the rights of citizens when implementing
population planning policies. Urge the Chinese
government to establish penalties, including specific
criminal and financial penalties, for officials and
individuals found to commit abuses such as coercive
abortion and coercive sterilization, which continue in
China despite provisions under existing laws and
regulations intended to prohibit them.
Urge Chinese officials to cease coercive methods
of enforcing birth control quotas. Urge the Chinese
government to dismantle coercive population controls
and provide greater reproductive freedom and privacy
for women.
Call on Chinese officials to permit greater
public discussion and debate concerning population
planning policies and to demonstrate greater
responsiveness to public concerns. Support the
development of programs and international cooperation
on legal aid and training programs that help citizens
pursue compensation under China's newly amended State
Compensation Law, and other remedies against the state
for injury suffered as a result of official abuse
related to China's population planning policies.
Freedom of Residence and Movement
Findings
The Chinese government's household
registration (hukou) system, first implemented in the
1950s, continues to limit the right of Chinese citizens
formally to establish their permanent place of
residence. Implementation and enforcement of some hukou
measures resulted in discrimination against rural hukou
holders who migrate to urban areas. Most frequently,
hukou is used to deny social benefits such as education
and subsidized healthcare to migrant workers in cities.
The discriminatory effects are especially prominent in
the area of education.
Authorities continued during the Commission's
2010 reporting period to relax some hukou restrictions
consistent with earlier reforms. Guangzhou municipality
instituted reforms to unify rural and urban hukou into
a single residential hukou. Chongqing municipality
initiated gradual voluntary hukou
reforms aimed at increasing the percentage of urban
hukou holders. The effects of these reforms are unclear
pending ongoing implementation.
The Chinese government and Communist Party
exercised strict control over public debate on hukou
reforms during the 2010 reporting year. Authorities
removed from the Internet a joint editorial published
by 13 newspapers that decried the hukou system as
corrupt and in need of speedy reform. A coauthor of the
piece was forced to resign his position as deputy
editor of a major newspaper.
The Chinese government continued to impose
restrictions on Chinese citizens' right to travel in a
manner that is inconsistent with international human
rights standards. During the Commission's 2010
reporting year, Chinese government authorities
arbitrarily barred rights defenders, advocates, and
critics from entering and leaving China. Officials
refused to renew passports to rights advocates and
subsequently cited invalid passports as grounds to
prevent entry. In some instances, no reasons for the
travel ban were provided.
The Chinese government continued to use
coercive measures to restrict Chinese advocates',
rights defenders', and dissidents' liberty of movement
within China, especially during politically sensitive
periods, including the months leading up to the
Shanghai 2010 World Expo. Authorities used measures
such as surveillance, police presence outside of one's
home, ``invitations'' to tea with police, forced trips,
detention, removal from one's home, reeducation through
labor, and imprisonment.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Support programs, organizations, and exchanges
with Chinese policymakers and academic institutions
engaged in research and outreach to migrant workers
that provide legal
assistance to migrant workers and encourage policy
debates on the hukou system.
Encourage U.S. academic and public policy
institutions and experts to consult with the Commission
on avenues for outreach to Chinese academic and public
policy figures engaged in policy debates on reform of
the hukou system.
Stress to Chinese government officials that the
Chinese government's noncompliance with international
standards regarding freedom of movement inside China
negatively impacts confidence outside China in the
Chinese government's commitment to international
standards more generally.
Raise specifically Chinese authorities'
restriction on the liberty of movement of rights
defenders, advocates, and critics including writer Liao
Yiwu, advocate Feng Zhenghu, economist Ilham Tohti,
professor Cui Weiping, writer Liu Xia (wife of
imprisoned intellectual Liu Xiaobo), and democracy
advocates Ding Zilin, Qi Zhiyong, and Li Hai.
Status of Women
Findings
Chinese officials continued to promote
existing laws that aim to protect women's rights,
including the amended Law on the Protection of Women's
Rights and Interests and the amended Marriage Law;
however, inconsistent interpretation, selective
implementation, and selective enforcement of these laws
across localities limit progress on concrete
protections of women's rights.
Recent statistics show increases in women
holding positions at the central, provincial, and
municipal levels of government.
Female political representation at the village
level remains low, due in part to the traditional
patriarchal system still in play in parts of rural
China. Villages typically have a high rate of ``self-
governance'' with regard to issues such as land
contracts, profit distribution from collectives, and
land requisition compensation, and with limited
decisionmaking power in village committees, women's
interests are less likely to be represented in village
rules and regulations, as well as in land disputes.
The Chinese government is committed under
Article 7 of the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights and Article 11 of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women to ensuring gender
equality in employment. While China's existing laws
such as the Labor Law, amended Law on the Protection of
Women's Rights and Interests, and Employment Promotion
Law prohibit gender discrimination, they lack clear
definitions and enforcement mechanisms, which weakens
their effectiveness. Women continue to experience
widespread discrimination in areas including
recruitment, wages, and retirement. The Shenzhen
Municipal Women's Federation announced draft
regulations during the Commission's 2010 reporting year
to promote gender equality in employment in the
Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.
Sexual harassment remains prevalent in China,
and victims of sexual harassment face several
legislative, cultural, and social obstacles in
protecting their rights. China's amended Law on the
Protection of Women's Rights and Interests (LPWRI)
prohibits sexual harassment and provides an avenue of
recourse for victims through either administrative
punishment for offenders or civil action in the
people's court system; however, the LPWRI does not
provide a clear definition of sexual harassment or
specific standards and procedures for prevention and
punishment.
Domestic violence remains pervasive, affecting
nearly one-third of China's 270 million families.
Advocates continue to call for comprehensive national-
level legislation that clearly defines domestic
violence, assigns responsibilities to government and
civil society organizations to address it, and outlines
punishments for offenders. The All-China Women's
Federation proposed draft national legislation this
year, but it remains to be seen whether this or other
such drafts are entered into the legislative agenda.
China's increasingly skewed sex ratio, which
some researchers attribute to government-imposed birth
limits and a traditional cultural bias for sons, may
lead to continued or
increased forced prostitution, forced marriages, and
human trafficking.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Support programs in China that increase awareness
of judicial and law enforcement personnel regarding
domestic violence and sexual harassment and increase
women's leadership training through U.S.-China
exchanges and international conferences.
Support legal programs that promote women's land
rights, especially in rural areas, and urge higher
levels of government to increase supervision over
village committees to ensure that village rules and
regulations are in accordance with national-level laws
and policies and to ensure adequate protection of
women's rights and interests.
Urge the Chinese government to further revise the
Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests
or enact new comprehensive national-level legislation
to provide a clear definition of sexual harassment and
specific standards and procedures for prevention and
punishment. Inquire into whether
officials in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone have
placed gender equality regulations on the legislative
plan, whether they intend to make drafts available for
public comment, and if so, how long the public comment
period will be and to whom will they make drafts
available for comment.
Urge the Chinese government to enact
comprehensive national-level legislation that clearly
defines domestic violence, assigns responsibilities of
government and civil society organizations in
addressing it, and outlines punishments for offenders.
Call for the release of such legislation in draft form
for public comment.
Urge the Chinese government to establish an
enforcement mechanism for implementation of provisions
in China's Labor Law, amended Law on the Protection of
Women's Rights and Interests, and Employment Promotion
Law that prohibit
gender discrimination. Urge Chinese officials to
specifically address gender discrimination in
recruitment, wages, and retirement.
Human Trafficking
Findings
The Chinese government voted to accede to the
UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking
in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN TIP
Protocol) in December 2009, after several years of
stating its intent to do so.
The legal definition of trafficking under
Chinese law does not conform to international
standards. Article 240 of China's Criminal Law defines
the trafficking of persons as ``abducting, kidnapping,
buying, trafficking in, fetching, sending, or
transferring a woman or child, for the purpose of
selling the victim.'' Because this definition is
narrower in scope than the definition provided in
Article 3 of the UN TIP Protocol, it imposes limits on
the Chinese government's prosecution of traffickers,
protection of victims, and funding of anti-trafficking
programs.
China remains a country of origin, transit,
and destination for human trafficking and abductions.
The majority of trafficking cases are domestic and
involve trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced
labor, and forced marriage.
The Chinese government continues to deport
North Korean refugees under the classification of
``economic migrants,'' without legal alternatives for
victims of trafficking.
The Chinese government made some efforts to
eliminate trafficking and comply with trafficking-
related international human rights standards during the
Commission's 2010 reporting period. Authorities
investigated, prosecuted, and prevented some
trafficking crimes, especially domestic trafficking
cases, and those involving the abduction of women for
forced marriage or commercial sexual exploitation.
In April 2010, the Supreme People's Court, the
Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of
Justice, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly
issued the Opinion on Lawful Punishment for the Crime
of Abducting and Selling Women and Children. The
guideline may improve investigation and filing of cases
involving the trafficking of women under 18 years of
age.
Officials continued to take steps to increase
collaboration with other countries, regions, and
international organizations on victim identification,
repatriation, and criminal prosecution. For example,
some local governments in Yunnan province and Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region set up liaison offices with
the governments of bordering countries including Laos,
Vietnam, and Cambodia to cooperate on anti-trafficking
efforts.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Urge the Chinese government to abide by its
commitment under the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress
and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and
Children, revise the government's definition of
trafficking, and enact comprehensive anti-trafficking
legislation to align with international standards.
Call on the Chinese government to provide more
services for trafficking victims, particularly for
Chinese citizens trafficked for labor exploitation and
trafficked abroad.
Urge the Chinese government to abide by its
international obligations with regard to North Korean
trafficking victims who are deported without legal
alternatives to repatriation.
Support international and cross-border mechanisms
that can help enhance the Chinese government's
collaboration with other countries, regions, and
international organizations on victim identification,
repatriation, and criminal prosecution.
Support legal assistance programs that advocate
on behalf of both foreign and Chinese trafficking
victims.
North Korean Refugees in China
Findings
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year,
central and local authorities sustained efforts to
locate and forcibly repatriate North Korean refugees in
China. The 1951 Convention and its Protocol obligates
the Chinese government to refrain from repatriating
North Koreans in China who left the DPRK for fear of
persecution, or who fear persecution upon return to the
DPRK.
North Korean women along the Chinese border
continue to be trafficked into forced marriage and the
sex industry. The Chinese government's repatriation of
trafficked North Korean women contravenes the 1951
Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951
Convention) and its 1967 Protocol (Protocol), as well
as Article 7 of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress
and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and
Children (UN TIP Protocol). The government's failure to
take adequate measures to prevent North Korean women
from being trafficked contravenes its obligations under
Article 9 of the UN TIP Protocol and Article 6 of the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Chinese local authorities near the border with
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)
continued to deny household registration (hukou) to the
children of North Korean women married to Chinese
citizens. Without household registration, these
children live in a stateless limbo and cannot access
education and other social benefits.
Famine conditions in the DPRK have worsened
since late 2009, and food shortages during the
Commission's 2010 reporting year have been compared to
the food crisis of the 1990s.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Establish a task force to examine and support the
efforts of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) to gain unfettered access to North Korean
refugees in China, beginning with North Korean minors,
and to recommend a strategy for creating incentives for
China to honor its obligations under the 1951
Convention and its Protocol to immediately cease
detaining and repatriating North Koreans in China.
Urge central and local Chinese government
officials to abide by their obligations under the UN
TIP Protocol (Article 9) to prosecute human traffickers
in northeastern China and along the border with the
DPRK.
Urge Chinese officials to grant residency status
and related social benefits to North Korean women
married to Chinese
citizens and their children. In particular, urge local
Chinese officials to allow these children to receive an
education in accordance with the PRC Nationality Law
(Article 4) and the PRC Compulsory Education Law
(Article 5).
Public Health
Findings
Authorities are beginning to implement goals
outlined in the January 2009 10-year medical reform
plan--such as initiating a pilot public hospital reform
project in 16 cities and establishing a basic medicine
system with an official list of approved
pharmaceuticals--however, challenges remain in
implementation.
Rural areas continue to lack adequate
healthcare resources with which to serve local
residents.
Residents of urban areas tend to have greater
access to healthcare benefits; however, the growing
population of migrant workers and their families who
live in these areas but do not possess an urban hukou
(household registration) still face difficulties in
accessing basic health services.
Some children may go without household
registration (hukou) in China because they are born
``out of plan,'' that is, not in compliance with birth
limits imposed by population planning policies, and
their parents do not pay the required fines. Lack of a
valid hukou raises barriers to access to social
benefits typically linked to the hukou, including
subsidized healthcare and public education.
Discrimination and social stigma against
people living with medical conditions such as
infectious disease, physical disability, and mental
illness remain commonplace.
Chinese non-governmental organizations and
individual advocates continue to play a significant
role in raising awareness about health concerns;
however, Chinese authorities continue to suppress some
forms of public health advocacy.
The Chinese government has committed to take
steps to prevent, treat, and control infectious
disease, but reports indicate that curtailing the
spread of infectious diseases, especially in rural
areas, has continued to present a significant
challenge.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Urge the Chinese central government to work with
local governments to ensure effective implementation of
the healthcare reform plan. Local government
cooperation is critical in achieving the projected goal
of healthcare access for the entire population by the
year 2020.
Urge the Chinese government to encourage local
governments to adopt and enforce measures and
regulations that prohibit discrimination against
migrant workers and provide equal access to social
services.
Call on the Chinese government to ease repression
of public health advocates and provide more support to
U.S. organizations that address public health issues in
China.
Urge Chinese officials to focus attention on
effective implementation of China's Employment
Promotion Law and related regulations that prohibit
discrimination against persons living with HIV/AIDS,
Hepatitis B virus, and other illnesses in hiring and in
the workplace.
Climate Change and the Environment
Findings
Chinese leaders signed the United Nations
Copenhagen
Accord, ``with provisions for international
consultations and analysis under clearly defined
guidelines that will ensure that national sovereignty
is respected,'' and then in a separate action, they
agreed to voluntarily ``endeavor to lower its carbon
dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent by
2020 compared to the 2005 level . . .'' among other
actions. China emphasized that its ``autonomous
domestic mitigation actions are voluntary in nature.''
However, top Chinese leaders explained that they would
include related binding targets in China's 12th Five-
Year Plan (2010-2015).
Chinese leaders continued to emphasize China's
reliance on domestic monitoring, reporting, and
verification of its greenhouse gas emissions and
reductions; nevertheless, Chinese leaders have signaled
a willingness to discuss greater transparency.
China has made domestic regulatory and
institutional efforts, as well as engaged in bilateral
and multilateral cooperative programs to improve the
measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of
energy and greenhouse gas data. However, the
reliability and transparency of China's energy and
greenhouse gas emission data are still in question.
Without adequate procedural protections,
implementation of climate change mitigation policy may
place the rights of vulnerable groups, including the
rural poor and ethnic minorities, especially resettled
citizens, at risk. Hydroelectric dam construction has
been accompanied by lack of attention to environmental
impact assessment processes mandated by law, and by
reports of the infringement upon the fundamental rights
of local populations. Planned rapid acceleration of the
pace of development of nuclear and hydroelectric
projects heightens these concerns going forward.
China incorporated language related to climate
change and the environment in its 2009-2010 National
Human Rights Action Plan (HRAP), including one
overarching principle touching upon the broad themes of
sustainable development and guaranteeing the ``public's
environmental rights.'' The HRAP does not detail the
nature of these rights. In addition, the HRAP contains
several specific pollution and climate change action
objectives that are similar to some of the goals
stipulated in China's previous national economic
development, renewable energy, and climate change
plans.
A report released by the Ministry of
Environmental Protection (MEP) in February 2010 on a
national pollution source census conducted in China,
which for the first time included data from
agricultural and other sources of pollution, revealed
some discrepancies with past official figures for
several pollutants. The census figure for Chemical
Oxygen Demand, for example, was nearly double the
amount that was previously reported.
Limitations on citizen access to information,
including pollution and related data, hinder efforts to
raise environmental awareness, promote public
participation, and develop incentives for compliance.
Limits on access to remedies for environmental harms
and selective or arbitrary enforcement weaken
environmental compliance efforts.
Limited public participation in decisionmaking
processes and selective suppression of citizen demands
for a cleaner environment also weaken compliance
efforts and contribute to citizen dissatisfaction. In
several incidents, authorities harassed, detained, or
sentenced citizens for their environmental activism,
for allegedly organizing antipollution demonstrations,
or for ``illegally'' gathering environmental
information. In one notable case, officials ordered
Jigme Namgyal, a citizen living in the Tibet Autonomous
Region, to serve one year and nine months' reeducation
through labor for ``harming national security'' by
illegally gathering information and video material on
the local environment, by collecting ``propaganda''
material ``from the Dalai Clique,'' and for allegedly
organizing local residents to conduct ``irregular
petitioning'' of authorities, among other charges.
Numerous other factors, including the priority
attached to economic development, have led to
compliance challenges that hinder the realization of
some of the government's environmental protection
goals. Lack of accountability, corruption, local
governmental protectionism, and malfeasance impede
implementation and enforcement.
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, a
quasi-non-governmental organization overseen by the MEP
brought the first environmental administrative public
interest lawsuit by such a group to a special
environmental court, opening the door to the
possibility that other non-governmental groups could
bring such lawsuits in an effort to improve compliance
with environmental laws.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Support U.S. Government cooperation with the
Chinese
government and other educational programs geared toward
raising awareness among Chinese officials of how to
implement climate change mitigation and adaptation
strategies and environmental protection policies
effectively without transgressing on fundamental
rights.
Support U.S. Government engagement with relevant
ministries in developing China's capacity to reliably
measure, report, publicize, and verify emission
reduction strategies and techniques. Encourage Chinese
officials to make government and expert research
reports regarding climate change and its impacts in
China public and easily accessible.
Call upon the Chinese government to cease
punishing citizens, such as Jigme Namgyal, Wu Lihong,
and Sun Xiaodi, for their grassroots environmental
activism, or for utilizing official and
institutionalized channels to voice their environmental
grievances or to protect their rights.
Support efforts in China by those working to
strengthen environmental complaint and dispute
resolution mechanisms and support bilateral cooperation
in this area. Strengthen cooperation regarding
environmental health. Include environmental issues in
the Bilateral Human Rights Dialogue and expand
cooperation on rule of law education with specific
focus on issues pertaining to the environment.
Invite U.S. domestic environmental civil society
organizations and urge the Chinese government to invite
Chinese environmental civil society organizations as
participants or observers in bilateral climate change
and environmental protection projects and dialogues.
Invite Chinese local-level leaders, including those
from counties, townships, and villages, to the United
States to observe U.S. public policy practices and
approaches to problem solving.
Engage local leaders in their efforts to
reconcile development and environmental protection
goals. Call upon U.S. cities with sister-city
relationships in China to incorporate environmental
awareness and advocacy, environmental protection, and
climate change components into their programs. When
making arrangements for travel to China, request
meetings with officials from central and local levels
of the Chinese government to discuss environmental
governance and best practices.
Support multilateral exchanges regarding
environmental
enforcement and compliance tools including
environmental insurance, market mechanisms, criminal
prosecution of serious environmental infringements, and
public interest litigation mechanisms. Encourage
Chinese leaders to strengthen environmental impact
assessment processes and citizen participation in those
processes. Engage Chinese officials in devising a
realistic and fair compensation system for people
harmed by pollution.
Establish a Working Group on Climate Change
Policy, the Rule of Law and Human Rights in accordance
with Section II(B) of the Memorandum of Understanding
to Enhance Cooperation on Climate Change, Energy and
Environment between the Government of the United States
of America and the Government of the People's Republic
of China (the MOU) signed during the U.S.-China
Strategic and Economic Dialogue held in July 2009.
(Section II(B) of the MOU states that, ``[t]he
Participants may establish working groups or task
forces involving relevant ministries as necessary to
support the objectives of the Climate Change Policy
Dialogue and Cooperation.'')
Civil Society
Findings
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year,
the number of civil society organizations (CSOs)--
including organizational forms that most nearly
correspond to the Western concept of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs)--participating in legal and
policymaking activities in areas that are not
politically sensitive continued to increase gradually.
At the same time, organizations and individuals who
worked on politically sensitive issues continued to
face challenges.
NGOs continued to face challenges fulfilling
complicated and cumbersome registration requirements.
In order to operate legally, an organization is
required to obtain sponsorship agreement from a public
administration department in a relevant ``trade,
scientific or other professional area'' at the
appropriate level of government before registering with
the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA). Sponsorship
agreements are sometimes difficult to obtain because
local sponsors are sometimes reluctant to take on the
burdens of supervisory responsibilities. NGOs that do
not fulfill these ``dual management'' requirements are
not protected under the law and are prohibited from
receiving outside donations. In part to circumvent the
burdens of fulfilling dual management requirements,
some NGOs opt to register as commercial entities,
though such actions could also subject them to targeted
or selective oversight from the government as well as
higher tax rates.
Some Chinese citizens who sought to establish
and operate NGOs that focus on issues deemed by
officials to be sensitive faced intimidation,
harassment, and punishment from government authorities.
During this reporting year, for example, Chinese
officials repeatedly harassed and interfered with the
operations of Aizhixing Institute of Health Education,
a Beijing-based public health advocacy organization
that Wan Yanhai--a public health researcher and
advocate--founded in 1994. Authorities reportedly
canceled the group's seminar marking the International
Sex Worker Rights Day, conducted an unannounced
investigation into the group's tax records, and sent
fire department officials to carry out random and
unannounced safety inspections. Wan ultimately left
China for the United States in May 2010, saying that he
had concerns for his personal safety.
During this reporting year, the Chinese
government continued to tighten its control over
``sensitive'' civil society groups through selective
enforcement of regulations. In March 2010, China's
State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) put
into effect a circular concerning ``foreign exchange
donated to or by domestic institutions,'' which made it
difficult for some Chinese organizations, including
NGOs, to accept overseas donations. The circular
required organizations, when applying to receive
foreign donations through SAFE, to also submit their
business licenses, notarized donation agreements, and
certificates of registration of the overseas donating
organizations. One member of the Chinese NGO community
explained that the problem is not primarily a matter of
how social groups actually collect their funding, but
rather the authorities' selective enforcement of the
rules, depending on what the group does.
Despite an overall trend of tighter control,
at least one case of limited localized reform took
place: In Shenzhen, the MCA signed an agreement with
the local government to explore the establishment of a
system allowing CSOs to apply and register directly
with the MCA. The reforms could potentially lead to a
system where the MCA will supervise and regulate
organizations alone, without sponsoring organizations,
making it possible for future individuals wishing to
form organizations, including NGOs, to have a
relatively less complicated one-stop shop process
rather than the existing ``dual management'' setup.
The Chinese government in July 2009 issued
``working guidelines'' for social organizations (shehui
tuanti) seeking eligibility to receive tax-deductible
donations. Social organizations are one of the three
main types of CSOs in China. The other two primary
types of CSOs in China are foundations (jijinhui) and
private nonenterprise organizations (minban fei qiye
danwei). The working guidelines issued last July
further clarified the standards for determining the
eligibility of social organizations for tax-deductible
donations. At the same time, they continued to limit
the number of eligible social organizations. The
working guidelines also did not alter existing
regulations requiring all CSOs to register with the
government.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Encourage the Chinese government to broaden the
recent
reforms relating to registration of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and other aspects of civil affairs
in Guangdong province and to make them applicable to
other parts of the country through national legislation
and regulatory development.
Ask the Chinese government to refrain from
applying uneven or selective enforcement of regulations
to intimidate groups that they consider to be handling
sensitive work. Request the Chinese government revisit
the recently issued State Administration of Foreign
Exchange circular concerning overseas donations to
Chinese organizations. Emphasize that NGOs are actually
a way for citizens to channel their grievances and find
redress, and in turn contribute to the maintenance of a
stable society. Conversely, stricter controls over
civil society organizations could remove a potentially
useful social ``safety valve,'' thereby increasing the
sources of instability. During discussions with Chinese
officials, mention the Tsinghua University report that
made the same findings: that even as the government
increased spending on public security and tightened its
control over civil society, social conflicts are
happening with greater regularity.
Take measures to facilitate the participation of
Chinese citizens who work in the NGO sector in relevant
international conferences and forums, and support
training opportunities in the United States to build
their leadership capacity in nonprofit management,
public policy advocacy, strategic planning, and media
relations.
Institutions of Democratic Governance
Findings
The Communist Party exercises control over
political affairs, government, and society through
networks of Party committees or branches that exist at
all administrative levels within governmental,
legislative, judicial, and security organizations;
major social groups (including unions); enterprises
(both domestic and foreign-invested); most residential
communities; and the People's Liberation Army. During
the Commission's 2010 reporting year, Chinese leaders
emphasized expanding and strengthening the Party,
focusing in part on establishing or strengthening Party
branches at the local level and in non-government
organizations, the military, and academic institutions.
During the 2010 reporting year, isolated
experiments with intraparty democracy took place around
the country. In some of these experiments, Party
officials used the ``open recommendation, direct
election'' method, whereby Party officials elicit
comments from the public on specific candidates, but
only Party members, not the general public, cast
ballots for the Party committee, Party branch, and
residents' committee members and leaders already
approved by Party officials at the next highest
administrative level. Party authorities in various
locations experimented with election monitoring systems
during intraparty elections for residents' committee
members and leaders.
During this reporting year, Party and central
government leaders continued activities to strengthen
some controls over society and to ``safeguard
stability.'' Local governments charged with the work of
``maintaining social stability'' continued to establish
specialized institutions including ``stability
preservation offices'' and ``comprehensive governance
offices.'' Officials reportedly continued to expand
networks of informants to pinpoint potential ``social
instability'' and to establish ``stability preservation
funds'' (weiwen jijin) from which they make payments to
people with grievances ostensibly in order to preempt
their escalating disputes.
Chinese leaders made public statements
emphasizing the leading role of the Party, the need to
adhere to China's unique style of ``socialist
democracy,'' and the impossibility of implementing
``Western-style'' democracy with a separation of powers
and competing political parties. Direct elections for
local people's congress representatives are held only
at the county level and direct elections for ``village
committees'' are held only at the village level, and
leaders emphasized that direct elections would not be
held at higher administrative levels.
Some citizens and social groups demanded that
the Party and government undertake democratic reforms
and human rights protections. Some of these requests
were met with official reprisal, including harassment,
detention, and, in some cases, harsh prison sentences.
Chinese authorities continued to have no tolerance for,
arrested, and imposed sentences on individuals involved
in political parties not sanctioned by the Communist
Party. For example, a court in Jiangsu province
sentenced Guo Quan, formerly a university professor, to
10 years in prison for ``subversion of state power.''
The court found that Guo used the Internet to organize
an ``illegal'' political party called the ``China New
Democracy Party,'' among other charges.
The National People's Congress (NPC) Standing
Committee conducted two reviews of proposed draft
revisions to China's Organic Law on Villagers'
Committees. Proposed amendments could potentially
resolve the difficulties villagers have in removing
village committee members, make it easier to convene
villager meetings, and strengthen villager oversight of
village affairs. In addition, they could also
strengthen Party control at the village level.
Local areas continued to experiment with
village committee election procedures, although
implementation problems with village elections
persisted. During this reporting year, Chinese
authorities developed plans to improve governance in
``difficult villages,'' which are villages where, among
other problems, leaders do not support or have delayed
holding village committee elections for a long time,
where there have been long-standing tensions between
leaders and villagers, or where
citizens have taken their grievances to higher level
officials.
The Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, Wu
Bangguo, mentioned that the NPC and NPC Standing
Committee would increase supervision over governmental
affairs through ``inquiry and question'' procedures,
which, though in the past have been used rarely,
focused this year on ``issues of broad concern to NPC
delegates'' and the oversight of economic policy. The
NPC and NPC Standing Committee ``will invite
responsible cadres from the State Council and related
departments to attend meetings and listen to
suggestions, respond to inquiries, and answer
questions.'' The NPC Standing Committee passed the
revised Electoral Law in March 2010, which now awards
the same proportion of NPC deputies per population to
both rural and urban areas. In the past, urban
residents enjoyed greater representation. One county in
Sichuan province piloted experiments with full-time
professional local people's congress deputies.
Chinese officials describe China's political
system as a ``socialist democracy'' with ``multi-party
cooperation'' and ``political consultation'' under the
leadership of the Communist Party. Consultation
reportedly takes place at both the national and the
local levels. During this reporting year, authorities
in Guangzhou municipality issued new rules that provide
for political consultation between the municipal Party
committee and members of the local people's political
consultative conference and local branches of the eight
``approved'' political parties regarding laws,
regulations, and some policies of broad public
interest.
During this reporting year, authorities
pledged in the 2009-2010 National Human Rights Action
Plan (HRAP) to more stringently implement
anticorruption measures. Central and local Party and
government entities also issued new or revised
corruption prevention measures, some focusing on
strengthening and expanding the system of reporting
officials' personal finances. Chinese authorities have
taken additional steps to encourage reporting of
corruption. Whistleblower protections, however, remain
inadequate.
Citizens and groups are increasingly able to
access various channels such as public hearings, expert
meetings, roundtables, and the Internet to express
opinions regarding proposed policies and regulatory
instruments. Authorities reportedly have made 67
administrative legal measures available for public
comment since 2004. However, citizens still have little
direct access to political decisionmaking processes
above the village level (village elections) and the
county level (people's congress representative
elections).
During this reporting year, at least some
cities implemented a national directive issued in 2008
stipulating that cities and counties expand the scope
of public hearings to solicit citizen opinions
regarding laws, regulations, provisions, and major
government administrative policies that are relevant to
the interests of citizens. Citizens and the media
continue to express concerns regarding the
implementation and impact of public hearings. Questions
remain regarding the depth and breadth of
participation, and the processes for compiling,
assessing, and incorporating public suggestions are
still not transparent.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Support programs that aim to reduce corruption in
people's congress and village committee elections,
including expansion of domestic election monitoring
systems and training of domestic election monitors.
Support exchanges between Members of the U.S.
Congress and members of the National People's Congress
and the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference, especially in relation to Congressional
oversight processes.
Support projects that seek to work with local
governments in their efforts to improve transparency
and accountability, especially efforts to expand and
improve China's open government information
initiatives. Such projects might include joint efforts
to better publicize the Open Government Information
(OGI) Regulations at local levels and train citizens
and groups in how to submit OGI requests.
Support projects that assist local governments,
academics, and the nonprofit sector in expanding and
making more transparent the use of public hearings and
other channels for citizens to incorporate their input
in the policymaking process. Such projects might
include an exchange program component, whereby Chinese
local government officials and non-governmental
organization representatives would travel together to
the United States to attend town hall or public
meetings that address significant issues. Such projects
might also include pilot projects in China that make
the processes through which citizens submit suggestions
to authorities about draft laws, regulations, or
policies more transparent, by making the suggestions
submitted to authorities available to the public.
Call on the Chinese government to release people
detained or imprisoned for exercising their right to
call for political reform within China, including Liu
Xiaobo (signer of Charter 08 who was sentenced to 11
years in prison in December 2009 for ``inciting
subversion of state power''), Guo Quan, and other
people mentioned in this report and in the Commission's
Political Prisoner Database.
Commercial Rule of Law
Findings
The Chinese government has increasingly relied
on industrial policies rather than the market to direct
economic growth. These industrial policies are
comprehensive frameworks for development in key sectors
of the Chinese economy, providing for subsidies and
other benefits, plans for restructuring the state-owned
companies in the relevant sector, and export goals.
Benefits outlined under the policies may discriminate
against
foreign-invested companies to the benefit of China's
state-owned enterprises. In some cases, provisions of
the policies have been found not to comply with World
Trade Organization (WTO) requirements, such as
provisions in the auto industrial plan concerning
import of auto parts, which a WTO dispute panel found
to violate the WTO rules in a case decided in 2008. The
Chinese government revised the policy, effective
September 2009. China's use of industrial policies has
been coupled with increasing protectionism by the
Chinese government.
The Chinese government has promoted
``indigenous innovation'' as a massive government
campaign utilizing industrial policies and government
procurement to decrease reliance on foreign technology,
and to enhance China's economy and national security,
with the stated purpose of enabling China to become a
global leader in technology by mid-century. In November
2009, three government departments issued the Circular
on Launching 2009 National Indigenous Innovation
Accreditation Work. Products that satisfy the standards
set forth in the circular may be entitled to certain
preferences in government procurement. The initial
draft of the circular provided that, in order to
qualify for these preferences, products (1) must be
produced by an enterprise in China that owns the
intellectual property; (2) must be covered by a
trademark that was first registered in China by a
Chinese company; (3) must be innovative and
internationally competitive; and (4) must meet Chinese
technical standards. In April 2010, the Ministry of
Science and Technology issued a revised version of the
circular relaxing the requirements for Chinese
ownership of
intellectual property rights, and allowing products
based on technology and trademarks licensed to a
licensee in China to qualify. Questions remain
concerning the implementation of the revised circular,
however, including the resolution of conflicts between
national- and local-level decisions on indigenous
innovation.
The Chinese government has encouraged
indigenous innovation for several years. Indigenous
innovation is one of the ``guiding principles'' of
China's National Medium- and Long-Term Program for
Science and Technology Development (2006-2020), and
China explicitly called for indigenous innovation in
government procurement in the 2007 Administrative
Measures for Government Procurement of Imported Parts,
which provide that procurement of imported parts should
facilitate indigenous innovation by bringing into China
technologies that China then can assimilate. In some
cases, industrial policies call for indigenous
innovation, such as the 2004 Auto Industrial Policy,
which calls for indigenous innovation in the auto
sector.
Chinese government departments in charge of
implementing China's Antimonopoly Law (AML), which took
effect in August 2008, have continued to flesh out the
regulatory regime. The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM)
passed two sets of measures on mergers, which came into
effect in January 2010. In May 2010, the State
Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) issued
for comment three drafts concerning (1) monopoly
agreements, or uncompetitive agreements, (2) abuse of
dominance, and (3) administrative monopoly, or
anticompetitive behavior by government authorities. The
MOFCOM measures cover reporting of proposed
concentrations, and investigations. The drafts issued
by the SAIC expand on provisions of the AML and provide
guidance on the regulators' methodology.
Although one of the purposes of the AML is to
protect fair competition in the Chinese market, this
may conflict with
China's industrial policies encouraging the mergers of
large state-owned enterprises into larger enterprise
groups and the protection of state-owned enterprises in
general. For example, the Auto Industrial Policy calls
for the development of large auto enterprise groups,
and the 2009 Program for the Adjustment and
Rejuvenation of the Auto Industry calls for the
formation of two to three large auto groups and four to
five smaller ones, through a process of takeovers and
reorganization. In the period since the AML came into
effect in August 2008 to the end of 2009, MOFCOM has
completed 60 merger reviews, 6 of which MOFCOM approved
with conditions, and 1 of which MOFCOM blocked. MOFCOM
only publishes rulings on mergers that it rejects or
approves with conditions, so it is difficult to tell
whether the parties to unconditionally approved mergers
are state-owned enterprises or non-Chinese companies.
Of the published cases, however, six involved mergers
between non-Chinese parties.
During the Commission's last (2009) reporting
year, China passed the Food Safety Law and implementing
legislation. The law called for the creation of a
National Food Safety Commission to coordinate the work
of government departments with responsibility for food
safety. During this reporting year, in February 2010,
the State Council established this commission, with
Vice Premier Li Keqiang as chairman and high-level
members of relevant departments as commission members.
The government also continued to issue regulations on
food safety, including regulations on food additives
and catering. China passed a Tort Liability Law in
December 2009, which came into effect in July 2010. The
Tort Liability Law covers product liability and product
recalls, and, if implemented faithfully and
effectively, may provide tools for victims of food
safety violations to seek redress.
China's economic development has led to
increased need for land, and income from land sales has
been an important source of revenue for local
governments. In some cases, these factors have been
associated with abuse by local governments and property
developers, including widespread demolitions and forced
evictions. Forced evictions are contrary to Article
11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights, which covenant China has ratified.
Some property owners who refuse to leave their homes
have been beaten, harassed, or illegally detained.
In some cases, property rights owners receive
poor procedural protection and inadequate compensation
when their land is expropriated. There is evidence of
collusion in some cases between property developers and
local governments, which may receive as much as 60
percent of their revenue from land sales, to seize land
from its occupants for sale to the developers.
Furthermore, though China's 2007 Property Law and
China's 2004 Law on Administration of Urban Real
Property both provide that local governments should
only expropriate land in the ``public interest,'' this
term is not defined in law. Currently, the 2001
Regulations on Government Housing Demolition in Urban
Areas, which govern land requisitions, do not include
any requirement that expropriations of land be in the
public interest, and lack sufficient procedural
protections for property rights owners. In December
2009, five Peking University law professors sent an
open letter to the National People's Congress calling
for the repeal or amendment of the 2001 regulations,
which the professors said violated China's Constitution
and Property Law. In January 2010, the State Council
Legal Affairs Office published for public comment draft
Regulations for Expropriation and Compensation of
Residential Buildings on State-Owned Land, which
require that, in most cases,
expropriation must be in the public interest, and offer
some guidance as to what constitutes ``public
interest.'' The draft regulations, which have not yet
been finalized, fall short in that they allow some
expropriations that are not in the public interest, and
do not offer any protection to rural land dwellers.
Rural land is owned by collectives, and
farmers legally can enter into 30-year contracts with
their collectives for use of collectively owned land.
However, there is little protection for farmers. In
some cases, the collectives take back land and ``re-
allocate'' it to others. In other cases, village
leaders, developers, and local governments conspire to
take the land and change it into what is characterized
as ``urban land,'' which the local government can then
sell. Although the farmers are legally entitled to
compensation, procedures are not clearly spelled out;
in some cases, very little of the compensation may
reach them and they are left destitute. The draft
Regulations for Expropriation and Compensation of
Residential Buildings on State-Owned Land do not cover
collectively owned land, and at least one of the Peking
University professors who called for repeal or
amendment of the 2001 regulations has warned that this
is a problem. Nonetheless, Chinese authorities have not
proposed similar legislation to protect rural land
dwellers.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Develop and support a project surveying the role
of China's industrial policies in the Chinese economy
from the perspective of WTO requirements, including how
the development of these policies and the role they
play in directing China's economy, impact the
development of transparency and rule of law and China's
compliance with its international legal commitments.
Make a formal request to the Chinese government
through bilateral meetings such as the Joint Commission
on Commerce and Trade or the Strategic and Economic
Dialogue, or through the inquiry points of the Chinese
government departments responsible for indigenous
innovation policy, for details of plans, policies,
regulations, measures, and other legislation relating
to indigenous innovation, and explanations as to how
these have been or will be implemented. This
information will facilitate understanding of the full
impact of China's indigenous innovation policy on
China's legal system and government procurement
practices.
Request through the Open Government Information
office at the Ministry of Commerce, or through
bilateral dialogues
between the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal
Trade Commission and their Chinese counterparts,
details on merger applications reviewed since the
Antimonopoly Law came into effect, including the number
of applications involving non-Chinese companies, the
number involving state-owned enterprises, and the
results of each of the merger reviews.
Arrange meetings under the auspices of legal
exchanges such as the U.S. Legal Exchange under the
Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, or through the
American Bar Association, between U.S. tort lawyers and
Chinese lawyers on consumer rights and compensation for
victims of substandard food products, and the U.S.
system of redress through the courts and government
departments in cases of food quality problems.
Urge the Chinese government in meetings and
correspondence to (1) revise the draft Regulations for
Expropriation and Compensation of Residential Buildings
on State-Owned Land to clarify that expropriation is
allowed only in the public interest, (2) issue the
final version and put it into effect immediately, and
(3) ensure that the draft regulations are amended to
provide comparable protection for rural land dwellers,
or draft equivalent legislation to protect the rights
of rural land dwellers. Property owners whose land was
expropriated in the period between the date the draft
was published and the effective date of the regulations
and any comparable legislation for rural land should be
given an opportunity to challenge the expropriation.
Arrange and support a program of technical
assistance for Chinese government departments
responsible for land management, concerning U.S.
procedures and standards for taking property by eminent
domain. Such assistance would highlight the meaning
under U.S. law of takings in the ``public interest,''
and could be organized by U.S. municipal governments
working with their sister cities in China.
Urge the Chinese government to put in place
comprehensive legislation to clarify rural land titles
and to provide legal assistance at the grassroots or
through pro bono programs at law firms, to rural land
dwellers to help them protect their rights to
collectively owned land. Working through organizations
such as the American Bar Association, encourage the All
China Lawyers Association to develop a comprehensive
and independent legal aid program to address rural land
issues.
Help the Chinese government address issues with
rural land rights and land transfer by developing and
supporting a program under which U.S. local or state
governments responsible for land titles participate in
face-to-face meetings and exchanges with local
authorities in China. This training would cover title
registration, transfer, and dispute settlement.
Access to Justice
Findings
Public security officials and those working
under their direction used abductions, physical
violence, or threats of physical violence to harass and
intimidate human rights lawyers during the Commission's
2010 reporting year. Chinese government officials
continued to use license suspension and disbarment as a
means to control and repress human rights lawyers who
work on politically sensitive issues.
Amendments to the State Compensation Law, if
implemented faithfully, may expand channels whereby
individuals who have been subjected to the abuse of
administrative authority may obtain compensation.
Amendments to the Administrative Supervision Law, if
implemented faithfully, may improve protections for
whistleblowers. Other proposed administrative law
reforms may, if passed and implemented faithfully,
provide greater oversight of state agencies, improved
protection of citizen interests, and enhanced
supervision of government employees.
During the 2010 reporting year, large numbers
of petitioners, i.e., individuals availing themselves
of China's xinfang (``letters and visits'') system--an
alternative to courts whereby citizens may seek redress
for grievances by submitting petitions to government
authorities were harassed, abused, put in illegal
``black jails,'' locked up in psychiatric hospitals, or
sent to reeducation through labor centers.
Chinese officials limited Chinese citizens'
and foreign visitors' lawful access to justice in
sensitive cases. In July 2010, a Beijing court
sentenced American geologist Xue Feng to eight years in
prison for helping the American company he worked for
purchase commercial information on oil wells in China.
Although the court claimed the information constituted
a state secret and endangered national security,
officials reportedly did not declare the information a
state secret until after the transaction had occurred.
During the more than two-year period of Xue's
detention, Chinese officials attempted to coerce him
into confessing to the crime by allegedly torturing him
and committed several violations of China's Criminal
Procedure Law.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Object to the continued harassment of human
rights lawyers and defenders. Call for the release of
lawyers, activists, and others who are incarcerated,
subject to unlawful home confinement, or who have
disappeared for their activities to defend and promote
the rights of Chinese citizens, including Gao Zhisheng,
Hu Jia, and Zheng Enchong, as well as other prisoners
mentioned in this report and in the Commission's
Political Prisoner Database.
Support the U.S. State Department's International
Visitors Leadership Program and other similar bilateral
exchange programs that bring Chinese human rights
lawyers, advocates, and scholars to the United States
for study and dialogue. Support similar programs in the
non-governmental organization (NGO) and academic
sectors that partner with China's human rights lawyers
and nonprofit legal organizations.
Support research and technical exchange programs
designed to improve implementation of administrative
law reforms, prioritizing those that will provide
greater oversight of government agencies and grant more
protections to Chinese citizens. Support NGOs with
programming to build capacity among
petitioners. Support research and exchanges that
examine incentive structures that can lead to the
punishment of whistleblowers and the stifling of
citizen expressions of legitimate grievances.
Communicate concerns about possible official
political abuse of psychiatric treatment and
politically motivated commitment of petitioners to
psychiatric hospitals in China to the American
Psychiatric Association, the Geneva Initiative on
Psychiatry, and the World Medical Association. Urge
Chinese officials to adopt a national mental health law
that will specifically clarify the process of
involuntary commitment and protect individuals from
being hospitalized by public security officials.
Call on the Chinese government to release Xue
Feng and permit him to return to the United States.
Call on the Chinese government, in the interim, to
ensure that U.S. officials are permitted to meet with
him on a regular basis.
Xinjiang
Findings
Human rights conditions in the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region (XUAR) worsened during the
Commission's 2010 reporting year. Following government
suppression of a demonstration by Uyghurs and riots in
the XUAR in July 2009, authorities instituted
unprecedented levels of control over the free flow of
information, denying XUAR residents and the outside
world news about conditions in the region and
increasing the government's capacity to manipulate
information. Amid this information blackout,
authorities strengthened security measures and
campaigns to promote ``ethnic unity,'' using them to
quell free speech, curb independent religious activity,
and impose intrusive controls over the lives of XUAR
residents.
Authorities singled out Uyghurs in particular
in security campaigns, and the whereabouts of some
Uyghurs detained in the aftermath of the July 2009
demonstrations and riots remain unknown. Trials
connected to events in July have been marked by a lack
of transparency and violations of due process.
Authorities detained, and in some cases, imprisoned,
Uyghur Web site workers and a journalist in connection
to free speech about the events and about broader
conditions in the XUAR.
Central government and Communist Party
authorities inaugurated a ``central work forum'' on the
XUAR in May 2010 that sets central government and Party
objectives for the region's economic and political
development, intensifying a trend of top-down
initiatives that prioritize state economic and
political goals over the promotion of regional autonomy
and broader protections of XUAR residents' rights.
The government enforced other policies and
measures that also fueled worsening human rights
conditions in the region, including measures aimed at
quelling dissent, promoting assimilation, and
repressing independent expressions of ethnic and
religious identity, especially among the Uyghurs. The
XUAR government intensified steps to promote Mandarin
Chinese and marginalize the use of the Uyghur language
in XUAR schools, in violation of Chinese law. As in
past years, some population planning policies in the
region singled out non-Han ethnic groups. The
government continued work to transfer Uyghur and other
non-Han workers to jobs in the interior of China,
through programs reportedly marked, in some cases, by
coercion and abusive practices. Uyghurs and other
groups within the XUAR remained subject to hiring
practices that have allowed widespread discrimination
against non-Han groups. Ongoing work to ``reconstruct''
the historic Old City section of Kashgar continued to
undermine Uyghurs' right to preserve their cultural
heritage. Repression of Islam in the XUAR worsened.
[For more information on conditions for religious
freedom in the XUAR, see Findings and Recommendations
on Freedom of Religion in this section.]
Uyghurs seeking asylum outside China continued
to face barriers to accessing asylum proceedings and
risk of refoulement under the sway of China's influence
in neighboring countries and its disregard for
international law, as illustrated by the Cambodian
government's deportation of 20 Uyghur asylum seekers to
China in December 2009, following Chinese government
intervention.
Repressive government controls throughout the
region, especially those targeting Uyghurs, illustrated
the status of the XUAR as a government-designated
ethnic autonomous region that lacks true autonomy,
particularly for the group in whose name it was
established. Despite guarantees in Chinese law for
measures of autonomy in governance and protections for
ethnic minority rights, central and local government
authorities exert control at a level antithetical to
local residents' meaningful control over their own
affairs and to the protection of their rights. Chinese
government actions violate not only Chinese law but
also international human rights law that the Chinese
government is bound to uphold.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Support legislation that expands U.S. Government
resources for raising awareness of human rights
conditions in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
(XUAR), for protecting Uyghur culture, and for
increasing avenues for Uyghurs to protect their human
rights.
Raise concern about human rights conditions in
the XUAR to Chinese officials and condemn the use of
information blackouts and security campaigns to
suppress human rights. Call on the Chinese government
to release people imprisoned for advocating for their
rights or for their personal connection to rights
advocates, including Nurmemet Yasin (sentenced in 2005
to 10 years in prison for allegedly ``inciting racial
hatred or discrimination'' or ``inciting splittism''
after writing a short story); Alim and Ablikim
Abdureyim (adult children of activist Rebiya Kadeer,
sentenced in 2006 and 2007 to 7 and 9 years in prison,
respectively, for alleged economic and ``splittist''
crimes); and other prisoners mentioned in this report
and in the Commission's Political Prisoner Database.
Call on the Chinese government to provide details
about each person detained, charged, tried, or
sentenced in connection with demonstrations and riots
in the XUAR in July 2009, including each person's name,
the charges (if any) against each person, the name and
location of the prosecuting office (i.e.,
procuratorate), the court handling each case, and the
name of each facility where a person is detained or
imprisoned. Encourage people who have been wrongfully
detained to file for compensation. Call on the Chinese
government to ensure people suspected of crimes in
connection to events in July 2009 are able to hire a
lawyer and exercise their right to employ legal defense
in accordance with Articles 33 and 96 of China's
Criminal Procedure Law, and to ensure suspects can
employ legal defense of their own choosing. Call on the
Chinese government to announce the judgments in all
trials connected to events in July 2009, as required
under Article 163 of China's Criminal Procedure Law.
Call on the government to allow independent experts to
conduct independent examinations into the
demonstrations and riots and to allow them access to
the trials connected to these events.
Support U.S. government funding for non-
governmental organizations that address human rights
issues in the XUAR to enable them to continue to gather
information on conditions in the region and develop
programs to help Uyghurs increase their capacity to
preserve their rights and protect their culture,
language, and heritage. Support funding for media
outlets devoted to broadcasting news to the XUAR and
gathering news from the region to expand their capacity
to report on the region and provide uncensored
information to XUAR residents.
Call on the Chinese government to support
development policies in the XUAR that promote the broad
protection of XUAR residents' rights and allow the XUAR
government to exercise its powers of regional autonomy
in making development decisions. Call on central and
XUAR authorities to ensure equitable development that
not only promotes economic growth but also respects the
broad civil and political rights of XUAR residents and
engages these communities in participatory
decisionmaking. Ensure development projects take into
account the particular needs and input of non-Han
ethnic groups, who have faced unique challenges
protecting their rights in the face of top-down
development policies and who have not been full
beneficiaries of economic growth in the region.
Raise the issue of Uyghur refugees with Chinese
officials and with officials from international refugee
agencies and from transit or destination countries for
Uyghur refugees. Call on Chinese officials and
officials from transit or destination countries to
respect the asylum seeker and refugee designations of
the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the refugee
and citizenship designations of other countries. Call
on transit and destination countries to abide by
requirements in the 1951 Convention on the Status of
Refugees and the Convention against Torture on
refoulement.
Tibet
Findings
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year,
the Chinese government and Communist Party pressed the
``core interest'' policy that seeks to isolate the
Dalai Lama internationally and diminish or end his
international influence. The policy is based on Chinese
assertions that ``Tibet'' is one of China's two ``core
interests'' (``Taiwan'' is the other); the Dalai Lama
is a separatist; and other governments therefore should
not permit the Dalai Lama to enter their countries and
thereby threaten China's ``territorial integrity.'' The
policy operates in tandem with the Party's domestic
campaign to isolate Tibetans in China from the Dalai
Lama. The results of such government policies could
include further increases of human rights abuses of
Tibetans concurrent with a decrease in the ability of
the international community to detect, document, and
respond to such abuses.
The 25-member Party Political Bureau
(Politburo) met in January to formulate a ``new general
strategy for governing Tibet'' based on the notion of
``four adherences'' that emphasizes the high degree of
subordination imposed on local ethnic autonomous
governments established under China's Constitution and
Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law. One ``adherence''
reaffirms the Party's intention to continue the policy
of creating a Tibet where the fundamental objectives
are Chinese but where some ``Tibetan traits'' will
remain. Formulation of a ``new'' Tibetan governance
strategy by a body made up of the highest ranking
representatives of central Party and government power,
and lacking Tibetan representation, demonstrates the
poor implementation of ``ethnic autonomy'' in the
Tibetan autonomous areas of China.
The Politburo Standing Committee presided in
January over the Fifth Tibet Work Forum (Fifth Forum),
applying the highest imprimatur of political power to
achieving sweeping economic, social, and cultural
policy objectives for the Tibetan areas of China by
2020. The Fifth Forum expanded the Party's Tibet policy
purview beyond the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to
include the Tibetan autonomous areas in Qinghai, Gansu,
Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces. The policy change more
than doubles the number of Tibetans who live within the
forum's contiguous target area, and nearly doubles the
area subject to central-level policy coordination.
Party General Secretary and President of China Hu
Jintao outlined goals that prioritize changes to rural
Tibetan areas, where most Tibetans live. Heightened
emphasis on the link between rural development and
regional stability follows Tibetan farmers' and
herders' participation in the wave of protests (and
some rioting) that began in March 2008.
The Dalai Lama's envoys arrived in China for
the ninth round of formal dialogue with Party officials
in January 2010, less than one week after the Fifth
Forum concluded. The 15-month interval between the
eighth and ninth rounds of dialogue was the longest
since such contacts resumed in 2002. Neither side
reported substantive progress, both sides reiterated
key positions, and the Party added more preconditions
on the Dalai Lama, but dialogue participants referred
to certain developments in a positive manner. A senior
Party official praised the ``better attitude'' of the
Dalai Lama's Special Envoy, and the Special Envoy
referred favorably to the Fifth Forum decision to
consider development issues throughout all Tibetan
autonomous areas.
The Dalai Lama expressed deepening alarm about
the outlook for Tibetan Buddhism in China, saying in
March that ``monasteries function more like museums and
are intended to deliberately annihilate [Tibetan]
Buddhism.'' A senior TAR official said in March that
Gedun Choekyi Nyima, the then-five-year-old boy who
disappeared after the Dalai Lama recognized him as the
Panchen Lama in 1995, is in the TAR living a ``very
good life'' as ``an ordinary citizen'' with his family,
and that he and his family are ``reluctant to be
disturbed.'' The Karmapa, the spiritual head of the
Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, stated publicly in
January that he fled his religious seat in the TAR at
the end of 1999 and escaped to India because he feared
the government would have assigned him ``political
duties'' when he was older.
The government and Party created increasing
restraints on the exercise of freedom of religion for
Tibetan Buddhists by strengthening the push to use
policy and legal measures to shape and control what
officials refer to as the ``normal order'' for Tibetan
Buddhism. At the Fifth Forum, Party General Secretary
and President Hu Jintao used the Marxist premise of
``special contradiction'' to reinforce the Party
campaign against the Dalai Lama and seek to end his
influence among Tibetans in China. Legal measures
requiring nationwide re-registration of ``professional
religious personnel,'' underway during 2010, could
result in substantial losses to the Tibetan monastic
community if authorities apply re-registration in a
manner intended to weed out monks and nuns whom
authorities suspect of holding religious views that the
government does not deem to be ``legal.'' Such views
include religious devotion toward the Dalai Lama and
support of the Dalai Lama's recognition in 1995 of
Gedun Choekyi Nyima as the Panchen Lama.
Government and Party economic development
objectives for 2010 to 2020 principally focus on
accelerating and strengthening a development model that
subordinates respecting and protecting Tibetan culture
to Party and government priorities. Party General
Secretary and President Hu Jintao outlined Fifth Forum
objectives that included building major infrastructure
projects, increasing natural resource exploitation, and
continuing to push forward the construction of a
``socialist new countryside'' (compulsory settlement of
nomadic herders and resettlement of farmers). China's
state-run media provided information showing that, by
the end of 2009, more than 1.33 million TAR nomadic
herders and farmers (a figure equal to about half the
TAR Tibetan population) will have been settled in new
housing, and that by 2020 officials plan for the mining
industry share of TAR GDP to increase from about 3
percent currently to between 30 percent and 50 percent.
Reports during this reporting year disclosed limited
progress on Tibetan railway construction.
Government security and judicial institutions'
use of laws on ``splittism'' and ``leaking state
secrets'' during this reporting year infringed upon
China's constitutionally protected freedoms of speech,
religion, association, and assembly--first by using the
law on ``splittism'' to punish Tibetans who criticize
or peacefully protest against government policies, and
then by using the law on ``leaking state secrets'' to
punish Tibetans who attempt to share with other
Tibetans information about incidents of repression and
punishment. Reports of Tibetan political protest and
detention declined during this reporting year based on
Commission monitoring as of September 2010. The
apparent decline may suggest that Tibetans generally
are not risking the consequences of political protest
in the presence of the ongoing security crackdown.
Courts sentenced Tibetans to imprisonment for using
cultural or entertainment media to articulate their
views.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Urge the Chinese government to engage in
substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his
representatives on protecting the Tibetan culture,
language, religion, and heritage within the Tibet
Autonomous Region (TAR) and the Tibetan autonomous
prefectures and counties in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan,
and Yunnan provinces--a geographic area that both sides
identify as the focus of their Tibet policies. A
Chinese government decision to engage in such dialogue
can result in a durable and mutually beneficial outcome
for Chinese and Tibetans, and improve the outlook for
local and regional security in coming decades.
Convey to the Chinese government the urgent
importance of refraining from using legal measures to
infringe upon and repress Tibetan Buddhists' right to
the freedom of religion. Such measures include:
aggressive campaigns of ``patriotic education'' that
compel Tibetans to endorse state antagonism
toward the Dalai Lama; preventing Tibetan Buddhists
from identifying and educating religious teachers in a
manner consistent with Tibetan preferences and
traditions; and enacting laws and issuing regulations
that remold Tibetan Buddhism to suit the state.
Request that the Chinese government follow up on
the March 2010 statement by the Chairman of the TAR
government that Gedun Choekyi Nyima, the Panchen Lama
whom the Dalai Lama recognized in 1995, is living in
the TAR as an ``ordinary citizen'' along with his
family. Urge the government to invite a representative
of an international organization to meet with Gedun
Choekyi Nyima so that he can express his wishes with
respect to privacy, photograph the international
representative and Gedun Choekyi Nyima together, and
publish Gedun Choekyi Nyima's statement and the
photograph.
Encourage the Chinese government to maximize
benefits to Tibetans resulting from the Fifth Tibet
Work Forum by fully taking into account the views and
preferences of Tibetans when planning infrastructure
and natural resource development projects in Tibetan
areas of China. Encourage the Chinese government to
engage appropriate experts in assessing the impact of
infrastructure and natural resource development
projects, and in advising the government on the
implementation, progress, and impact of such projects.
Increase support for U.S. non-governmental
organizations to develop programs that can assist
Tibetans to increase their
capacity to peacefully protect and develop their
culture, language, and heritage; that can help to
improve education, economic, health, and environmental
conservation conditions of ethnic Tibetans living in
Tibetan areas of China; and that create sustainable
benefits without encouraging an influx of non-Tibetans
into these areas.
Continue to convey to the Chinese government the
importance of honoring reference to the freedoms of
speech, religion, association, and assembly in China's
Constitution, and refraining from using the security
establishment, courts, and law to infringe upon and
repress Tibetans' exercise of such rights. Continue to
convey to the Chinese government the importance of
distinguishing between peaceful Tibetan protesters and
rioters, and request the Chinese government to provide
complete details about Tibetans detained, charged, or
sentenced with protest-related crimes.
Continue to raise in meetings and correspondence
with
Chinese officials the cases of Tibetans who are
imprisoned as punishment for the peaceful exercise of
human rights. Representative examples include: former
Tibetan monk Jigme Gyatso (now serving an extended 18-
year sentence for printing leaflets, distributing
posters, and later shouting pro-Dalai Lama slogans in
prison); monk Choeying Khedrub (sentenced to life
imprisonment for printing leaflets); Bangri Chogtrul
(regarded by Tibetans as a reincarnated teacher;
serving a sentence of 18 years commuted from life
imprisonment for ``inciting splittism''); and nomad
Ronggye Adrag (sentenced to 8 years' imprisonment for
shouting political slogans at a public festival).
Developments in Hong Kong and Macau
Findings
In November 2009, the Hong Kong government
issued a consultation document on election of the
Legislative Council (Legco) and of the chief executive
in Hong Kong's 2012 elections, and in April 2010,
submitted its final proposals on elections. The
document and proposals increased from 800 to 1200 the
number of members of an election committee that chooses
the chief executive, and increased the number of Legco
members from 60 to 70, but otherwise did not increase
the proportion of Legco seats returned by direct
election. A 2007 decision of China's National People's
Congress Standing Committee, which prohibited the
people of Hong Kong from directly electing both the
chief executive and all members of the Legislative
Council by universal suffrage in the 2012 elections,
had limited the scope and form of the Hong Kong
government's proposal.
In July 2009, the election committee in Macau
selected a new chief executive in an uncontested
election, and 29 members of the Legislative Assembly,
with 12 selected by direct election.
Recommendations
Members of the U.S. Congress and Administration officials
are encouraged to:
Make every effort to visit Hong Kong when
traveling to mainland China. Members of the U.S.
Congress and Administration officials should meet with
their counterparts in the Hong Kong Legislative
Council, and with members of the Hong Kong government
administration. Such meetings would show U.S. support
for a high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong under the
system of ``one country, two systems.''
Urge Chinese government officials to allow the
people of Hong Kong to make their own determination as
to constitutional reform, without interference from the
central government either through decisions of the
National People's
Congress or informally, and to allow the introduction
of universal suffrage with one person, one vote, if
this is the wish of the people of Hong Kong.
The Commission adopted this report by a vote of 17 to 0
with one abstention.
Political Prisoner Database
Recommendations
When composing correspondence advocating on behalf of a
political or religious prisoner, or preparing for official
travel to China, Members of Congress and Administration
officials are encouraged to:
Check the Political Prisoner Database (PPD)
(http://ppd.cecc.gov) for reliable, up-to-date
information on a prisoner or groups of prisoners.
Consult a prisoner's database record for more detailed
information about the prisoner's case, including his or
her alleged crime, specific human rights that officials
have violated, stage in the legal process, and location
of detention or imprisonment, if known.
Advise official and private delegations
traveling to China to present Chinese officials with
lists of political and religious prisoners compiled
from database records.
Urge U.S. state and local officials and
private citizens involved in sister-state and sister-
city relationships with China to explore the database,
and to advocate for the release of political and
religious prisoners in China.
A MORE POWERFUL RESOURCE FOR ADVOCACY
The Commission's 2010 Annual Report provides information
about Chinese political and religious prisoners\1\ in the
context of specific human rights and rule of law abuses. Many
of the abuses result from the Communist Party's and
government's application of policies and laws. The Commission
relies on the Political Prisoner Database (PPD), a publicly
available online database maintained by the Commission, for its
own advocacy and research work, including the preparation of
the Annual Report, and routinely uses the database to prepare
summaries of information about political and religious
prisoners for Members of Congress and Administration officials.
On July 29, 2010, the Commission announced the availability
of a PPD upgrade that doubles the number of types of
information available to the public and enables faster and
easier methods of finding and downloading information about
political and religious prisoners. The Commission invites the
public to read about issue-specific Chinese political
imprisonment in sections of this Annual Report, and to access
and make use of the upgraded PPD at http://ppd.cecc.gov.
(Information on how to use the PPD is available at: http://
www.cecc.gov/pages/victims/index.php.)
The PPD received approximately 34,400 online requests for
prisoner information during the 12-month period ending August
31, 2010. During the entire period of PPD operation beginning
in late 2004, approximately 29 percent of the requests for
information have originated from U.S. Government (.gov)
Internet domains, 15 percent from commercial (.com) domains, 15
percent from network (.net) domains, 12 percent from
international (e.g., .fr, .de, .ca) domains, 3 percent from
nonprofit organization (.org) domains, 2 percent from education
(.edu) domains, 2 percent from Arpanet (.arpa) domains, and 1
percent from international treaty organization (.int) domains.
Approximately 19 percent of the requests have been from
numerical Internet addresses that do not provide information
about the name of the registrant or the type of domain.
POLITICAL PRISONERS
The PPD seeks to provide users with prisoner information
that is reliable and up to date. Commission staff members work
to maintain and update political prisoner records based on
their areas of expertise. The staff seeks to provide objective
analysis of information about individual prisoners and about
events and trends that drive political and religious
imprisonment in China.
As of September 3, 2010, the PPD contained information on
5,608 cases of political or religious imprisonment in China. Of
those, 1,426 are cases of political and religious prisoners
currently known or believed to be detained or imprisoned, and
4,182 are cases of prisoners who are known or believed to have
been released or executed, who died while imprisoned or soon
after release, or who escaped. The Commission notes that there
are considerably more than 1,426 cases of current political and
religious imprisonment in China. The Commission staff works on
an ongoing basis to add cases of political and religious
imprisonment to the PPD.
The Dui Hua Foundation, based in San Francisco, and the
former Tibet Information Network, based in London, shared their
extensive experience and data on political and religious
prisoners in China with the Commission to help establish the
database. The Dui Hua Foundation continues to do so. The
Commission also relies on its own staff research for prisoner
information, as well as on information provided by non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), other groups that specialize
in promoting human rights and opposing political and religious
imprisonment, and other public sources of information.
MORE POWERFUL DATABASE TECHNOLOGY
The PPD has served since its launch in November 2004 as a
unique and powerful resource for the U.S. Congress and
Administration, other governments, NGOs, educational
institutions, and individuals who research political and
religious imprisonment in China or who advocate on behalf of
such prisoners. The July 2010 PPD upgrade significantly
leverages the capacity of the Commission's information and
technology resources to support such research, reporting, and
advocacy. [See New Political Prisoner Database Features in this
section.]
The PPD aims to provide a technology with sufficient power
to cope with the scope and complexity of political imprisonment
in China. The most important feature of the PPD is that it is
structured as a genuine database and uses a powerful query
engine. Each prisoner's record describes the type of human
rights violation by Chinese authorities that led to his or her
detention. These types include violations of the right to
peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of association,
and free expression, including the freedom to advocate peaceful
social or political change and to criticize government policy
or government officials. Users may search for a prisoner by
name, using either the Latin alphabet or Chinese characters.
The PPD allows users to construct queries that include one or
more types of information. [For a list of types of information,
see box titled Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Political Prisoner Database: Previous and Additional Data
Fields in this section.]
The design of the PPD allows anyone with access to the
Internet to query the database and download prisoner data
without providing personal information to the Commission, and
without the PPD downloading any software or Web cookies to a
user's computer. Users have the option to create a user
account, which allows them to save, edit, and reuse queries,
but the PPD does not require a user to provide any personal
information to set up such an account. The PPD does not
download software or a Web cookie to a user's computer as a
result of setting up such an account. Saved queries are not
stored on a user's computer. A user-specified ID (which can be
a nickname) and password are the only information required to
set up a user account.
New Political Prisoner Database Features
Some of the new PPD features that will strengthen reporting
on political and religious imprisonment in China and advocacy
on behalf of Chinese political prisoners are listed below.
An easy-to-use Welcome Page search box for a
prisoner's name.
An increase in the number of types of
information (fields) from 19 to 40. Several of the
additional fields are on the judicial process--for
example, court names and dates and articles of China's
Criminal Law. All 40 of the PPD fields may be queried
separately or in any combination.
A full-text search that applies to all 40
fields in a PPD record.
A one-click download of all of the field data
for all of the records in the PPD as a Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet.
An Excel spreadsheet download of the data for
every PPD record that satisfies a query or a full-text
search that a user creates.
Opening a PPD record from another Web site,
blog, document, or email by using the PPD record's Web
link. The link will open the current state of the
database record, not a stored Web page.
Opening reports, articles, and texts of
Chinese laws that are available on the Commission's Web
site or on another Web site by clicking links in a PPD
record's short summary. (Many PPD records contain a
short summary of the case that includes basic details
about the political or religious imprisonment and the
legal process leading to imprisonment.)
Exporting a PPD record to a single-page Adobe
PDF document that contains all of the available record
data, including the short summary.
Congressional-Executive Commission on China Political Prisoner Database:
Previous and Additional Data Fields
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PPD Fields Added in the July 2010 Upgrade PPD Fields Available
(21) Prior to Upgrade (19)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Affiliation CECC record number
Residence (province) Detention status
Residence (prefecture) Issue category
Residence (county) Main name
Formal arrest date Chinese characters (main
name)
Trial date Other (or lay) name
Trial court Alternate name(s)
Sentence date Pinyin name (for non-Han)
Sentence court Ethnic group
Appeal date Sex
Appeal court Age at detention
Appeal ruling date Religion
Appeal ruling court Occupation
Sentence ends per PRC Date of detention
Actual date released Province where imprisoned
Charge (statute) Current prison
Sentence length (months) Sentence length (years)
Sentence length (weeks) Legal process
Sentence length (days) Short summary
Prefecture where imprisoned
County where imprisoned
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II. Human Rights
Freedom of Expression
Introduction
The Chinese government and Communist Party's system of
restrictions on free expression consists of two core
components: content prohibitions and prior restraints. Content
prohibitions are based on vague and broadly worded criminal and
administrative provisions covering a wide range of media. These
provisions prohibit Chinese citizens from expressing or
accessing content the Party or government deems to ``incite
subversion of state power,'' ``spread rumors,'' or ``attack the
Chinese Communist Party,'' among other things.\1\ Such
provisions continued to serve as the basis for punishing
peaceful critics of the Party this past year. The Commission's
2009 Annual Report noted the arrest of prominent intellectual
Liu Xiaobo as part of a crackdown on citizens who supported
Charter 08, a treatise advocating political reform and human
rights circulated online.\2\ In December 2009, a Beijing court
sentenced Liu to 11 years in prison for inciting subversion,
the longest known sentence for that crime.\3\ Officials also
moved forward with cases against Tan Zuoren and Huang Qi, the
activists who criticized authorities for not doing enough to
investigate school collapses in the May 2008 Sichuan
earthquake.\4\ Courts in Sichuan province sentenced Tan to five
years' imprisonment for inciting subversion and Huang to three
years' imprisonment for leaking state secrets. These cases
reflect officials' heightened concern about the Internet, as
Liu, Tan, and Huang had peacefully used that medium for rights
advocacy and political expression. Officials continued to
censor political expression across a wide range of media, from
the Internet to print publications. In March 2010, after 13
Chinese newspapers published a joint editorial criticizing and
calling for reform of China's household registration system,
officials disciplined editors at the Economic Observer and
ordered the editorial removed from Web sites.\5\
The second core component of China's system of
restrictions, prior restraints, refers to a system by which the
government controls, through a licensing requirement for
example, who may use a forum for expression. In China, prior
restraints are extensive. Any person or group wishing to
publish a newspaper, magazine, or book; \6\ host a Web site;
\7\ or work as a journalist \8\ must first obtain a license
from or register with the government. Reflecting heightened
concern over the Internet, the government during the
Commission's 2010 reporting year sought to tighten prior
restraints on those applying for domain names for Web sites, to
curb anonymity on the Internet, and to crack down on unlicensed
video Web sites. In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the
government shut down Internet, text messaging, and
international phone call service altogether following
demonstrations and riots in July 2009, and only gradually began
lifting restrictions in December. Officials also sought to
tighten control over the news industry nationwide, announcing
in March 2010 a qualification exam for journalists that would
require knowledge of ``Chinese Communist Party journalism'' and
warning against unlicensed citizen journalists sharing news on
the Internet.
INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR FREE EXPRESSION
The Chinese government's content restrictions and prior
restraints aimed at controlling political and religious content
are inconsistent with international human rights standards and
also with the rights to free speech and the press enumerated in
China's Constitution.\9\ Chinese officials, however, continue
to insist that these rights are protected.\10\ Under
international human rights standards, a restriction on free
expression is permitted so long as it is (1) for the purpose of
respecting the rights or reputations of others or protecting
national security, public order, public health or morals, or
the general welfare; (2) set forth in law; and (3) narrowly
tailored.\11\ The vagueness of the Chinese government's content
prohibitions provides Chinese officials with broad discretion
to apply prohibitions for purposes impermissible under
international human rights standards, such as to target
criticism of the Communist Party.\12\ The vagueness with which
prohibitions are set forth in law also leaves citizens with no
clear guidance on the boundaries of free speech.\13\ The
government's prior restraints on various speech activities also
are not narrowly tailored, allowing officials the discretion to
suppress unlicensed expression that they find politically
disagreeable.\14\ Moreover, officials apply restrictions on
expression with little transparency \15\ and without sufficient
judicial oversight.\16\
Abuse of Vague Criminal Law Provisions
CRIME OF SUBVERSION
During this reporting year, Chinese officials continued to
label peacefully expressed criticism of the government or the
Party as a threat to state security, relying in some cases on
Article 105 of China's Criminal Law. Article 105 provides for
sentences of up to life imprisonment for attempts to subvert
state power or up to 15 years for inciting such subversion.\17\
Chinese courts make little assessment of whether the speech in
question poses an actual threat to state security.\18\ Chinese
lawyers have noted that courts can apply Article 105
arbitrarily because no legislative or judicial interpretation
defines the specific boundaries between free expression and
state security.\19\ In June 2010, Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui
Hua Foundation, a human rights organization, said, ``There's
little doubt that . . . the intent of the law against inciting
subversion is the silencing of political speech.'' \20\
This past year, courts continued to punish alleged
subversion in trials marred by procedural abuses and in which
the defendants' online activity figured prominently. The
Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court levied what is
reportedly the longest known sentence for inciting subversion,
11 years, against the prominent intellectual Liu Xiaobo in
December 2009.\21\ [See box titled Liu Xiaobo below.] In
February 2010, a court in Chengdu city sentenced the activist
Tan Zuoren to five years in prison for inciting subversion.\22\
The court cited online essays Tan wrote criticizing the
government's handling of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, Tan's
efforts to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the protests,
and interviews he gave to foreign media in which he criticized
the government's response to the May 2008 Sichuan
earthquake.\23\ Tan was detained while conducting an
investigation into school collapses in the quake. During Tan's
trial, the judge refused to allow Tan's lawyers to call
witnesses or to show evidence, frequently cut his lawyers off,
and barred reporters from the courtroom.\24\ In October 2009, a
court in Jiangsu province sentenced former professor Guo Quan
to 10 years in prison for subversion for using the Internet to
organize an ``illegal'' political party and publishing
``reactionary'' articles online.\25\ [See Section III--
Institutions of Democratic Governance.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liu Xiaobo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
On December 25, 2009, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court
sentenced the prominent intellectual Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison
for inciting subversion.\26\ The court cited six essays Liu had written
and posted on the Internet as well as his work on Charter 08, a
treatise advocating political reform and human rights circulated online
for signatures.\27\ The essays, with titles such as ``The Chinese
Communist Party's Dictatorial Patriotism'' and ``Can It Be That the
Chinese People Are Only Suited To Accepting `Party-Ruled Democracy'?
'', criticize the Communist Party's governance of China but do not
advocate violence.\28\ The court noted how Liu had taken advantage of
the Internet's ``rapid transmission of information, broad reach, great
social influence, and high degree of public attention.'' \29\ Liu's
case was marred by official abuses. When police first took Liu into
custody in December 2008, they kept him under residential surveillance
at a secret location instead of his home in Beijing and did so beyond
the legal six-month limit.\30\ At trial, the judge limited Liu's
defense lawyers to less than 20 minutes to present their arguments and
prevented Liu from finishing his remarks.\31\ In February 2010, the
Beijing High People's Court affirmed the lower court judgment and
rejected Liu's argument that his residential surveillance amounted to
de facto detention and should be counted toward time served.\32\ In
March, officials in Shanghai municipality ordered Shanghai petitioner
Mao Hengfeng to serve 18 months of reeducation through labor for
shouting slogans outside Liu's trial in December 2009.\33\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OTHER CRIMES: SPLITTISM, STATE SECRETS, AND SLANDER
This past year authorities used legal provisions
criminalizing slander and acts of endangering state security--
``splittism'' (separatism) and possessing or trafficking state
secrets--to punish persons who criticized officials or who
dealt with commercial information.
Gheyret Niyaz. In July 2010, a court in
Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR),
sentenced Gheyret Niyaz, a Uyghur journalist and Web
editor, to 15 years' imprisonment for ``leaking state
secrets.'' Prosecutors cited essays by Gheyret Niyaz
addressing economic and social problems affecting
Uyghurs; sources also connected the prison sentence to
interviews Gheyret Niyaz gave to foreign media that
criticized aspects of government policy in the
XUAR.\34\ [For information on other Uyghur cases, see
box titled Free Expression Punished in Xinjiang in
Section IV--Xinjiang.]
Xue Feng. In July 2010, a Beijing court
sentenced Xue Feng, a naturalized American citizen and
geologist, to eight years in prison for trafficking
state secrets.\35\ Xue had helped an American company
purchase information on oil wells in China.\36\
Officials reportedly did not declare the information a
state secret until after the purchase took place and
allegedly tortured Xue.\37\ Xue's lengthy detention and
trial violated China's Criminal Procedure Law, while
officials violated China's consular treaty with the
United States by delaying notification of the case and
access to Xue by U.S. officials.\38\
Tagyal (Shogdung). In May 2010, authorities in
Qinghai province arrested the Tibetan writer known as
Shogdung, whose real name is Tagyal, on the charge of
inciting splittism.\39\ The writer had signed an open
letter suggesting that people avoid sending donations
for the April 2010 Yushu earthquake in Qinghai through
official channels, citing corruption concerns, and had
written a book about the March 2008 Tibetan
protests.\40\ [For information on other Tibetan cases,
see box titled Imprisonment for Sharing Information,
Cultural Expression in Section V--Tibet.]
Fan Yanqiong, Wu Huaying, and You Jingyou. In
April, a court in Fujian province sentenced Fan
Yanqiong to two years in prison and Wu Huaying and You
Jingyou each to one year in prison for the crime of
slander (Article 246 of China's Criminal Law) after
they wrote essays and created a video documenting a
mother's claim that her daughter was gang-raped and
murdered by people with ties to local police.\41\ The
court claimed the allegations were fabricated and had
caused a stir on the Internet.\42\ Authorities
reportedly suspended the license of Wu's lawyer before
the trial.\43\ The Commission's 2009 Annual Report
noted rising official abuse of Article 246 to retaliate
against Internet whistleblowers.\44\
Huang Qi. In November 2009, a court in Chengdu
city, Sichuan province, sentenced the rights activist
Huang Qi to three years in prison for illegal
possession of state secrets.\45\ Huang's human rights
Web site advocated on behalf of grieving parents after
the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Authorities have
considerable discretion to declare almost any matter of
public concern a state secret. [See box titled Open
Government Information and the Amended State Secrets
Law below.] Huang's lawyer said the ``state secrets''
were rules for government agencies on dealing with
citizen petitions.\46\
[For information on authorities' use of extralegal tactics and
restrictions on freedom of movement to punish free expression,
see Section II--Criminal Justice--Abuse of Police Powers:
Suppression of Dissent and Section II--Freedom of Residence and
Movement.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Open Government Information and the Amended State Secrets Law
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
China's 2009-2010 National Human Rights Action Plan emphasizes
citizens' ``right to be informed'' and says the ``Chinese government
will make more efforts to keep the public informed of government
affairs, and improve relevant laws and regulations, so as to guarantee
citizens' right of information.'' \47\ Effective in May 2008, the
Regulations on Open Government Information require governments to
disclose information involving the vital interests of citizens and
give citizens the right to request information.\48\ One barrier to
transparency, however, is a state secrets framework that gives
officials wide latitude to declare almost any matter of public concern
a state secret, from death penalty statistics to the state's
reeducation through labor policy, and to deny requests for
information.\49\ The Commission's 2009 Annual Report noted that Chinese
officials were considering proposed changes to the state secrets law in
effect since 1989,\50\ and in April 2010, the National People's
Congress Standing Committee passed the amended Law on the Protection of
State Secrets, which took effect on October 1, 2010.\51\ The definition
of ``state secrets'' in the 2010 law, however, remains vague and broad.
According to Article 9, a state secret may relate to major policy
decisions on state affairs, national economic and social development,
and science and technology, or other matters as determined by
officials.\52\ Like the previous law, the amended law does not provide
for any judicial review of a state agency's determination that
information is a state secret. It remains to be seen whether other
provisions in the amended law, including one that places time limits on
state secrets, reduce the number of state secrets.\53\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internet and Other Electronic Media
CHINA'S INTERNET POLICY
As the Commission has documented in recent annual
reports,\54\ the Chinese government continued to encourage the
Internet for economic development while maintaining political
control over the medium. According to a white paper on the
Internet released by the State Council Information Office
(SCIO) in June 2010, the government plans to increase the
percentage of Internet users from 28.9 percent of the
population to 45 percent in five years.\55\ According to
official statistics, there were 420 million Internet users in
China as of the end of June 2010, an increase of 82 million
over the previous year.\56\ The white paper noted the
government's investments in Internet infrastructure and the
role the Internet has played in driving China's economy.\57\
The white paper also repeated the government's argument that
increased access to the Internet, as evidenced by the large
number of blogs in China and the presence of lively exchanges
on China's Internet, shows that China ``guarantees citizens'
freedom of speech on the Internet.'' \58\ This past year,
Chinese citizens continued to use communication technologies to
advocate for rights and to criticize government policies. In
early summer 2010, for example, workers in China used the
Internet and cell phones to organize and document strikes.\59\
Such phenomena, however, are insufficient evidence that China
guarantees free speech, in light of the continued political
censorship documented below.
While greater Internet access has afforded Chinese citizens
unprecedented opportunities for expression, it has not
signified Chinese officials' willingness to loosen political
control. In an April 2010 speech before the National People's
Congress Standing Committee, SCIO Director Wang Chen said the
government is using the Internet to promote ``positive
propaganda''; ``guide public opinion'' (citing guidance of the
Internet following unrest in Tibetan and Uyghur areas of China
in 2008 and 2009); enhance China's ``soft power''; and
``balance the hegemony of the Western media.'' \60\ Wang also
said the government is campaigning to gain global acceptance
for its model of Internet control:
Our nation has successively engaged in dialogue and
exchanges with more than 70 countries and international
organizations. We have explained our Internet
management policy, introduced the achievements of our
Internet construction . . . countered Western enemy
forces' smears against us, and enhanced the
international community's acceptance and understanding
of our model of managing the Internet.\61\
Officials remained concerned about citizens' use of the
Internet to network socially and post commentary. In mid-July
2010, Chinese and foreign media reported that officials were
behind service disruptions at major microblogging sites, the
removal of the blogs of well-known activists and lawyers, and
increased monitoring of journalists' blogs.\62\ In April 2010,
the New York Times reported that the SCIO had established a new
bureau to monitor social networking sites, which have grown in
popularity in China.\63\ The Chinese government continued to
employ paid agents to issue pro-government comments online.\64\
In his April speech, Wang said officials would ``strengthen the
blocking of harmful information from outside [China's]
borders.'' \65\ In December 2009, Minister of Public Security
Meng Jianzhu published an essay saying the Internet had become
an important tool for ``anti-China forces'' and ``a new
challenge for public security forces safeguarding state
security and social stability.'' \66\
CENSORSHIP OF POLITICAL CONTENT
Scope of Censorship
Censorship of political content on the Internet remained
pervasive this reporting year. The Chinese government readily
acknowledges the blocking of some online content, such as
content it considers to be pornographic,\67\ but it provides
few details about how it determines other content to block,
including what political content it censors.\68\ The scope of
content the Chinese government requires authorities and private
actors to censor remains ill-defined, and therefore allows
officials to target political and religious content
arbitrarily.\69\ OpenNet Initiative, an Internet research
organization, noted in a 2009 report that censors primarily
target Chinese-language content, including content dealing with
the 1989 Tiananmen protests, Tibetan rights, and Falun Gong, as
well as ``human rights, political reform, sovereignty issues,
and circumvention tools.'' \70\ The following are select
examples of censored political content from the past year, as
reported by Chinese Internet users and foreign media in China.
News items were removed from Web sites,
including an article examining the role of the Internet
in mass incidents in China; \71\ a transcript of U.S.
President Barack Obama's November 2009 town hall
meeting in Shanghai, where he called for a free
Internet; \72\ and a Chinese editorial cartoon that
appeared to refer to the government suppression of the
1989 Tiananmen protests.\73\
In October 2009, the organizers of an overseas
Web site inviting visitors to comment on the fall of
the Berlin Wall reported the site was blocked in
China.\74\
In March 2010, the Chinese government
reportedly instructed Web sites to limit online
discussion of the controversy between the U.S.
technology company, Google, and the Chinese
government.\75\
In April 2010, Internet users reportedly were
unable to search the word ``carrot'' on the Internet
because it shares the same Chinese character as ``Hu''
in President Hu Jintao's name.\76\
In May 2010, several popular Uyghur Web sites
remained shut down after authorities restored Internet
access to the XUAR.\77\
China's Internet Censors and the Rule of Law
Both Chinese officials and Internet companies in China have
a responsibility under China's laws and regulations to censor
content. Chinese officials block or filter access to foreign
Web sites through control of the gateway connection between
China and the global Internet.\78\ Chinese authorities continue
to block social media sites based overseas, such as Facebook,
YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr.\79\ According to Xiao Qiang, an
expert on China's Internet based at the University of
California at Berkeley, ``There is an Internet monitoring and
surveillance unit in every city, wherever you have an Internet
connection.'' \80\ Chinese Internet regulations provide lists
of prohibited categories of content including content that
``harms the honor or interests of the nation,'' ``destroys
ethnic unity,'' ``spreads rumors,'' or ``disrupts national
policies on religion.'' \81\ These vague and broadly worded
categories provide little guidance to Internet users or
Internet companies in China,\82\ the latter of which are
required by Chinese regulations to censor content and to
monitor and report customer activity to authorities.\83\ [See
box titled Chinese Media Article Exposes Problems With China's
Internet Censorship below.] In January 2010, Chinese cell phone
users complained about unclear standards during a crackdown on
text messages containing pornography or ``unhealthy''
information.\84\ Vague content prohibitions also apply to other
electronic media, such as television.\85\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chinese Media Article Exposes Problems With China's Internet Censorship
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Global Times, which operates under the official People's Daily,
issued a rare article in February 2010 on the subject of Internet
censorship in China that highlighted a number of problems, including
lack of transparency and clear standards and the absence of adequate
procedural protections.\86\ According to a professor of Internet
politics at Nanjing University cited in the article, the 14 regulations
dealing with online content in China are all vague and lack detailed
provisions.\87\ The professor also noted that content bans were
becoming increasingly unpredictable and that affected Internet users
receive no explanation or opportunity to appeal.\88\ The article noted
how these factors led Internet users to practice self-censorship and
placed pressure on Internet companies, especially those without
government connections, who feared being closed down for any
misstep.\89\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This past year, the government introduced measures that
could increase the pressure on Internet companies to censor
politically sensitive content. In April 2010, the National
People's Congress Standing Committee passed an amended state
secrets law, effective October 1, 2010.\90\ [For more
information, see the box titled Open Government Information and
the Amended State Secrets Law above.] The law retains the vague
definition of state secrets that allows officials to declare
almost any matter of public concern a state secret.\91\ In
addition, the amended law adds a new provision, Article 28,
which requires Internet and other telecommunication companies
to cooperate with authorities' investigation of state secret
leaks and, upon discovering a leak, to stop transmission of the
secret, preserve any relevant records, and notify
officials.\92\ This provision further codifies in law a
requirement that appears in existing administrative
regulations.\93\ Internet companies that violate Article 28
will face punishment from police, state security officers, or
government officials.\94\ In December 2009, the National
People's Congress Standing Committee issued the Tort Liability
Law, effective July 1, 2010, which includes a provision
(Article 36) exposing Internet service providers (ISPs) to
liability for failing to remove content that infringes upon the
rights of others, to the extent the ISP is aware of or is
informed of such content.\95\ A state-controlled media article
noted that the liability provision could pressure ISPs to be
overzealous in removing content, including politically
sensitive content.\96\ Furthermore, the article said it is
unclear to what extent the ``aware'' clause requires ISPs to
actively search the Internet for prohibited content.\97\
The pressure to censor politically sensitive content
affects foreign companies in China in ways that may have an
impact on trade and may further limit the free flow of
information, as the controversy between the Chinese government
and the U.S. company Google this past year clearly illustrated.
In January 2010, Google announced that partly because of
``attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on
the web'' in China, the company was ``no longer willing to
continue censoring'' search results on Google.cn, its search
engine for China.\98\ In explaining the problems Google faced
in China, a Google representative told the Commission at a
March 2010 hearing that Chinese government censorship requests
put Google in a ``terribly difficult position'' because
``there's not very much transparency at all about what's being
requested, and whether it's being requested of everybody.''
\99\ Google's stated refusal to censor the search engine it
created for the Chinese market raised the possibility that it
would be forced to shut down this service. Some Chinese
citizens supported Google's position but worried about losing
access to a source of information that censored less than
domestic alternatives.\100\ In February, Nature magazine
released a survey of 784 Chinese scientists, 84 percent of whom
said that blocked access to Google would ``somewhat or
significantly'' hinder their research.\101\ Google announced in
March that it would automatically redirect mainland users to
its less censored Hong Kong site, but in June modified this
practice out of fear that the Chinese government would not
renew Google's Internet content license.\102\
PRIOR RESTRAINTS AND BROAD RESTRICTIONS ON INTERNET ACCESS
This past year, officials sought to tighten broad prior
restraints on citizens' ability to post content on the
Internet. All Web sites hosted in China are required either to
be licensed by or registered with the government, and sites
providing news content or audio and video services require an
additional license or registration.\103\ In December 2009, the
state-run domain name registrar announced rules barring
individuals from registering for the Chinese domain name
``.cn'' for their Web sites, limiting registrations to only
entities with business licenses.\104\ Although officials and
domestic and foreign media cited pornography and online fraud
concerns with ``.cn'' sites, some in China questioned the
reasonableness of
banning all individual registrations.\105\ In February 2010,
the government rescinded the ban, but added a new requirement
that applicants must submit a photo and meet in person with the
Internet service provider assisting people with Web site
registration, which could have a chilling effect given China's
restrictions on political content.\106\ In its 2009 Annual
Report, the Commission also reported that the government had
issued a secret directive requiring Internet users in China to
provide their real name and identification number before
posting a comment on major news Web sites.\107\ This past year,
Wang Chen, the State Council Information Office Director,
confirmed the existence of the requirement and said the
government was exploring a real name identification system for
comment services generally.\108\
The government continued its periodic crackdown on illegal
Web sites, often couched as anti-pornography campaigns. A
February 2010 report by the government news agency Xinhua
indicated, however, that only 12 percent of the 136,000 Web
sites targeted in a government crackdown were shut down for
having pornography, while most had failed to register.\109\
Officials continued to target sites devoted to posting news or
videos. In November 2009, officials shut down Yeeyan, a site
that published translations of English and Chinese articles,
for failing to have a license to provide news.\110\ To obtain a
license to provide online news in China, an applicant must have
at least five full-time news editors with at least three years
of experience in journalism, as well as registered capital of
no less than 10 million yuan (US$1.48 million).\111\ Yeeyan
reportedly came back online 39 days later, after removing all
``political news'' from the site.\112\ As the Commission
reported in its 2008 Annual Report, a 2008 regulation requires
audio and video Web sites to be wholly state-owned or state-
controlled in order to obtain a license.\113\ In December 2009,
officials in a crackdown on unlicensed audio and video sites
shut down BTChina, a popular video-sharing site, which they
also accused of hosting pornography.\114\ The owner denied the
pornography charge and said that government regulations
prevented him from obtaining a license.\115\ A September 2009
government notice stated that beginning in March 2010,
officials nationwide would need to inspect their jurisdictions
for audio and video Web sites operating without a license.\116\
In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR),
authorities maintained blanket restrictions on the Internet,
international phone calls, and text messages, put in place
following demonstrations and riots in Urumqi starting July
2009, and gradually began lifting them only after almost half a
year had passed.\117\ It was not until May 2010 that officials
restored more complete Internet access.\118\ Authorities
claimed that overseas elements had directed the violence \119\
and that restrictions were imposed to prevent further
violence.\120\ The actual role the communication devices played
in violent rioting (as opposed to demonstrations) was
unclear,\121\ however, and the wide-reaching restrictions--
affecting all Internet, SMS, and international phone content
and lasting for months after the July 2009 events--exceeded
permissible boundaries allowable under international human
rights standards. [See International Standards for Free
Expression in this section.] The press freedom organization
Reporters Without Borders noted in October 2009 that the
restrictions were overbroad and prevented XUAR residents from
sharing information about the ensuing government
crackdown.\122\ [For more information, see Section IV--
Xinjiang--Controls Over Free Expression.]
Freedom of the Press
STATE POLICY
While China's Constitution guarantees freedom of the press,
in practice Communist Party and government control and
regulation of Chinese news media and publishing continued to
violate international standards. [See International Standards
for Free Expression in this section.] International standards
prohibit restrictions on free expression for political control,
but in China the official policy is that the media is
subordinate to the Party's interests. In a November 2009
speech, top Party official Li Changchun marked Journalists' Day
in China by telling journalists to ``persist in strengthening
and improving the Party's leadership over news propaganda
work.'' \123\ This policy continued to be reflected in media
coverage of major events. Following the April 2010 Yushu
earthquake in Qinghai province, Li said that propaganda
reporting had been effectively utilized to ``create a good
public opinion atmosphere'' for disaster relief work and told
Chinese media to reflect the ``good(ness)'' of the Communist
Party and ethnic groups ``uniting'' in disaster relief.\124\
The government also continued with state-led expansion of the
media industry in order to spread China's influence globally.
In July 2010, the central government's news agency Xinhua
launched a global English-language television channel.\125\
NEWS MEDIA
Censorship and Guidance of News
This past year, the Commission observed numerous reports of
officials continuing to direct media coverage of topics they
deemed politically sensitive. The Party, primarily through the
Central Propaganda Department, issues frequent directives to
Chinese news media informing them about the stories they can
and cannot cover or how to cover a story, including requiring
them to run only Xinhua reports.\126\ The following table
indicates some of the publicly known directives over the past
year, as well as other instances where officials sought to
control news coverage:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Restricted Topic Restriction
------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 2009--Southern Weekend's Ban on reprinting of interview and
interview with U.S. President posting on the Internet.\127\
Barack Obama.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 2010--Lunar New Year CCTV (national television station)
Holiday in February. ordered to avoid negative
news.\128\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 2010--Dispute between Google News Web sites ordered not to
and Chinese government over report information released by
Internet censorship. Google, to play down Chinese
citizens' displays of support for
Google, and to publish only
stories by central government
media.\129\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 2010--Annual meetings of Ban on negative news on front pages
National People's Congress and and in headlines.\131\
Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference.\130\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 2010--Coal mine disaster in Local officials reportedly ordered
Shanxi province. journalists to leave the area and
reduce coverage.\132\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 2010--Yushu earthquake in Officials attempted to ban non-
Qinghai province. local journalists from covering
quake. Media later ordered to
reduce coverage and focus on
Shanghai 2010 World Expo.\133\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 2010--Shanghai 2010 World Officials ordered news media to
Expo. adhere to only central media
reports when activities of central
officials are concerned.\134\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Political Loyalty and Prior Restraints
The Chinese government claims that government licensing and
supervision of journalists is needed to prevent corruption and
protect journalists.\135\ Journalists continue to be subject,
however, to political requirements unrelated to corruption or
protecting journalists. In March 2010, a high-level official at
the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), the
Chinese government's main regulator of the press, said that
journalists in China would be required to pass a new
qualification exam that will test them on their knowledge of
``Chinese Communist Party journalism'' and Marxist views of
news.\136\ In November, the All-China Journalists Association
issued a revised ethics code that maintains political
requirements, including to ``be loyal to the Party,'' ``persist
in correct guidance of public opinion . . . giving first place
to positive propaganda,'' and ``abide by the Party's discipline
for news workers.'' \137\ Government warnings against
unlicensed journalistic activity also appear intended to ensure
centralized control over the news. In a February 2010 People's
Daily interview, a GAPP official noted that commercial Web
sites and unlicensed ``Internet journalists'' are not allowed
to independently report news on the Internet.\138\ The official
said that the only news Web sites that are allowed to conduct
their own reporting are ``traditional media'' already licensed
by the government, naming as examples People.com.cn (of the
Party's flagship newspaper People's Daily) and Xinhuanet.com
(of the central government's news agency).\139\ The close ties
between some media and the state may exacerbate corruption
among journalists. According to one foreign news organization,
``[w]hen journalists from China's top news agencies approach a
bureaucrat or businessmen, they have not only market power
behind them but something even more formidable, the power of
the state.'' \140\
Punishment of Journalists and Newspapers
Chinese journalists and newspapers continued to face
official pressure and punishment for reporting on issues
authorities deemed to be sensitive. In November 2009, General
Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) officials
``severely punished'' four newspapers for publishing what they
deemed to be ``false'' reports claiming that much of China's
wealth is held by a small percentage of the population.\141\ In
May 2010, GAPP officials ordered Business Watch to halt
publication for one month because it had published an article
on a major state power company's alleged monopolistic
activities.\142\ The story was published during the annual
meetings of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference in March 2010 and prompted
some delegates to criticize the power company.\143\ Authorities
reportedly cited Business Watch for ``violating propaganda
discipline'' and creating a ``negative influence.'' \144\ In
early March, the Central Propaganda Department reportedly
issued a warning to top editors at the Economic Observer, after
it and 12 other newspapers jointly published an editorial
criticizing and calling for reform of China's household
registration system.\145\ Zhang Hong, an editor and co-author
of the editorial, reportedly was removed from his position.
[For more information, see Section II--Freedom of Residence and
Movement--Significant Household Registration (Hukou) Policies
and Regulatory Developments in 2010--The Joint Editorial on
Hukou Reform]. In May 2010, an editor of the China Economic
Times was reportedly removed from his position after the paper
reported that poorly handled vaccinations in Shanxi province
led to deaths and sickening of children.\146\ [For more
information, see Section II--Public Health.]
Foreign and Hong Kong Journalists
Credentialed journalists reporting for foreign news
organizations in China are subject to fewer restrictions than
their domestic counterparts but continued to face harassment.
As a result of China hosting the Olympics in 2008, since
January 2007, foreign journalists allowed into China
technically may report without additional government
permission, with the notable exception of permission being
required to enter restricted areas such as the Tibet Autonomous
Region.\147\ At the World Media Summit held in Beijing in
October 2009, President Hu Jintao promised that the government
would ``guarantee the legitimate rights and interests of
foreign news organizations and reporters, and facilitate
coverage and reporting by foreign media in China according to
relevant laws and regulations.'' \148\ The Foreign
Correspondents' Club of China, however, reported several cases
of harassment this past year when reporters tried to cover
sensitive events or geographic areas. In November 2009, police
and local foreign affairs officers in Kashgar city, Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), reportedly
harassed Italian and American journalists after finding out
their occupation.\149\ In February 2010, police in Chengdu
city, Sichuan province, forced nine Hong Kong reporters into a
holding room under the pretext that they wanted to check the
journalists' credentials.\150\ The reporters were attempting to
cover the trial of activist Tan Zuoren. The police released the
reporters only after the verdict was announced. The reporters
encountered further harassment outside the court as they tried
to interview Tan's lawyer.\151\
Chinese authorities continued to harass Chinese citizens
working with foreign journalists and to prevent citizens from
speaking to foreign journalists. In late April 2010,
authorities threatened a Chinese employee with loss of work
after he helped a German journalist film video of a migrant
school slated for demolition in Beijing.\152\ Police accused
the assistant of conducting ``independent''
reporting.\153\ In June 2010, public security officials in the
XUAR reportedly ordered people not to speak to foreign
journalists without authorization in the wake of the one-year
anniversary of the July 2009 demonstrations and riots in
Urumqi.\154\
PUBLICATIONS
Prior Restraints and Political Publications Considered Illegal
The Chinese government continued to engage in campaigns to
root out unlicensed publications and publications containing
what officials deemed to be ``illegal'' political content. All
newspapers and publications must be licensed by the government,
have a government sponsor, and meet certain financial
requirements.\155\ Chinese regulations include vague and
sweeping prohibitions on the publication of materials that
``destroy ethnic unity, or infringe upon ethnic customs and
habits,'' ``propagate evil cults or superstition,'' or ``harm
the honor or interests of the nation.'' \156\ The non-
governmental organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders
reported in March 2010 that the government Web site of Jilin
city, Jilin province, posted an article on how the city's local
press and publications bureau was targeting 38 different kinds
of ``illegal political publications,'' including those
``attacking the Party and the country's leaders,'' ``attacking
the Party's policies,'' and ``inciting ethnic splittism.''
Banned publications included those about China's present and
former leaders, Charter 08 (a political reform and human rights
treatise), the XUAR and Tibetan protests and riots of the last
two years, and the Dalai Lama.\157\ In July 2010, the writer Yu
Jie said police threatened him with imprisonment if he
published a book critical of China's Premier Wen Jiabao.\158\
Officials waged campaigns against ``illegal'' publications
around politically sensitive events or areas. Following the
April 2010 Yushu earthquake in Qinghai province, the Qinghai
``Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications''
Office issued a notice calling on officials to strengthen
supervision of the ``cultural market'' to ensure it ``remains
stable and orderly.'' \159\ The Ministry of Culture, from April
to June 2010, waged a campaign against ``illegal'' political
publications and cultural products centered on major tourist
sites, ethnic minority areas, and Shanghai, host of the 2010
World Expo.\160\ In May, the official newspaper China Daily
reported that local authorities in Lhasa city, Tibet Autonomous
Region (TAR), passed a rule requiring anyone wishing to make
photocopies to supply their ID and have their ID numbers
registered. The article cited a police official's claim that
``separatists'' hand out banners and pamphlets with illegal
content in the TAR.\161\
Worker Rights
Introduction
Workers in China still are not guaranteed, either by law or
in practice, full worker rights in accordance with
international standards, including the right to organize into
independent unions. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions
(ACFTU), the official union under the direction of the
Communist Party, is the only legal trade union organization in
China. All lower level unions must be affiliated with the
ACFTU, and must align with its overarching political concerns
of maintaining ``social stability'' and economic growth.
Labor disputes and officials' concern with maintaining
``social stability'' intensified over this reporting year as
layoffs, wage arrears, and poor and unsafe working conditions
persisted. Growing concern on the part of local governments to
maintain economic growth and employment continued to prompt
some localities to respond to labor laws that took effect in
2008 (the Labor Contract Law, Employment Promotion Law, and
Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law) with local
opinions and regulations of their own that weakened some
employee-friendly aspects of these laws. In response to
collective labor action that was organized and large scale, the
Chinese government continued to redirect labor disputes away
from the formal channels of arbitration and litigation toward
more ``flexible'' and ``grassroots-level'' negotiation and
mediation. Strikes and demands for higher wages during 2010
revealed that workers, in some cases, have been emboldened not
only by protections for workers codified in labor laws that
took effect in 2008, but also by a tighter labor market.
Backlogs in the handling of labor dispute cases continued to
exceed time limits mandated by law. Migrant workers continued
to face discrimination in urban areas, and their children still
faced difficulties accessing city schools.\1\ Employment
discrimination more generally continued to be a serious
problem, and plaintiffs brought a growing number of
antidiscrimination suits under China's Employment Promotion
Law.
Labor Dispute Settlement
China's Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law (LDMAL)
provides a specific timeframe within which disputes must be
resolved, requiring arbitral tribunals to rule on cases
``within 45 days of the acceptance of the arbitration
application by the labor dispute arbitration commission.'' \2\
If an extension is necessary for complex cases, it must be
approved by the dispute commission and, in any case, may not
exceed 15 days.\3\ If no decision is made within the timeframe
set forth in the LDMAL, then parties may pursue litigation in
courts.\4\ An ACFTU report indicated that, by the first half of
2010, some localities saw dramatic increases in the number of
labor dispute cases.\5\ The hearing of labor disputes in many
cases now takes far longer than the stipulated 45- to 60-day
legal requirement.\6\
To adjust to the pressure of a rapidly rising caseload and
address dissatisfaction with long delays between case filings
and hearings, some local governments pushed disputes down to
lower levels for resolution, encouraging, even coercing,
disputants to resolve
disputes through negotiation or grassroots mediation, often led
by low-level officials.\7\ This emphasis on mediation and
extrajudicial resolution has not been limited to local
governments, but also has been reflected in national- and
provincial-level regulations and circulars.\8\
In addition to large increases in arbitrated cases, labor
dispute cases also continued to deluge Chinese courts. In some
cases, these disputes were the result of strong dissatisfaction
with arbitration proceedings, as most arbitrated cases can be
reviewed in a court if either side is dissatisfied.\9\ In other
cases, the increase reflected the strong and growing rights
consciousness of Chinese workers who turned to new protections
offered in labor laws that took effect in 2008. The Supreme
People's Court reported that civil courts throughout China
accepted 280,000 cases in 2008 (a 94 percent increase from the
previous year) and 319,000 in 2009; during the first eight
months of 2010, the number of cases totaled 207,400.\10\ As
workers turn to strikes and protests, some officials believe
that the government has an incentive to proactively address
disagreements at worksites before they add to the case backlog
or threaten ``social stability.'' \11\ In Guangzhou city,
Guangdong province, for example, a new rule allows the
government to fine employers up to 20,000 yuan (US$2,968) if
they refuse to conduct collective negotiations with workers to
resolve wage arrears issues.\12\
While employment discrimination continued to be a serious
problem during this reporting year, legal scholars noted that
there appeared to be a growing number of cases brought by
plaintiffs under China's Employment Promotion Law alleging
discrimination in hiring. The law, which took effect in 2008,
prohibits discrimination based on ethnicity, race, sex,
religion, residency, infectious disease, and disability.\13\
One study indicated that civil society organizations have
contributed to a greater awareness of employment discrimination
and have helped bring cases to the courts.\14\ In some widely
reported cases, plaintiffs have prevailed, suggesting that
``courts have taken a favorable view of the law'' and that the
``long-discussed implementation deficit of Chinese law is
shrinking, slightly.'' \15\
China's Labor Contract Law, which also took effect in 2008,
continues to be subject to interpretation at the local level.
Interpretations over this reporting year have been inconsistent
across some localities. For example, Article 14 of the law
states that if a ``worker has worked for an uninterrupted term
of 10 years for the employer'' and if the worker ``proposes or
agrees to renew or conclude a labor contract,'' then the worker
is entitled to an open-ended contract, that is, ``a labor
contract without a fixed period.'' \16\ Addressing this
provision, the Jiangsu High Court's Guiding Opinion on the
Handling of Employment Disputes ruled in December 2009 that an
employee may be entitled to an open-ended contract even if the
employee's 10 years include leave from work due to pregnancy or
other conditions allowed by the statute.\17\ A March 2010
opinion by the Shanghai High People's Court, however, construes
the law more strictly, indicating that judges should deny
employees' requests for open-ended contracts in such
situations.\18\ Such variance in interpretation across locales
potentially lays the groundwork for disputes leading ultimately
to calls for further national-level clarification of ambiguity
in the law's provisions.
Recent Worker Actions
Widespread reports of strikes and demonstrations continued
during this reporting year, especially in manufacturing centers
in southern China. Strikes were often prompted by factory
slowdowns, closures, and nonpayment of wages or overtime.\19\
In these cases, trade unions often appeared during the period
of negotiation and settlement of the strike as subordinate to
the government.\20\ During the spring and summer of 2010,
Chinese and international media and non-governmental
organizations reported on a spate of worker actions--from a
succession of strikes to suicides at a factory compound--at
various enterprises in China, mostly foreign-owned, that
garnered attention in China and around the world.\21\
Unofficial reports suggest that the striking workers' primary
demand was higher wages. These reports also indicate that many
of the workers decided to participate in the strikes after
hearing coworkers who had worked at other factories recount
similar situations at their previous places of employment--
namely, low wage levels and subsequent successful attempts to
force employers to raise wages through work stoppages. In other
words, the spread of the strikes seemed to have resulted from a
``copy-cat chain'' of events inspired by previous successes
rather than an organized labor movement.\22\ Journalists,
commentators, and academics in China and abroad have also
pointed to changing attitudes of a new generation of workers,
migrant workers' difficulties in adjusting to urban factory
life, and the denial of the right to free association as
factors contributing to worker actions.\23\
Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining
The Chinese government prevents workers in China from
exercising the constitutionally protected freedom of
association.\24\ Trade union activity in China is organized
under the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), a
quasi-governmental organization under the direction of the
Communist Party.\25\ Leading trade union officials hold
concurrent high-ranking positions in the Party. The ACFTU
Constitution and the Trade Union Law of 1992 both highlight the
dual nature of the ACFTU to protect the legal rights and
interests of workers while supporting the leadership of the
Party and the broader goals and interests of the Chinese
government.\26\ The ACFTU monopolizes many worker rights issues
in China, such as shopfloor organizing and ``formalistic''
collective contract negotiations, but it does not consistently
or uniformly advance the rights of workers.\27\
In recent years, the central government has shown support
for an enlarged trade union role in collective contracting, and
in union organizing in private firms in China, including
multinational companies.\28\ These changes are less a sign of
opening up and liberalization than they are a collection of
strategies to improve the standing and legitimacy of the ACFTU
in workers' eyes. The government's strategy appears to be based
on its expectation that a more vibrant and engaged ACFTU may
limit demands for independent union organization and
spontaneous collective action by aggrieved workers.
At the shopfloor level, the ACFTU's unions remain weak and
marginalized. While the ACFTU and its affiliated unions at
lower administrative levels sometimes may play an important
role in legislative and regulatory development, this role is
not matched with power at the enterprise level. Generally
speaking, firm-level union branches are weak, nondemocratic,
and subordinate to management.\29\ Despite an increase in
legislation and administrative regulations that gives the ACFTU
more power at the firm level to
resolve disputes, the structural weaknesses of the trade union
branches make improvements in trade union autonomy and worker
advocacy difficult and slow.\30\
In its last Annual Report, the Commission noted that during
2009, with the impact of the global economic crisis and
increased government fear of social instability related to
rising unemployment, the trade union's role focused on
assisting the government in resolving labor disputes and
conflicts. This was reflected in the renewed emphasis on
mediation and local-level dispute resolution contained in local
regulations and measures. During 2010 it was no longer clear
that the global economic crisis still was the main driver of
the increase in labor disputes, as it appeared to be during
2009. The Chinese economy showed some signs of recovery, and
the migrant labor shortage first reported in 2004 began to
reappear.\31\ Some of the strikes and demands for higher wages
during 2010 may not be a sign of continued weakness on the part
of workers vis-a-vis management.\32\ Rather, they may reveal
that workers in some cases have been emboldened not only by
protections for workers codified in labor laws that took effect
in 2008, but also by a tighter labor market.\33\
Most workers who participated in recent strikes reportedly
were not calling for the formation of independent trade unions
per se, but rather were calling for unions to act more
independently and democratically within the confines of Chinese
law. A June 18, 2010, China Daily commentary noted that Chinese
workers' demands for genuine union representation was not the
same as a push for alternative unions.\34\ While acknowledging
that the government-run ACFTU ``has a herculean task ahead if
it wants to fulfill its assigned role of representing
workers,'' the article, written by a prominent Australia-based
expert on Chinese labor, states that Chinese workers ``are
willing to become members of the ACFTU,'' but that the ACFTU
should: \35\
Do away with the ``fake unions'' . . . [the ones]
assigned by the local governments, whose paramount
interest is to attract foreign investment . . . . These
governments now rent out land to companies and appoint
a few local union-ignorant people to run the trade
union offices . . . . The local trade union offices
should be put under the jurisdiction of the upper-level
union instead of local governments. The ACFTU should
allow workers to elect their representatives to their
workplace union committees, too, as has happened in a
very modest number of firms. Only then can the union
branches demonstrably represent workers' interests
rather [than] . . . employers' or governments'
[interests].\36\
The lack of genuine labor representation is well
documented. A representative of the Hong Kong-based labor
organization China Labour Bulletin told the Toronto Star in a
June 8 article that China's state-run labor unions ``will
rarely, if ever, stand four-square with workers.'' \37\ In the
past reporting year, however, Chinese officials have appeared
to be more willing to address the issue of more genuine worker
representation. As the global economic crisis deepened and the
number of labor disputes continued to increase at an alarming
rate, there has been greater emphasis on encouraging mutual
cooperation and agreement between employers and workers. A key
notion in recent regulatory development was that protection of
both workers' rights and employers' lawful rights and interests
was essential to maintain stable labor relations and to
continue with industrial and economic development.\38\
China's Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law, which
went into effect in 2008, underlined the requirement first to
exhaust all consultation, negotiation, and mediation avenues to
resolve labor disputes. The law suggests that arbitration and
litigation should be used only when the other alternatives
failed.\39\ It also indicates the importance of the tripartite
system of coordination between labor bureaus, trade unions, and
enterprise representatives to solve labor dispute cases
together.\40\ Earlier local interpretations echoed and
encouraged the use of this structure,\41\ and in some
instances, they also suggested major collaboration and
involvement from local governments and other relevant
departments and organizations.\42\
With the explosion of labor conflict cases in arbitration
committees and courts, however, the central government has been
trying to redirect these labor conflicts to other channels at
lower levels, and to encourage more mediation in general and
negotiation within enterprises.\43\ Local governments are
encouraged to strengthen and provide better guidance to improve
the competence of labor dispute mediation organizations,\44\
and there is emphasis on the communication and exchange of
information between the relevant bodies.\45\ Thus, the
government continues to seek inter-organizational
collaboration, where arbitration committees, courts, mediation
committees, trade unions, and enterprises research and work
together to resolve labor disputes.\46\ In Jiangsu province,
for example, the Human Resources and Social Security Office
issued a circular calling for the establishment of a ``Five in
One'' mechanism to resolve labor disputes, outlining the
respective responsibilities of judicial administrative
departments, the human resources and social security
department, the people's courts, arbitration committees, and
trade unions to first utilize mediation before proceeding to
the arbitration and judicial stages.\47\ A Chongqing
municipality notice also highlights the primary
responsibilities of mediation committees, while delineating the
rights of disputants and the procedures for all parties to
follow in dispute cases.\48\
The Supreme People's Court issued a judicial interpretation
in September 2010--its third since 2008--in an attempt to
clarify the courts' responsibilities to ``properly [hear] labor
dispute cases,'' the vast majority of which had failed to
result in satisfactory outcomes during the mediation and
arbitration stages.\49\ The interpretation specifies the types
of dispute cases deemed to be acceptable by the courts, noting
that people's courts shall accept, among others, cases
concerning disputes arising out of the restructuring of
enterprises,\50\ the failure of employers to pay wages as
stipulated in labor contracts,\51\ and when employees are
unable to obtain insurance benefits due to their employers'
failure to properly handle the required social insurance
application procedures.\52\
COLLECTIVE CONTRACTING
Collective contracts and some process of collective
consultation and negotiation have been part of Chinese labor
relations since the 1990s when state enterprise reform deepened
and labor conflict began to increase rapidly, especially in the
private sector. The ACFTU has championed collective contracts
and collective negotiations as important foundations for trade
union work at the enterprise level. In recent years, the
collective contract system has
received more Chinese government and Communist Party support as
part of an attempt to institutionalize a tripartite system of
labor relations at the local level between the government, the
ACFTU, and the employer associations.\53\ Nonetheless, the
collective contract and consultation system remains weak and
formalistic because enterprise-level trade union leaders are
not positioned to serve the interests of their workers. Many
collective contracts merely reflect the basic legal standards
in the locality and often are the result of concerted
government or Party work to encourage the enterprise to enter
into formalistic contracts rather than the result of genuine
bargaining between management and the enterprise trade
union.\54\
In December 2009, Zhang Jianguo, Director of the ACFTU's
Collective Contracts Department, stated that ``in mitigating
labour disputes, the fundamental issue is to establish a
collective bargaining system that would allow labour disputes
to be managed and
resolved within the enterprise. From this point of view,
collective bargaining is the route we must take in defusing
conflict and developing harmonious labour relations.'' \55\ Han
Dongfang, a well-known Chinese labor activist and founder of
the China Labour Bulletin, made this point in a more succinct
way:
The long-term trend is clear. The only way the
government can prevent greater social conflict is by
giving more power to the workers not less. If workers
have the right to negotiate as equals with the boss the
chances of disputes turning violent will be greatly
reduced. If on the other hand, the government ignores
workers' rights and gives the boss free rein, the
consequences will be very serious.\56\
In July 2010, Chinese media reports indicated that drafters
of Guangdong province's Regulations on the Democratic
Management of Enterprises (Regulations) began seeking opinions
from relevant government departments, workers, state-owned and
non-state-owned enterprises.\57\ One labor advocacy group
argued that these ``regulations . . . could, if implemented,
finally open the door to genuine worker participation in
collective bargaining in China.'' \58\ Article 38 of the draft
Regulations states that if less than one-third of workers
request wage consultations with management, they must notify
the enterprise union, and the union may consult with management
on the workers' behalf, and report the results to workers.\59\
However, if one-third or more of workers demand collective
consultations, the union must demand collective consultations
with the enterprise's management.\60\
The Guangdong government's decision to advance and demand
faster action on the drafting process appeared to be a response
to the recent worker actions in the spring and summer of
2010.\61\ The original draft of the Regulations initially was
submitted to the Guangdong Province People's Congress Standing
Committee in July 2008. However, with the onset of the global
financial crisis in the fall of 2008, officials reportedly
delayed further action on the draft.\62\ In July 2010, when
worker actions revealed a ``sharpened concern over [the]
problem of representation,'' officials recognized that, given
that the ``changes in labor supply and demand'' have enabled
workers to gradually gain more leverage in their relationships
with management, the absence of genuine representation can
easily turn common labor strife into a ``hard landing'' with
``intensified contradictions.'' \63\ Thus, by focusing on the
right of workers to carry out collective actions as well as the
representativeness and trustworthiness of unions, the draft
Regulations reportedly reflects an attempt to defuse potential
collective labor disputes by preemptively bringing workers into
formal legal and regulatory channels.\64\
While some labor activists appeared to be optimistic about
the draft's potential impact, an expert on Chinese labor
relations at the University of Michigan cautioned that
``without significant institutional reforms to the trade union
itself, including the system of leadership selection,
compensation and job security of trade union leaders within the
enterprise, and better support and training from higher level
unions, these reforms are unlikely to succeed.'' \65\ Still, in
recent years at least eight other provincial, city, and
autonomous regional governments have also enacted or put forth
for consideration their own regulations on enterprise
democratic management and collective consultations, including
the provinces of Guizhou,\66\ Hubei,\67\ Jiangsu,\68\
Shanxi,\69\ and Zhejiang,\70\ as well as the cities of Jinan
\71\ and Tianjin.\72\ Shanghai reportedly is advancing similar
regulations as well.\73\ However, Guandong's draft Regulations
are particularly noteworthy in that they specifically grant
workers the right to demand the initiation of collective wage
consultations--a right that typically has been reserved for
unions. In addition, some localities, including Beijing,\74\
Guangdong,\75\ Hainan,\76\ and Tianjin,\77\ also have issued
guidance notices and regulations highlighting collective
consultations' potential in fostering ``harmonious'' labor
relations and specifying the legal rights of parties involved
in collective consultations. In mid-September 2010, however,
media reports indicated that the Guangdong Province People's
Congress Standing Committee delayed further deliberation of
Guangdong's draft Regulations. Heavy lobbying by some members
of the Hong Kong industrial community, many of whom operate
factories in southern China, reportedly played a role in the
Standing Committee's decision.\78\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Migrant Workers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Chinese government characterizes as migrants rural residents who
have left their place of residence to seek non-agricultural jobs in
Chinese cities, sometimes in the same province and sometimes far from
home. China had more than 229 million migrant workers at the end of
2009, an increase of almost 2 percent from the year before.\79\
Official Chinese government statistics break down the total number of
migrants into those who spent less than half the year as migrants,
i.e., those who spent less than six months during the year away from
their place of legal residence (85 million in 2009), and those who
spent more than half the year as migrants (144 million in 2009).\80\
The Chinese household registration (hukou) system places restrictions
on migration between rural and urban areas in China. Therefore, migrant
workers may work in a city for many years but remain unable to qualify
for city residency. Without city residency, authorities may deny them
many basic public benefits, such as inclusion in social insurance
programs, education for their children, and healthcare.\81\ As a
marginalized urban group, migrant workers are often abused or exploited
by employers who take advantage of their insecure social position and
lower levels of education.\82\ While the central government has allowed
the hukou system to relax over time, this system of institutionalized
discrimination continues to affect adversely the social, civil, and
political rights of migrants.\83\
During the global economic crisis, wage arrears problems increased
dramatically as factories shut their doors.\84\ Moreover, even though
wages for migrant workers have been on the rise, they continued to work
longer hours for less pay than local residents.\85\ Many localities
have expanded efforts to include migrants in social insurance coverage.
However, there are still significant problems in terms of participation
(for both employers and employees), coverage, and portability between
rural and urban areas and even within urban areas. Migrant workers
generally are able to withdraw monies only from their individual
accounts, losing the larger percentage of their pensions that is paid
by their employers. With migrant workers facing uncertainty about
whether they would return to the same locale to look for new work, and
with the portability of pension accounts highly restricted, they chose
to withdraw their pensions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Migrant Workers--Continued
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Beijing Federation of Trade Unions survey of workers in Beijing
reportedly found that the percentage of migrant workers surveyed who
had signed formal employment contracts with their employers was
significantly lower than the percentage of workers with a Beijing urban
hukou who had done so.\86\ In February 2010, over 10,000 children of
migrant workers reportedly were unable to resume classes after the
Chinese New Year's holiday in some districts within Beijing as dozens
of schools faced forced demolitions.\87\ These students have few
alternatives--in Beijing, for example, state-run and legal private
schools can accommodate only half of all admissions demand.\88\ Adding
to the problem, many parents prefer to enroll their children in state-
run schools, since these institutions are cheaper and safer and have a
lower turnover of teachers.\89\ In an attempt to curb rising crime
rates, officials in Daxing, a Beijing suburb, are planning to carry out
a ``sealed management'' system (fengbi guanli) and build fences around
16 migrant communities, putting migrants behind ``tall metal fences and
high walls'' while ``newly-installed closed-circuit cameras sweep the
area for suspicious activity.'' \90\
A recent ACFTU study found that China's new generation of migrant
workers, unlike their parents, have higher expectations with regard to
wages and labor rights as they struggle to transition into urban
life.\91\ China's Minister of Agriculture, Han Changfu, observes the
several characteristics that set post-1990s workers apart from the
previous generations, pointing out that many of them have never put
down roots, are better educated, are the only child in the family, and
are more likely to demand equal access to employment and social
services--and even equal political rights--in the cities.\92\ Some
reports indicate that the so-called ``post-1980s'' and ``post-1990s''
new generation of migrant workers is at the forefront of the recent
strikes; in all, there are about 100 million young workers in China's
total pool of migrant workers.\93\ As a Chinese demographer explained,
the young workers have ``the greatest intention to become urban
residents and their problems can only be solved by making them such.''
\94\ The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security announced in
March 2010 that it would provide job training to about 600,000 migrant
workers each year,\95\ and high-level central government officials have
called for reforming the household registration system.\96\ [See also
Section II--Freedom of Residence and Movement.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Working Conditions
There is increasing evidence of deteriorating working
conditions for many Chinese workers and increasing bifurcation
of the workforce as highly skilled workers still are in high
demand while lower level workers bear the brunt of the global
economic downturn. The trend of informalization also
disadvantages the lower rungs of the labor market more severely
as employers seek to retain highly sought technical workers and
managers while reducing the size of the less skilled labor
force.\97\ Academic experts define informal employment as
employment that is not stable or secure, that lacks a written
agreement or contract, and that does not provide social
insurance or benefits.\98\ Since the mid-1990s, when China's
economic reforms quickened, there has been a ``rapid and
unprecedented rise'' in informal employment.\99\ Economists
estimate that 45 percent of urban employment in China is now
informal. Of workers in the state or collective sectors, 22
percent are employed informally, while the percentage rises to
84 percent for workers in the private sector. Informal
employment is also more likely for women, for the very young
and the very old, and among less educated workers.\100\
Workplace abuses also contributed to poor working
conditions. During the first five months of 2010, 10 workers
committed suicide at a Shenzhen factory compound owned by the
Taipei-based Foxconn Technology Group, which manufactures
electronic products for several foreign companies. Yang
Jianchang, a member of the Shenzhen People's Congress, blamed
authorities for failing to intervene, saying that ``the union
and officials . . . actually understand little about what the
youths really want and their sufferings.'' \101\ Nine labor
advocates embedded themselves in the factory as workers and
later published a report detailing that Foxconn ``uses military
style management,'' that its ``managers always scold workers,''
and that the company sometimes forces workers to sign contracts
against their will.\102\ In response to the worker suicides and
criticism from Chinese and foreign media as well as non-
governmental labor organizations that Foxconn's factory
``remains a typical sweatshop . . . that overlook[s] the basic
needs of their workers for the sake of profit,'' the company in
late May 2010 agreed to double workers' wages to 2,000 yuan
(US$294) per month.\103\
Wages
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, minimum wages
rose in 11 provincial-level areas across China. Shanghai,
Guangdong, and Zhejiang have monthly minimum wage levels above
the 1,000 yuan mark (US$148).\104\ Reports indicate that some
cities proceeded to raise minimum wages because they struggled
to compete for workers.\105\ A labor non-governmental
organization also attributed the rise in wages to the sudden
jump in prices at the end of 2009, when China's consumer price
index increased 1.9 percent, year on year, in December.\106\
China's 1994 Labor Law guarantees minimum wages for workers
and requires local governments to set wage standards for each
region.\107\ China's Labor Contract Law (LCL) improves formal
monitoring requirements by tasking local labor bureaus to
monitor labor practices to ensure rates adhere to minimum wage
standards.\108\ The law also imposes legal liability on
employers who pay rates below minimum wage.\109\ In addition,
the law guarantees minimum hourly wages for part-time
workers.\110\
Illegal labor practices, however, continue to undermine
minimum wage guarantees. Wage arrears remain a serious problem,
especially for migrant workers. Subcontracting practices within
industry exacerbate the problem of wage arrearages. When
investors and developers default on their payments to
construction companies, workers at the end of the chain of
labor subcontractors lack the means to recover wages from the
original defaulters. Some subcontractors neglect their own
duties to pay laborers and leave workers without any direct
avenue to demand their salaries.
Kang Houming, a delegate representing migrants at the
National People's Congress from Chongqing municipality, told a
Hong Kong magazine that, as of March 2010, there has yet to be
a ``fundamental solution to the wage arrears problems.'' \111\
The key concern is not only whether governments will raise
minimum wages, but also whether local governments will enforce
new wage levels even as enterprises complain that the increased
costs make them less competitive, and as some local interests
take abusive action against migrant workers who demand back
wages.\112\ In February 2010, in a case reflective of the
general problem, a group of migrant workers at a power plant in
Chongqing municipality's Wuxi county went to the Sinohydro
Foundation Engineering Company, which oversaw the operations at
the Wuxi plant, to demand their back wages after their
supervisor ``went missing'' during the Spring Festival.\113\
The workers, who staffed two 12-hour shifts daily without
written contracts, reportedly were later beaten by a gang of
people wielding knives and sticks.\114\
Working Hours
China's Labor Law mandates a maximum 8-hour workday and 44-
hour average workweek.\115\ Forced overtime and workdays much
longer than the legally mandated maximum are not uncommon,
especially in export sectors, where some employers avoid paying
overtime rates by compensating workers on a piece-rate basis
with quotas high enough to avoid requirements to pay overtime
wages.\116\ According to a report, suppliers in China avoid
exposing themselves to claims of requiring illegal long hours
by hiring firms that help them set up double booking systems
for foreign importers who aim to adhere to Chinese rules and
regulations. Such firms not only help suppliers prepare books
to pass audits, but also coach managers and employees on how to
respond to auditors' questions.\117\
Disputes over working hour abuses continued to be a major
reason for labor disputes, especially disputes involving
overtime or wage arrears related to past abuses and to
struggling enterprises avoiding legal responsibilities to cut
costs.\118\ China's Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law
lengthened the time allowed to file a dispute and also put more
evidentiary responsibility on the employer to demonstrate that
overtime abuses had not occurred, which also resulted in an
increase in the number of workers seeking compensation.\119\
Many workplaces reduced hours and salaries in the wake of the
global economic crisis, which led to workers' complaints over
minimum wage violations.\120\
Occupational Safety
LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND DEVELOPMENTS
China's Law on Safe Production, which took effect in 2002,
delineates a set of guidelines to prevent ``accidents due to
lack of work safety'' and to keep ``their occurrence at a lower
level, ensuring the safety of people's lives and property and
promoting the development of the economy.'' \121\ Specifically,
the law charges principal leading members of production and
business units to educate workers on safety issues and
formulate rules of operation; \122\ protects workers' right to
speak up and address work safety issues; \123\ sets forth trade
unions' right to pursue workers' complaints over safety issues;
\124\ tasks local governments to inspect, examine, and handle
violations and potential dangers in a timely manner; \125\ and
lays out the consequences for noncompliance.\126\
In 2009, there were 2,631 reported deaths in Chinese mines,
representing a decrease from a high of 6,995 in 2002.\127\
Workers in China, however, continued to face persistent
occupational safety issues during this reporting year. Miners
are limited in their ability to promote safer working
conditions in part due to legal obstacles to independent
organizing. Collusion between mine operators and local
government officials reportedly remains widespread. As one Hong
Kong-based labor advocacy group explained to Time Magazine,
``[T]he people who are tasked with doing the investigations [of
mine accidents] are the same people who have financial
interests in the mines themselves.'' \128\ The China Daily
reported that even though the ``heaviest fine specified by the
national safety laws amounts to 2 million yuan (US$294,117) . .
. not a single coal mine in China has ever incurred such a
heavy fine for safety violations,'' and ``fines of 1 million
yuan (US$147,058), which have been seen in some areas, are
regarded as harsh enough.'' \129\ During this reporting year,
the Chinese government continued to control media coverage of
workplace accidents.
WORKERS COMPENSATION
One major problem facing injured workers or their family
members pushing to receive timely compensation is China's
``complicated and incredibly time consuming'' work-related
injury compensation procedure; in some instances, cases can
last for decades.\130\ It is difficult to determine the total
number of cases in part because many cases never are reported
due to the convoluted nature of the compensation process.\131\
Moreover, Chinese courts and doctors do not routinely recognize
some occupational diseases; while traumatic work injuries and
deaths have been widely recognized and reported, experts on
workers compensation litigation in China report failures to
diagnose diseases like silicosis, and failure to recognize that
the condition may be caused by exposure at work.\132\ As a
result, the extent of work-related diseases like silicosis
remains difficult to measure and report and, therefore, in many
cases goes largely unrecognized.
A Chinese worker stricken with an occupational illness or
injury must undergo a ``diagnosis . . . conducted by medical
and health institutions approved by the public health
administration departments of the people's governments at or
above the provincial level.'' \133\ The worker, or a close
relative, must then apply to the local human resources and
social security bureau within one year after the issuance of
the diagnosis in order to receive an official certification of
work-related injury/disability.\134\ This certification, the
``key document'' that enables ``official classification of
incapacity,'' allows the worker to apply for benefits, which is
also a complicated process.\135\ If the worker's application is
rejected, he or she must appeal to the labor dispute
arbitration committee, though its rulings are nonbinding. Only
if the committee makes a decision that is unfavorable can the
worker proceed with civil litigation.\136\ The process becomes
even more problematic given the reality ``faced by migrant
workers, most of whom will have already left their jobs and
moved back home by the time clinical symptoms of the disease
become apparent.'' \137\
Central government directives encourage local governments
to pressure bereaved families into signing compensation
agreements and to condition out-of-court compensation
settlements on forfeiture by bereaved families of their rights
to seek further compensation through the court system.\138\
There have been reports of local officials preempting class
actions by prohibiting contact among members of bereaved
families in order to forestall coordination.\139\ In December
2009, Li Liang, a 26-year-old engineer, collapsed on a factory
bus and died in Suzhou city ``amid a spate of workers falling
seriously ill from chemical poisoning.'' \140\ The factory,
which produces electronic touch screens for several foreign
companies, reportedly assigned workers to clean the screens
with the toxic solvent n-hexane ``in violation of local codes
and without proper safety equipment.'' \141\ After Li's death,
2,000 workers went on strike to demonstrate their concerns over
prolonged exposure to the chemical. Officially, management told
other employees that Li had died of a heart attack. Authorities
were never able to determine Li's cause of death, since
management persuaded the victim's father to have the body
cremated before the family received medical expenses and
humanitarian aid from the company, some of which came from Li's
coworkers.\142\
Child Labor
Child labor remained a persistent problem during this
reporting year.\143\ As a member of the International Labour
Organization (ILO), China has ratified the two core conventions
on the elimination of child labor.\144\ China's Labor Law and
related legislation prohibit the employment of minors under 16
years old,\145\ and both national and local legal provisions
prohibiting child labor stipulate a series of fines for
employing children.\146\ Under China's Criminal Law, employers
and supervisors face prison sentences of up to seven years for
forcing children to work under conditions of extreme
danger.\147\ Systemic problems in enforcement, however, have
dulled the effects of these legal measures. The overall extent
of child labor in China is unclear in part because the
government classifies data on the matter as ``highly secret.''
\148\
Child laborers reportedly work in low-skill service sectors
as well as small workshops and businesses, including textile,
toy, and shoe manufacturing enterprises.\149\ Many underage
laborers reportedly are in their teens, typically ranging from
13 to 15 years old, a phenomenon exacerbated by problems in the
education system and labor shortages of adult workers.\150\ In
April 2010, the National Labor Committee, a New York-based
nonprofit that focuses on U.S. companies' treatment of foreign
workers, alleged that two factories in Dongguan city, Guangdong
province that manufacture products for Microsoft recruited
``hundreds--even up to 1,000--`work study students' 16 and 17
years of age, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a
week.'' \151\ They were required to produce 2,000 computer mice
per shift and are ``prohibited from talking, listening to music
or using the bathroom during working hours.'' \152\ The report
also found that:
These hours and conditions are blatantly illegal. Under
China's laws, 14- and 15-year-olds may not work, while
16- and 17-year-olds are classified as ``non-adult''
workers, who cannot work more than eight hours a
day.\153\
Investigators working for Dongguan's Human Resources Bureau
told the Associated Press that factories are allowed to hire
workers between 16 and 18 years of age as long as management
registers them with the authorities.\154\ However, KYE
factories reportedly hired 385 such workers, of which 326 were
not ``properly registered.'' \155\ A company representative
reportedly acknowledged management's failure to register these
workers, and reportedly said they ``would now fix the
problem.'' \156\
The Chinese government, which has condemned the use of
child labor and pledged to take stronger measures to combat
it,\157\ permits ``work-study'' programs and activities that in
practical terms perpetuate the practice of child labor, and are
tantamount to official endorsement of it.\158\ National
provisions prohibiting child labor provide that ``education
practice labor'' and vocational skills training labor organized
by schools and other educational and vocational institutes do
not constitute use of child labor when such
activities do not adversely affect the safety and health of the
students.\159\ The Education Law supports schools that
establish work-study and other programs, provided that the
programs do not negatively affect normal studies.\160\ These
provisions contravene China's obligations as a Member State to
ILO conventions prohibiting child labor.\161\ In 2006, the
ILO's Committee of Experts on the Applications of Conventions
and Recommendations ``expresse[d] . . . concern at the
situation of children under 18 years performing forced labor
not only in the framework of re-educational and reformative
measures, but also in regular work programs at school.'' \162\
Prison Labor
During this reporting year, the Commission monitored
reports on prison labor in China.\163\ The export of prison
products from China reportedly continues despite China's
Provisions Reiterating the Prohibition on the Export of
Products Made by Prisoners Undergoing Reeducation Through
Labor, which prohibit the export of such products.\164\ Media
reports during the reporting year also have described the
alleged export of prison labor from China to worksites in other
countries operated by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Chinese
prisoners reportedly have worked on housing and other
infrastructure projects such as ports and railroads in Sri
Lanka and the Maldives, among other places.\165\ China's Law on
the Control of Exit and Entry of Citizens states that
``approval to exit from the country shall not be granted to . .
. convicted persons serving their sentences.'' \166\ Despite
the existing law, however, and despite Chinese officials'
encouragement for companies to increase the number of local
residents that they hire and train in foreign countries, one
academic who follows the issue wrote that it is the operating
practice of some Chinese companies on overseas projects to
``keep the number of local workers to a bare minimum and to
bring in much of the work force from China, including convicts
`freed' on parole . . . .'' \167\ A Ministry of Commerce
official dismissed such allegations made in media reports,
telling People's Daily that, based on China's own laws and
regulations, ``enterprises engaged in foreign contracted
projects . . . must . . . assign employees who . . . have no
misconduct record or criminal record to work overseas.'' \168\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
China's International Commitments to Worker Rights
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a member of the International Labour Organization (ILO), China is
obligated to respect a basic set of internationally recognized labor
rights for workers, including freedom of association and the
``effective recognition'' of the right to collective bargaining.\169\
China is also a permanent member of the ILO's governing body.\170\ The
ILO's Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work
(1998 Declaration) commits ILO members ``to respect, to promote and to
realize'' these fundamental rights based on ``the very fact of [ILO]
membership.'' \171\
The ILO's eight core conventions articulate the scope of worker rights
and principles enumerated in the 1998 Declaration. Each member is
committed to respect the fundamental right or principle addressed in
each core convention, even if that member state has not ratified the
convention. China has ratified four of the eight ILO core conventions,
including two core conventions on the abolition of child labor (No. 138
and No. 182) and two on non-discrimination in employment and occupation
(No. 100 and No. 111).\172\ The ILO has reported that the Chinese
government is preparing to ratify the two core conventions on forced
labor (No. 29 and No. 105).\173\ On its face, Chinese labor law appears
to incorporate some of the basic obligations of the ILO's eight core
conventions, but, in practice, many of these obligations remain
unfulfilled.\174\ Importantly, Chinese labor law does not incorporate
basic obligations of the ILO's provisions relating to the freedom of
association and the right to collective bargaining.
The Chinese government is a state party to the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which guarantees the
right of workers to strike, the right of workers to organize
independent unions, the right of trade unions to function freely, the
right of trade unions to establish national federations or
confederations, and the right of the latter to form or join
international trade union organizations.\175\ In ratifying the ICESCR,
the Chinese government made a reservation to Article 8(1)(a), which
guarantees workers the right to form free trade unions. The government
asserts that application of the article should be consistent with
Chinese law, which does not allow for the creation of independent trade
unions.\176\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Criminal Justice
Introduction
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, international
and Chinese domestic media have documented a range of new as
well as ongoing problems within China's justice system,
including detention abuses, coerced confessions, and police
torture. Closed trial proceedings and trial procedures that
unfairly disadvantage criminal suspects and defendants continue
to contravene protections in both Chinese and international
law. Public security administrative powers remain unchecked
despite growing media coverage and public controversy.
Chinese and international media reported on various
criminal justice policy developments during this reporting
year, including reforms to stem the use of coerced confessions,
to limit the number of executions, and to address public
dissatisfaction with public security authorities.\1\ While
there were some potentially positive
developments, the Chinese criminal justice system in practice
consistently contravened domestic legal protections and
continued to fall short of upholding international human rights
standards. The Chinese government adopted legislation and
regulations that signal new challenges for human rights
advocates and reformers within the justice system. The National
People's Congress, for instance, passed new amendments to
tighten controls over communications under its state secrets
law and increased restrictions on lawyers and law firms that
work on politically sensitive cases or cases involving mass
incidents.\2\ The rights of criminal suspects and defendants
continued to fall far short of the rights guaranteed in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as rights
provided for under China's Criminal Procedure Law and
Constitution.\3\ Although China's 2009-2010 National Human
Rights Action Plan (HRAP), released in April 2009, signaled the
Chinese government's commitment to improving the ``process of
law enforcement and judicial work,'' Chinese authorities have
not implemented criminal justice provisions in the HRAP
consistently.\4\
Abuse of Police Powers: Suppression of Dissent
Chinese authorities' targeting of human rights advocates
and defenders in the leadup to sensitive dates and events in
2009 continued through the 2010 reporting year. In the period
surrounding sensitive events, such as the 60th anniversary of
the founding of the People's Republic of China in October 2009,
U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to China in November 2009,
the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (Two
Sessions) in March 2010, the 21st anniversary of the 1989
Tiananmen protests, and the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, public
security officers and unidentified personnel continued to use
detention measures against human rights advocates, petitioners,
and their families.
Public security officers continued to engage in extralegal
tactics such as harassment, assault, kidnappings, and illegal
detention in order to punish Chinese citizens who expressed
dissent or sought to defend their rights and the rights of
others. Such arbitrary restrictions on personal liberty,
freedom of expression, and freedom of peaceful assembly and
association contravene the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, as well as China's Constitution.\5\ In September 2009,
for example, prominent activist Qi Zhiyong said Chinese
authorities placed him under home confinement and told him to
leave Beijing prior to China's National Day parade.\6\ In the
leadup to President Obama's visit to China in November 2009,
Chinese law enforcement officials reportedly detained dozens of
rights defenders and reform advocates.\7\ On November 13, 2009,
public security officers took away Zhao Lianhai, the head of an
advocacy group for parents of children sickened by melamine-
tainted milk, searched his house, and confiscated personal
property. When Zhao refused to comply with the public security
officers because the summons did not specify a charge, the
police officers added ``provoking an incident'' to the
summons.\8\ In February 2010, before the Two Sessions, Beijing
and Shanghai police forcefully removed Mao Hengfeng, a longtime
Shanghai petitioner, from her Beijing hotel room; subsequently,
the Shanghai Municipal Reeducation Through Labor Committee
ordered her to serve 18 months of reeducation through labor for
her involvement in a protest that occurred outside a Beijing
court in December 2009.\9\ [See box titled Liu Xiaobo in
Section II--Freedom of Expression.] During the Two Sessions in
early March 2010, the non-governmental organization Chinese
Human Rights Defenders reported that public security officers
detained more than 20 petitioners.\10\ Chinese police similarly
acted to limit free speech and activism in the period before
and during the Shanghai Expo. Shanghai public security officers
reportedly detained, threatened, and placed under surveillance
housing petitioners that sought to exercise their
constitutional right to petition. [For more information on the
Shanghai Expo, see Section III--Access to Justice--Abuse of
Petitioners.] In early April 2010, Shanghai police sent human
rights advocates notices warning them not to go near the
Shanghai Expo.\11\ In June 2010, Human Rights in China, a U.S.-
based
non-governmental organization, reported that police authorities
detained and abused members of the Guizhou Human Rights
Symposium for planning to commemorate the 21st anniversary of
the Tiananmen protests.\12\ Later in June 2010, state security
officers reportedly abducted Beijing-based human rights
advocate Liu Dejun and took him to the outskirts of Beijing,
where he was beaten and threatened before being left on the
side of the road.\13\
Lawyers and rights defenders who took on ``sensitive''
cases or who became involved with ``sensitive'' issues during
the past year were harassed, abducted, or beaten by public
security officers or unidentified personnel working under the
direction of, or with the knowledge of, the public security
bureau. In November 2009, public security officers detained
Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer, for more than
13 hours, after he and other activists gathered outside the
U.S. Embassy for a possible meeting with President Obama.\14\
In January 2010, Chinese lawyers met with imprisoned human
rights lawyer Wang Yonghang who defended Falun Gong prisoners
and verified reports that authorities beat Wang on three
occasions following his kidnapping by plainclothes police
officers.\15\ Prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng
resurfaced in late March after ``disappearing'' into what
experts on the case describe as official custody for more than
a year, but news outlets reported that Gao once again
``disappeared'' in late April.\16\ [For more information, see
Section III--Access to Justice--Human Rights Lawyers and
Defenders.]
Pretrial Detention and Prisons: Torture and Abuse in Custody
Although China officially claims to have outlawed torture
in 1996 with amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law and the
Criminal Law, torture and abuse by law enforcement officers
remain widespread. In November 2008, the UN Committee against
Torture (UNCAT) stated it ``remains deeply concerned about the
continued allegations . . . of routine and widespread use of
torture and ill-treatment of suspects in police custody,
especially to extract confessions or information to be used in
criminal proceedings.'' \17\ While the Chinese government
objected to the UNCAT report's findings in its November 2009
followup report, over this reporting year, the Commission
observed cases of alleged torture during pretrial detention and
the continued reporting of suspicious deaths in detention
centers.\18\
Despite the government's public efforts to combat the
practice of torture, international media, domestic news sites,
and non-governmental organizations have documented ongoing
problems of police torture and other forms of police
mistreatment. Public security officers have allegedly employed
various torture measures, including beatings, electric shock,
cigarette burnings, and sleep deprivation.\19\ In December
2009, the Yancheng Evening News reported that 19 out of 26
suspects in Chongqing municipality's ``anticrime'' crackdown
alleged that police used torture to extract confessions.\20\ In
February 2010, a Dahe Net article (reprinted in the Global
Times, which operates under the official People's Daily)
reported that the Mengzhou Municipal People's Court sentenced
three police officers to varying periods of fixed-term
imprisonment or to suspended sentences for using torture to
extract a confession after the officers ruptured a suspect's
bladder with tear gas canisters.\21\ In May 2010, environmental
activist Wu Lihong described his mistreatment in prison to
international reporters: ``They used tree branches to whip my
head, burned my hands with cigarettes and kicked and beat me
until my arms and legs were swollen and my head was spinning.''
\22\ [For more information, see Section II--Climate Change and
the Environment.] In a related case, Zhu Mingyong, a lawyer for
alleged Chongqing criminal syndicate boss Fan Qihang, made
public secret recordings of his client detailing numerous forms
of torture in July 2010, after submitting recordings and
pictures documenting Fan's torture to the Supreme People's
Court for review.\23\
During this reporting year, an earlier case of torture
emerged, sparking national interest in the justice system's
overreliance on confessions in criminal trials. In May, the
China Daily reported that officials in Shangqiu city, Henan
province, admitted police officers had tortured criminal
suspect Zhao Zuohai into confessing to a murder.\24\ Zhao, who
spent 11 years in prison before being released after the
supposed victim reappeared in late April, was reportedly beaten
and forced ``to stay awake for more than 30 days'' during the
interrogation process.\25\ Days after his release, the Henan
High People's Court acquitted Zhao in a retrial, and the
Shangqiu Intermediate People's Court awarded Zhao 650,000 yuan
(US$96,000) in compensation. In June, the Procuratorial Daily
reported that the ``wrongful case of Zhao Zuohai'' had sparked
a ``great amount of public concern,'' particularly over the
causes behind such an injustice.\26\ A May 2010 China Daily
editorial advocated for greater oversight to prevent future
abuses, stating, ``The police ought to police themselves to rid
its [sic] reputation of such taints.'' \27\
Chinese print and online media outlets have continued
reporting on several instances of ``bizarre'' or ``unnatural''
detention deaths over the year, which, according to the China
Daily, have reportedly ``sparked nationwide discussion about
inmates' human rights and the proper management of detention
houses.'' \28\ In news reports and online forums, the detention
deaths received high-profile monikers, following the widely
reported ``hide-and-seek'' death of detainee Li Qiaoming in
February 2009.\29\ During this reporting year, the Chinese
media reported on unnatural death cases and official
explanations that reportedly captured public attention,
including deaths linked to ``taking a shower,'' ``drinking hot
water,'' ``falling in the bathroom,'' ``hanging by shoelaces,''
and ``having a nightmare.'' \30\ According to a June Zhejiang
Daily report, ``the naming convention[s]'' related to these
official explanations that have emerged are a ``glib poke at
the official line that time and again accompanies these
tragedies, a line that clumsily obfuscates the most commonly
suspected cause of the deaths, which is abuse at the hands of
detention center personnel.'' The reports of unnatural deaths
have shaken public confidence in China's judicial system,
according to various media reports.\31\ In March 2010, Minister
of Public Security Meng Jianzhu addressed the controversy,
urging reform and stating that the unnatural deaths have
``seriously harmed the public's confidence in law enforcement
by police authorities.'' \32\
During this reporting year, Chinese authorities announced
new measures intended to limit inmate abuse and police torture
by improving the criminal justice system. At the end of May,
the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate,
and the Ministries of Public Security, State Security, and
Justice released two evidence guidelines that prohibit the use
of illegally obtained evidence to convict defendants.\33\ In
May, the Ministries of Public Security, Supervision, and Human
Resources and Social Security jointly issued the first police
discipline regulation, which went into effect in June 2010 and
details punishments for 76 types of misconduct including
sanctioning inmates to mistreat suspects.\34\ The amended State
Compensation Law, which enters into effect in December 2010,
stipulates that when a detainee dies or is incapacitated, the
authorities shall be required to provide evidence proving they
are not responsible.\35\
Arrest and Trial Procedure Issues
ACCESS TO COUNSEL
The right to legal counsel in criminal trials is not a
guaranteed legal right for all defendants in China, even though
China's Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) and Lawyers Law provide
guidelines for legal representation in criminal trials.\36\
Many criminal defendants reportedly do not have access to legal
assistance. This is counter to provisions under Article
14(3)(d) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, which China signed in 1998 but has not yet
ratified.\37\
Most Chinese defendants confront the criminal process
without the assistance of an attorney.\38\ According to a
survey reported on Qianlong Web, lawyers participated in
criminal defense in approximately 30 percent of criminal cases
nationally, and in Beijing, the rate of legal representation
was less than 10 percent.\39\ In March 2010, All China Lawyers
Association (ACLA) President Yu Ning told China Newsweek that
criminal defense may be in decline since many Chinese lawyers
seek more profitable legal fields and hope to avoid the risks
associated with criminal law.\40\
Chinese criminal lawyers continue to confront obstacles in
handling cases, most notably in managing the ``three
difficulties'' (san nan) of criminal defense--gaining access to
detained clients, reviewing the prosecutors' case files, and
collecting evidence.\41\ Although authorities amended the 2008
Lawyers Law to address these longstanding issues, ACLA Vice
President Wang Junfeng said in December 2009 that, based on
national ACLA surveys conducted in late 2009, the amended
Lawyers Law had not ``fundamentally resolved'' the ``three
difficulties'' and that some lawyers expressed concerns that
the amended Lawyers Law posed new difficulties for the legal
profession.\42\ Many lawyers in the survey expressed
frustration with justice officials for failing to honor new
rights under the Lawyers Law, due to incongruence between the
CPL and the revised Lawyers Law.\43\ A senior lawyer with the
ACLA, Li Guifang, told the China Daily in June 2010 that it is
``almost impossible'' for criminal defense attorneys to meet
with their clients within the first 48 hours of detention--a
period he characterized as ``a crucial time in getting to grips
with a case and vital for warning a suspect of his legal rights
and responsibilities.'' \44\
Chinese lawyers also remain vulnerable to prosecution under
controversial Article 306 of China's Criminal Law (commonly
referred to as the ``lawyer-perjury'' statute), a legal
provision on evidence fabrication that specifically targets
defense attorneys.\45\
Because of the risks presented by Article 306, most defense
attorneys reportedly engage in passive defense: they focus on
finding flaws and weaknesses in the prosecutors' evidence
rather than actively conducting their own investigations.\46\
Human rights groups and Chinese legal experts estimate that
more than 100 defense attorneys have been charged with evidence
fabrication under Article 306 and suspect the statute has had a
``chilling effect for defense lawyers, who may decide to defend
clients less forcefully than they otherwise would for fear of
displeasing the prosecution.'' \47\ According to a March Legal
Daily article, Article 306 may be responsible for declining
rates of criminal representation: ``Because of Article 306, an
increasing number of lawyers are leaning toward noncriminal
procedure professions, which has led to an increasing decline
in the rate of criminal defense.'' \48\
In late 2009 and early 2010, the case against prominent
Beijing-based lawyer Li Zhuang and its handling figured
prominently in national Chinese news and in ongoing debates
over Article 306.\49\ In early February 2010, the Chongqing No.
1 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Li to a prison term of
one year and six months for falsifying evidence and inciting
others to bear false witness (under Article 306) in what
reportedly was widely regarded as political targeting.\50\
FAIRNESS OF CRIMINAL TRIALS
Chinese lawyers and criminal defendants continue to face
numerous obstacles in defending the right to a fair trial.
Closed trials, political influence, and a lack of transparency
in judicial decisionmaking remain commonplace within the
justice system. Although China has signed and committed to
ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), Chinese officials routinely sentence defendants in
trials that fall far short of fair trial standards set forth in
the ICCPR.
During this reporting year, the Commission has observed
several notable cases in which Chinese judicial authorities
failed to uphold defendants' right to a fair trial in
accordance with domestic and international law.
In November 2009, the Wuhou District People's
Court in Chengdu city, Sichuan province, sentenced
veteran activist Huang Qi, whose human rights Web site
advocated on behalf of grieving parents after the May
12 Sichuan earthquake, to three years' imprisonment for
violating China's broad and vague ``state secrets''
legal framework.\51\ Throughout the legal process,
owing to the broad definition of state secrets,
authorities granted Huang's lawyers, witnesses, and
associates limited access to evidence.\52\ [For more
information see Section II--Freedom of Expression--
Abuse of Vague Criminal Law Provisions--Other Crimes:
Splittism, State Secrets, and Slander.]
On December 25, 2009, a Beijing court
sentenced prominent intellectual Liu Xiaobo to 11 years
in prison for ``inciting subversion of state power''
for his role in organizing Charter 08, a treatise
advocating political reform and human rights, and
publishing six articles online.\53\ Among various
procedural violations, Liu was denied the right to hire
the attorney of his choice. Liu's defense attorneys
were also denied the right to present their opinions,
as required by law, to prosecutors before the
indictment was issued and were not given adequate time
to prepare for trial.\54\ [For more information see box
titled Liu Xiaobo in Section II--Freedom of
Expression.]
In June 2010, the Yanqi County People's Court,
located in Bayinguoleng (Bayangol) Mongol Autonomous
Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,
sentenced Karma Samdrub, a Tibetan environmentalist, to
15 years' imprisonment for ``illegally excavating and
robbing cultural sites or ancient tombs,'' charges that
were initially dropped in 1998.\55\ Karma Samdrub's
lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, called the trial a ``miscarriage
of justice'' due to a number of procedural
irregularities: ``evidence was tampered with,
inadequate translation was provided and the judge
refused to look into [Karma Samdrub's] claims of
beatings and sleep deprivation while in custody.'' \56\
[For more information see Section V--Tibet--Political
Imprisonment of Tibetans: Law as a Tool of Repression.]
Arbitrary Detention
Arbitrary detention in China takes many forms and continues
to be used widely by Chinese authorities to quell local
petitioners, government critics, and rights advocates.
Arbitrary detention includes various forms of extralegal
detention, such as ``black jails'' (hei jianyu); ``soft
detention'' (ruanjin), a form of unlawful home confinement;
reeducation through labor, an administrative detention of up to
four years for minor crimes; and forcible detention in
psychiatric hospitals for nonmedical reasons. Another form of
extralegal detention--shuanggui (often translated as ``double
regulation'' or ``double designation'')--is used by the
Communist Party for investigation of Party members, most often
officials in cases of suspected corruption.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention defines the
deprivation of personal liberty to be ``arbitrary'' if it meets
one of the following criteria: (1) there is clearly no legal
basis for the deprivation of liberty; (2) an individual is
deprived of his liberty for having exercised rights guaranteed
under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR);
or (3) there is grave noncompliance with fair trial standards
set forth in the UDHR and other international human rights
instruments.\57\ In addition, many forms of arbitrary detention
also violate China's own laws.\58\
``SOFT DETENTION'' AND CONTROL
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, the Commission
noted various reports of law enforcement authorities using
``soft
detention'' and surveillance measures to control and intimidate
Chinese citizens. The ``soft detention'' that numerous human
rights defenders, advocates, and their family members are
subjected to has no basis in Chinese law and constitutes
arbitrary detention under international human rights standards.
In late April 2010, for example, public security officers held
housing rights advocates and victims of forced evictions under
``soft detention'' at their homes in order to prevent them from
drawing attention away from the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.\59\
In June, the South China Morning Post reported on New York
University Law School Professor Jerome Cohen's visit with
criminal lawyer Zheng Enchong, who has remained under ``soft
detention'' since June 2006.\60\ In Cohen and Yu-Jie Chen's
South China Morning Post editorial on the meeting, the authors
described the circumstances behind Zheng's house arrest:
Around the clock, 12 guards, including uniformed
police, plain-clothes public security officials and
their hired hands, take turns manning the outer gate,
building entrance and hallway outside Zheng's
apartment. Strategically posted surveillance cameras
ensure that no one in the vicinity can escape police
eyes. Zheng, who is 60, only leaves when summoned by
police and has been summoned at least 77 times since
2006 for interrogations that are intimidating and
occasionally physically abusive. His home has been
searched 11 times, and five computers have been
confiscated. He generally has no Internet access, and
his phone is monitored when not disconnected.\61\
Petitioners and activists across China continue to face the
threat of police surveillance and home confinement for
criticizing government policies, challenging officials, and
advocating for human rights. Huang Yuqin, a Shanghai resident
whose home was demolished on March 2, 2010, was placed under
``soft detention'' and prevented from leaving her home on at
least one occasion.\62\ Public
security officers placed Beijing activists Cha Jianguo and Gao
Hongming, founders of the China Democracy Party, under ``soft
detention'' in late January 2010. Although police stationed at
Cha and Gao's apartment blocks did permit them to leave their
homes, the police directed Cha and Gao to travel in police
vehicles.\63\ In July 2010, authorities placed a number of
civil society activists under ``soft detention'' during German
Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to Beijing. Those who
reportedly faced harassment or restrictions on movement
included Yang Jing, Qi Zhiyong, Wang Debang, and Xu
Yonghai.\64\
REEDUCATION THROUGH LABOR
Public security officers continue to use the reeducation
through labor (RTL) system to silence critics and to circumvent
the criminal procedure process. RTL is an administrative
measure that allows Chinese law enforcement officials to order
Chinese citizens, without legal proceedings or due process, to
serve a period of administrative detention of up to three
years, with the possibility of up to one-year extension.\65\
While Chinese sources maintain that the RTL system has been
established ``to maintain public order, to prevent and reduce
crime, and to provide compulsory educational reform to minor
offenders,'' RTL is used frequently to punish, among others,
dissidents, drug addicts, petitioners, Falun Gong adherents,
and religious practitioners who belong to religious groups not
approved by the government.\66\
During this reporting year, the Commission observed
numerous accounts of RTL orders violating the legal rights of
Chinese citizens, specifically their rights to a fair trial and
to be protected from arbitrary detention.\67\ In October 2009,
the non-governmental organization Chinese Human Rights
Defenders reported that the Shenyang RTL Committee ordered
democracy advocate Sun Fuquan to serve one year and nine months
of RTL in February 2009 for ``inciting subversion of state
power'' and ``splittist speech'' by posting information online
about the violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen
protests.\68\ In March 2010, the Shanghai RTL Committee ordered
Shanghai petitioner Mao Hengfeng to serve one year and six
months of RTL for ``disturbing social order'' after she shouted
slogans outside a Beijing court on December 25, 2009. On April
13, 2010, the Shanghai RTL Committee ordered Shanghai
petitioner Chen Jianfang to serve one year and three months of
RTL for committing ``acts disruptive to social order,'' after
he participated in a peaceful protest outside of Peking
University on April 17, 2009.\69\
Human rights advocates and legal experts within China have
been calling for an end to RTL for decades. In 2008, another
public call to end RTL came in the treatise Charter 08, which
was signed initially by 303 Chinese intellectuals, human rights
advocates, and others. The Charter states: ``All persons should
be free from unlawful arrest, detention, summons,
interrogation, and punishment. The system of reeducation
through labor should be abolished.'' \70\ In March 2010, the
Chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee,
Wu Bangguo, announced that the Illegal Behavior Correction Law,
which in recent years has been discussed as possibly replacing
the RTL regulations, had been included in the 2010 legislative
agenda.\71\ In 2010, two prominent Chinese legal scholars
publicly debated abolishing and reforming the reeducation
through labor system in a series of public opinion
editorials.\72\
``BLACK JAILS'': SECRET DETENTION SITES
During this reporting year, Chinese authorities continued
to use ``black jails'' (hei jianyu), secret detention sites
established by local officials, to detain and punish
petitioners who travel to Beijing and provincial capitals to
voice complaints and seek redress for injustices. Inside the
black jails, detainees are denied access to legal counsel and
in most cases, contact with family and friends. A
November 2009 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report detailed
conditions at the black jails: ``Detainees are kept under
constant surveillance, and subject to often arbitrary physical
and psychological abuse including beatings, sexual violence,
threats and intimidation.'' \73\
The Chinese government continues to deny the existence of
black jails. In November 2009, Foreign Ministry spokesperson
Qin Gang told reporters: ``I can assure you there are no so-
called black jails in China. We put people first, and we are an
administration for the people.'' \74\ Still, the existence of
black jails of various forms throughout China is well
documented by international organizations and, increasingly,
domestic media. Black jails arose as a substitute for the
dismantled ``custody and repatriation'' (shourong qiansong)
centers that had been used to detain petitioners and
undocumented migrants until the centers were abolished in
2003.\75\ Law professor and human rights defender Xu Zhiyong
defines black jails as:
places used by provincial governments to illegally
imprison petitioners; we call them black jails because,
first, they are just like prisons--established by the
government to restrict people's freedom--and, second,
they are ``black'' because they have no basis in any
laws or regulations and are totally illegal.\76\
According to the HRW report on black jails, guards at the
detention centers ``routinely subject [the] detainees to abuses
including physical violence, theft, extortion, threats,
intimidation, and deprivation of food, sleep, and medical
care.'' \77\
During this reporting year, the Commission observed reports
by international and domestic Chinese media organizations on
black jails, as well as on the network of personnel that
intercept and abuse petitioners.\78\ In one prominent example
of domestic reporting, a Southern Weekly article reported in
August 2009 on the case of 21-year-old Li Ruirui from Anhui
province.\79\ According to the report, a black jail security
guard publicly raped Li after she had been detained for several
days in a black jail in the Juyuan Hotel in Beijing. In
December, a court in Beijing ordered the guard Xu Jian to serve
eight years in prison and pay 2,300 yuan (US$337) in
compensation.\80\ In late November, China's Oriental Outlook
Magazine, published by the official Xinhua news agency,
provided an investigative report on the network of black jails,
stating that they ``seriously damage the government's image.''
\81\ The report noted that, at certain times of the year, local
governments employ over 10,000 black jail ``retrievers'' to
abduct citizens and pay fees from 100 to 200 yuan (between
US$15 and US$30) per person per day of detention. The Oriental
Outlook report stated there were at least 73 black jails in
Beijing alone. Chinese human rights observers stated that this
was the first time an official, high-level magazine
acknowledged the existence of black jails; however, the article
did not appear to influence official statements on the
existence of black jails or prompt official calls to abolish
the detention centers.\82\
SHUANGGUI: EXTRALEGAL INVESTIGATORY DETENTION OF PARTY MEMBERS
During this reporting year, the Chinese media reported on
the Communist Party's use of shuanggui (often translated as
``double regulation'' or ``double designation''), a form of
extralegal detention that involves summoning Communist Party
members under investigation to appear at a designated place at
a designated time. Shuanggui investigations often precede
formal Party disciplinary sanctions or the transfer of suspects
to law enforcement agencies, if there has been a violation of
the criminal law. Although those under investigation are
reportedly held under conditions preferable to police
detention, in 2006, Professor Jerome Cohen pointed out that the
suspects are ``generally held incommunicado and denied some of
the protections to which criminal suspects are entitled at
least in principle.'' \83\ Shuanggui has no basis in Chinese
law and violates protections found in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights.\84\
Communist Party discipline inspection commissions continued
to use shuanggui during the past year to detain high-ranking
officials in the Communist Party's ongoing battle against
corruption. In October 2009, for example, Ou Shaoxuan, a former
top-level official of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region High
People's Court, was put under shuanggui for alleged corruption
in a property dispute.\85\ The China Daily reported in late
April 2009 that Chinese authorities had placed six officials
from the State Food and Drug Administration, the agency
responsible for issuing production licenses for biological
products and supervising drug safety, under shuanggui for
allegedly accepting bribes from drug companies.\86\
``Strike Hard'' and ``Anticrime'' Campaigns
With official sources reporting an increase in violent
crime and escalating social tensions with high-profile school
attacks, Chinese officials launched anticrime campaigns across
China during the reporting year.\87\ In June 2010, the Ministry
of Public Security announced the launch of the fourth round of
its national ``strike hard'' campaign (to take place between
July 2010 and February 2011) aimed at violent crime.\88\ In
June, the Vice Minister of Public Security Zhang Xinfeng told a
national meeting that ``China, during a process of social and
economic transformation, is facing emerging social conflicts
and new problems in social security.'' \89\ Traditionally,
``strike hard'' campaigns have been intense national crackdowns
of fixed duration associated with unusually harsh law
enforcement tactics, quick trials, and violations of criminal
procedure. In addition to the national ``strike hard''
campaign, provincial, municipal, and lower level governments
also undertook anticrime and anticorruption campaigns. In the
most high-profile example, the southwestern municipality of
Chongqing continued a massive, public ``anticrime'' sweep
(known in Chinese as ``striking organized crime and uprooting
evil'' [dahei chu'e]) of criminal syndicates and corrupt
officials that resulted in thousands of arrests and raised
various concerns about judicial independence and procedural
rights.
Launched in June 2009, the Chongqing anticrime campaign
continued to capture national publicity and lead to numerous
high-profile trials and arrests. By April 2010, Chongqing
authorities had arrested 14 high-ranking officials and more
than 3,000 others in the crackdown.\90\ In February 2010, in
one of the more publicized cases, the Chongqing No. 1
Intermediate People's Court sentenced Li Zhuang, a prominent
Beijing lawyer who represented alleged Chongqing organized
crime figure Gong Gangmo, to one year and six months in prison
for fabricating evidence and interfering with witness
testimony. While officials alleged that Li urged his client to
make false claims of torture by police and directed a lawyer to
make claims in support of the allegations, various Chinese
lawyers have asserted ``that the prosecution of Li is a
political vendetta because he, unlike most of the other defense
lawyers, fought hard for his client.'' \91\ In May 2010, the
Chongqing High People's Court upheld an April death sentence
for former Director of the Chongqing Municipal Judicial Bureau
Wen Qiang for his role in ``accepting bribes, shielding
criminal gangs, rape, and failing to account for his cash and
assets.'' \92\ In his May appeal, Wen confessed to ``85
percent'' of the charges, but maintained that the first trial
``inaccurately'' determined certain established crimes, which
had led to a ``more severe penalty.'' \93\
At the same time, however, Chinese scholars and lawyers
have expressed concern that efforts to satisfy public
resentment and meet anticrime targets have led to procedural
inconsistencies and wrongful convictions. Jiang Ping, former
President of the China University of Politics and Law, strongly
criticized the handling of the Li Zhuang case in an essay
widely circulated online, stating ``[n]o matter what you think
about it, from the most basic level, procedural justice was
violated.'' \94\ According to the July 1, 2010, Oriental
Outlook article, some Chinese legal scholars have criticized
the ``strike hard'' campaigns, whose ``severity and speed''
have led to criminal procedure violations. The article states
``the procedural rights of criminal suspects and defendants to
a certain extent are deprived--which is not consistent with the
spirit of the rule of law.'' \95\
Medical Parole
During this reporting year, Chinese authorities denied
medical parole and adequate medical treatment to those within
the prison system, particularly human rights advocates. The
U.S. State Department observed in its report on China's human
rights situation for 2009 that ``adequate, timely medical care
for prisoners remained a serious problem, despite official
assurances that prisoners have the right to prompt medical
treatment.'' \96\ Chinese authorities reportedly denied legal
advocate and rights defender Chen Guangcheng adequate medical
treatment while he was imprisoned.\97\ [For additional
discussion on Chen Guangcheng, see box titled Case Update: Chen
Guangcheng--Human Rights Defender in Section II--Population
Planning.] In April 2010, imprisoned activist Hu Jia, who had
been sentenced to three years and six months in April 2008, was
denied early release from prison despite a reportedly rapidly
deteriorating medical condition and possible liver cancer.\98\
In June 2010, Chinese authorities released Zhang Jianhong, also
known by his pen name Li Hong, who had been serving a six-year
sentence and suffers from advanced-stage Amyotrophic Lateral
Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Authorities first diagnosed
Zhang with advanced-stage muscular dystrophy in 2007, after
determining that he was ``suffering from muscle contractions
and spasms of the hands and feet, and gradual weakening of his
entire body.'' \99\ Despite the 2007 diagnosis, which qualified
him for medical parole, prison authorities rejected ``requests
from Zhang's family and lawyers for medical parole.'' \100\
Capital Punishment
In March 2010, Supreme People's Court President Wang
Shengjun emphasized the state policy of ``strictly controlling
and carefully applying the death penalty'' in his annual report
to the National People's Congress.\101\ Despite claims that
fewer executions occur, however, the Chinese government
maintained its policy of not releasing details on the thousands
reportedly executed annually and continues to keep information
on the death penalty a ``closely guarded state secret,''
according to a March 2010 Amnesty International report.\102\ In
August 2010, the National People's Congress reviewed the first
draft of the proposed eighth amendment to the Criminal Law,
which reportedly calls for reducing the current 68 crimes
punishable by death to 55 crimes.\103\ The reduction would
signal the first time the Chinese government has reduced the
number of crimes subject to the death penalty since the
Criminal Law was enacted in 1979.
In December 2009, China gained international attention for
executing British defendant Akmal Shaikh, the first EU national
to be executed in China since 1951, after refusing to allow
Shaikh to be examined by a doctor.\104\ Despite multiple
appeals by the British government based on Shaikh's ``serious
mental health problems,'' China executed Shaikh on December 29,
2009.\105\ According to an international media report, Chinese
authorities maintained that evidence of Shaikh's mental illness
was ``insufficient,'' and that the case was handled according
to Chinese law.\106\ China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson
Jiang Yu defended the execution, stating, ``The Chinese
judiciary's right to treat cases according to the rule of law
should be respected and there's nobody who has the right to
make improper comments on China's judicial sovereignty.'' \107\
International organizations and critics have claimed the
execution contravened the Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of
the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, adopted in 1984
by the UN Economic and Social Council, which states that
executions shall not be carried out on persons who suffer from
mental illness.\108\
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, China moved to
adopt lethal injection as the primary form of execution. Lethal
injection was legalized in China as an alternative to execution
by firing squad in the 1996 Criminal Procedure Law. In December
2009, Liaoning province became the first province to adopt
lethal injections as the sole form of execution.\109\ In 2010,
Beijing municipality also moved to implement lethal injections
for all executions.\110\
Freedom of Religion
Introduction
China's Constitution guarantees ``freedom of religious
belief'' but protects only ``normal religious activities,'' and
the government's restrictive framework toward religion
continued in the past year to prevent Chinese citizens from
exercising their right to freedom of religion in line with
international human rights standards.\1\ Some Chinese citizens
had space to practice their religion, but the Chinese
government continued to exert tight control over the affairs of
state-sanctioned religious communities and to repress religious
and spiritual activities falling outside the scope of Communist
Party-sanctioned practice. During the Commission's 2010
reporting year, the government maintained requirements that
religious organizations register with the government and submit
to the leadership of ``patriotic religious associations''
created by the Party to lead China's five recognized religions:
Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, and Taoism.
Unregistered groups risked harassment, detention, imprisonment,
and other abuses, as did members of registered groups deemed to
deviate from state-sanctioned activities. Variations in
implementation allowed some unregistered groups to function in
China,\2\ but such toleration was arbitrary and did not amount
to the full protection of these groups' rights.
As leadership in the State Administration for Religious
Affairs (SARA) changed in the past year,\3\ authorities
continued to affirm policies of control over religion. Despite
articulating a ``positive role'' for religious communities in
China, officials did not then use the notion of this ``positive
role'' to promote religious freedom, but rather used the
sentiment to bolster support for state economic and social
goals.\4\ According to Wang Zuo'an, the new head of SARA, ``The
starting point and stopping point of work on religion is to
unite and mobilize, to the greatest degree, the religious
masses' zeal, to build socialism with Chinese
characteristics.'' \5\
The government continued to use law to control religious
practice rather than protect the religious freedom of all
Chinese citizens. In April 2010, authorities marked the fifth-
year anniversary of implementation of the State Council
Regulation on Religious Affairs (RRA), which codifies the
government's and Party's restrictive framework for religion.\6\
While the RRA also provides some legal protections for
registered religious communities, it conditions many activities
on government oversight or approval.\7\ The RRA excludes
unregistered groups from limited state protections, leaving
them especially vulnerable to official harassment.\8\ In late
2009, Hubei and Hainan provinces each implemented new
provincial-level legislation that, compared to older
legislation they replace, provides more explicit protections
for registered religious communities, in line with the RRA, but
that also articulates more detailed state oversight of
religious activities. Both include, for example, limits on the
activities of clergy and other religious workers that were
absent from the earlier provincial legal measures they
replace.\9\ In January, SARA issued new trial measures on the
financial affairs of venues for religious activities,\10\
subjecting the venues to more clearly specified state
oversight, as well as specifying some protection for their
property and income.\11\ The new measures apply only to
registered religious venues, leaving unregistered venues both
outside this system of oversight and outside the limited
protections afforded by the measures.\12\ The State
Administration of Foreign Exchange issued a circular, effective
March 1, 2010, concerning foreign exchange donated to or by
domestic institutions that imposes unique requirements on
religious organizations to receive approval to accept one-time
donations over 1 million yuan (US$147,000).\13\ [See Section
III--Civil Society for more information.]
Buddhism
The Chinese government and Communist Party exercise control
over the doctrine and religious practices of Han Buddhists in
non-Tibetan areas in much the same manner as they do for other
religious communities.\14\ During the Commission's 2010
reporting year, the government and Party continued to control
Buddhist doctrine, as well as monitor and control unregistered
Buddhist groups and activities. [For more information on
conditions for Tibetan Buddhists, see Section V--Tibet.]
CONTROLS OVER BUDDHIST DOCTRINE
During this reporting year, the government continued to
control the institutions and religious practices of Buddhists
in an effort to bring them into conformity with Party goals and
policies. The government requires Buddhist groups and religious
personnel to register with the Buddhist Association of China
(BAC) \15\ in order to practice their religion and hold
religious services legally,\16\ and authorities tend to allow a
wider scope of activities for Buddhist groups that work more
closely with them.\17\ During this reporting year, authorities
continued to emphasize the BAC's role in promoting the
government's and Party's goals. For example, Wang Zuo'an--
Director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs
(SARA)--said in a February 2010 speech that the BAC ``received
the Party and government's approval'' \18\ for, among other
things, ``raising high the banner of loving the country and
loving religion, as well as the banner of solidarity and
progress . . ., spurring economic development, social harmony,
ethnic solidarity, [and] unification of the motherland . . .
.'' \19\
MONITORING AND CONTROL OF UNREGISTERED BUDDHIST GROUPS AND ACTIVITIES
Local authorities continued to monitor and control
unregistered Buddhist groups and activities during this
reporting year, labeling certain groups ``cult organizations''
and characterizing unapproved religious practices as
inconsistent with legal measures. For example, the government
continued to enforce a ban against at least one Buddhist group
that it has designated a ``cult organization'': a Taiwan-based
sect known as the Quan Yin Method (Guanyin Famen).\20\ A 2000
circular from the Ministry of Public Security that explains the
background of the Party's ban of the Quan Yin Method cites
criticism of the Party by the sect's founder, Supreme Master
Ching Hai.\21\ In addition, reports from local governments
throughout China in late 2009 and early 2010 focused on the
construction of unregistered Buddhist temples or statues,\22\
often characterizing these practices as ``illegal'' \23\ or
``indiscriminate.'' \24\ Echoing the language from these
reports, a September 2009 article from the People's Daily cited
the ``indiscriminate construction'' of temples and religious
statues as a problem.\25\ Some of these government reports
claimed that local authorities stopped a ``resurgence of the
indiscriminate construction'' of temples during this reporting
year.\26\ An October 19, 2009, manual posted on the Web site of
the Wuxi City Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau, Jiangsu
province offered four methods of dealing with unauthorized
temples: ``transform,'' ``demolish,'' ``change,'' or ``co-
opt''; demolition and transformation are identified as the
primary two methods.\27\
Catholicism
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, the Chinese
government continued to interfere in the religious activities
of Chinese Catholics who did not accept the full authority of
the state-controlled church, including members of the state-
controlled church community and the unregistered, or
``underground,'' Catholic community. In addition, the
government continued to harass or detain some members of both
communities, which are estimated to equal between 4 million and
12 million believers.\28\ Authorities also placed restrictions
on pilgrimages to the Sheshan Marian shrine during the period
surrounding the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
RELATIONS WITH THE HOLY SEE AND INTERFERENCE WITH RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES
Chinese authorities continued to restrict the scope of
religious
activities of some Chinese Catholics, both registered and
underground, who did not accept the full authority of China's
state-
controlled church. For example, since the 1950s, the Chinese
Government has denied members of the Chinese official church
the freedom to recognize the authority of the Holy See to
select
Chinese bishops.\29\ The Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA)--
a state-controlled entity that monitors and controls Catholic
doctrine, practices, property, and personnel--exercises
influence over the ordination of bishops for the registered
church in China, including through coercion of bishops to
officiate ordinations.\30\ In some cases, the CPA has allowed
discreet Holy See approval of some bishops also approved by the
CPA,\31\ and the CPA continued this practice during this
reporting year.\32\ However, the government continued to insist
that the Chinese Catholic church be independent, and the
government interfered in the religious activities of Chinese
Catholics who did not accept the full authority of the state-
controlled church. In January 2010, CPA Vice Chair Liu Bainian
called on Chinese Catholics to ``continue to raise high the
banner of loving the country and loving religion, [and] insist
that the independent, autonomous, self-managing church be
unwavering. . . .'' \33\ Various local government reports
carried similar language,\34\ while some instructed officials
to monitor ``infiltration by'' or ``contact with'' foreign
religious groups with reference to Catholics.\35\ In April
2010, the CPA insisted that Bishop Du Jiang of the Bameng
diocese in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) attend
his official installation ceremony together with Ma Yinglin,
whom the state-controlled church ordained in 2006 without
approval from the Holy See.\36\ Du stated publicly that he was
forced to attend the ceremony with Ma, and authorities
subsequently placed Du under home confinement.\37\ During the
January 2010 funeral of underground bishop Yao Liang--an
octogenarian released from detention less than a year before
his death \38\--authorities prevented displays of official
bishop's insignia, prohibited the publication of obituaries,
and only allowed three bishops to attend.\39\ Authorities had
implemented similar restrictions during the October 2009
funeral of underground bishop Lin Xili.\40\
HARASSMENT AND DETENTION
During the past year, the government continued to harass
and detain arbitrarily Catholics who were not registered with
the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), as well as those who
were registered but ran afoul of the Party's policies. At least
40 unregistered Chinese bishops are in detention, home
confinement, or surveillance, are in hiding, or have
disappeared under suspicious
circumstances.\41\ Some have been missing for years, such as
underground bishops Su Zhimin and Shi Enxiang, whom public
security officials took into custody in 1996 and 2001,
respectively, and whose whereabouts are unknown.\42\
Authorities targeted other
underground bishops more recently, as government and Party
documents from late 2009 and early 2010 called on authorities
to ``educate and transform'' \43\ underground Catholic
communities to maintain ``stability'' \44\ and stop ``illegal
religious activities,'' \45\ as well as to ``insist on
maintaining secrecy . . . especially with regard to underground
Catholic forces . . . .'' \46\ In March 2010, authorities
detained underground priests Luo Wen and Liu Maochun after they
organized youth camps for university students.\47\ Authorities
released Luo on March 18.\48\ The Commission has observed no
reports that Liu has been released. After public security
officials held underground bishop An Shuxin in custody for 10
years, he joined the CPA in July 2009.\49\ He asserted that he
made the decision ``for the good of the diocese and the urgent
need to evangelize,'' \50\ despite facing resentment from some
members of the underground Catholic church.\51\ Even after An
joined the CPA, however, public security officials placed him
under surveillance.\52\ Authorities officially installed An on
August 7, 2010.\53\ In July 2010, authorities in Hebei province
released unregistered Catholic bishop Jia Zhiguo after
detaining him in an unknown location for one year and three
months.\54\ Jia's detention was reportedly linked to his
cooperation with officially recognized bishop Jiang Taoran;
local authorities told Jia that the ``unity'' between Jia and
Jiang is ``bad because it is desired by a foreign power like
the Vatican. If there must be unity, it must come through the
government and the [CPA].'' \55\ On June 8, 2010, over 100
public security officials and unidentified persons demolished
the only Catholic church in Ordos municipality, Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region and detained two priests for over 20
hours.\56\ The church was registered,\57\ but according to
media reports, the local government intended to build a new
road on the land where the church was located.\58\
RESTRICTIONS ON PILGRIMAGES TO THE SHESHAN MARIAN SHRINE
Authorities restricted the freedom of Catholics to visit
the Sheshan Marian shrine, in Shanghai municipality, during the
period surrounding the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.\59\ Large
numbers of Catholic pilgrims travel to Marian shrines around
the world in the month of May, and the Sheshan Marian shrine
has special significance to Catholics in China.\60\ A 2007
letter from Pope Benedict XVI mentions the shrine specifically:
``[May 24] is dedicated to the liturgical memory of Our Lady,
Help of Christians, who is venerated with great devotion at the
Marian Shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai.'' \61\ In 2010, May 24
fell during the Shanghai Expo, and local governments in the
Shanghai municipal area and other localities ordered security
forces to ensure ``stability'' in anticipation of Catholic
pilgrims traveling to the shrine.\62\ According to media
reports, the CPA issued directives during this reporting year
instructing Catholics not to travel from other localities to
visit the shrine,\63\ and some Catholics in China reported
being prevented from traveling to the shrine during the
Shanghai Expo.\64\
Falun Gong
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, the Communist
Party and Chinese government maintained the ``strike hard''
campaign that they have carried out against Falun Gong
practitioners for more than a decade.\65\ Falun Gong is a
spiritual movement based on the teachings of its founder, Li
Hongzhi, and Chinese meditative exercises called qigong.\66\
The Party designated Falun Gong an illegal ``cult
organization'' in 1999 following a peaceful demonstration held
by its practitioners near the Communist Party leadership
compound in Beijing.\67\ It is difficult to ascertain the
number of practitioners in China today because the movement has
been forced underground, but official Chinese sources and Falun
Gong sources estimate that tens of millions of Chinese citizens
practiced Falun Gong in the 1990s.\68\
The Shanghai 2010 World Expo, held from May to October
2010, became the latest in a series of events that the Chinese
government has seized upon as justification for ongoing
``security'' crackdowns that aim to ferret out and punish Falun
Gong practitioners. In the lead up to and during the Shanghai
Expo, authorities conducted propaganda campaigns deriding Falun
Gong, carried out strict surveillance of practitioners,
detained and imprisoned large numbers of practitioners, and
subjected some who refused to disavow Falun Gong to torture and
other abuses in prison and reeducation through labor
facilities.\69\ In May 2010, Falun Gong sources based in the
United States published information on 127 documented cases of
Chinese authorities detaining practitioners in the Shanghai
area in connection with the pre-Shanghai Expo crackdown; 26 of
the 127 are known to be serving sentences in prison or
reeducation through labor facilities.\70\
Authorities also continued to arbitrarily imprison Falun
Gong practitioners in cases unrelated to the Shanghai Expo. In
January 2010, after Zhang Binglan had reportedly given Falun
Gong fliers to her daughter, the Tancheng County People's Court
in Linyi city, Shandong province sentenced Zhang and her
husband Sun Dejian to eight years and six months in prison and
three years in prison, respectively, for ``using a cult
organization to undermine the implementation of the law.'' \71\
Other Falun Gong political prisoners remain in prison on
similar charges, such as artist Xu Na, whom the Beijing
Chongwen District People's Court sentenced to three years in
prison in 2008.\72\
The government has not ceased its harassment and
intimidation of lawyers who defend Falun Gong clients in the
Chinese judicial system, which the Commission first reported in
its 2009 report.\73\ In November 2009, the Shahekou District
People's Court in Dalian city, Liaoning province, sentenced
human rights lawyer Wang Yonghang, who had defended several
Falun Gong clients over a three-year period, to seven years in
prison on the charge that is most commonly leveled against
Falun Gong practitioners: ``using a cult organization to
undermine the implementation of the law.'' \74\ In May 2010,
the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice permanently revoked the
licenses of attorneys Tang Jitian and Liu Wei, which Tang
believed was retaliation for their defense of Yang Ming, a
Falun Gong practitioner in Sichuan province.\75\ Chinese
security forces continue to detain Gao Zhisheng, a prominent
human rights lawyer whom the government targeted in part
because of his work on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners.\76\
Gao was forcibly ``disappeared'' from February 2009 until late
March 2010, at which time he briefly reappeared before
vanishing again at the end of April.\77\
SHANGHAI 2010 WORLD EXPO
Local governments throughout the Shanghai municipal area
reported mobilizing security forces to target Falun Gong
practitioners in preparation for the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
In January 2010, residential committees in Shanghai's Pudong
district conducted ``one-by-one inspections of unstable
elements'' in which officials were told to report swiftly Falun
Gong ``reactionary posters and other activities'' to higher
authorities and warned that they ``absolutely must not allow
Falun Gong to take root, germinate, and spread.'' \78\ In
February, Xu Lin, the Pudong Party Secretary, warned security
forces that they must ``adopt necessary management and control
measures'' and ``must absolutely never lose
control [of Falun Gong].'' \79\ Shanghai Expo-related
propaganda campaigns in the greater Shanghai area portrayed
``cults'' like Falun Gong as ``dangers'' to society that
``wreck families'' and ``poison the minds of youth'' and
stressed the need to ``transform'' practitioners.\80\ Party
authorities made clear that participation in ``anti-cult''
propaganda campaigns was mandatory, and insisted that local
officials utilize these campaigns to organize residents to
``vigorously struggle'' and ``win the tough battle against
cults.'' \81\ At least four Shanghai Expo-related government
reports stressed the importance of ``transformation through
reeducation,'' a coercive process carried out during detention
that has been used to force Falun Gong practitioners to
renounce their beliefs.\82\
The crackdown against Falun Gong carried out in the name of
providing security for the Shanghai Expo extended well beyond
the Shanghai municipal area into surrounding provinces hundreds
of miles away from the Expo site. In April 2010, officials in
Fuzhou city, the capital of Fujian province, announced a
``large dragnet investigation'' during the period of the
Shanghai Expo that would ``strengthen monitoring and control of
Falun Gong practitioners'' and ``ensure that they do not have
contact with people from the outside.'' \83\ In March 2010,
Shicheng county authorities in Jiangxi province--approximately
700 miles from Shanghai--announced measures to ``guard
against'' possible ``interference and sabotage'' of the
Shanghai Expo by Falun Gong.\84\
THE 6-10 OFFICE
The 6-10 Office--an extralegal, Party-run security
apparatus created in June 1999 to implement the ban against
Falun Gong--spearheaded the Shanghai Expo crackdown against
Falun Gong.\85\ In February 2010, 6-10 Office agents visited
village and residential committees in Shanghai's Minhang
district to persuade community leaders to sign ``special 610
work responsibility agreements.'' \86\ In its 2010 work plan
for ``comprehensive management of social order,'' a township in
Pudong district designated ``perfecting the 610 prevention and
control system'' as a priority for its security services and
required specific measures to be taken such as ``24-hour
monitoring and control'' of Falun Gong practitioners during
``sensitive periods'' to ``ensure that there is no danger of
anything going wrong.'' \87\
Beyond the Shanghai Expo crackdown, government reports from
elsewhere in China indicate that the 6-10 Office continues to
expand its activities to punish Falun Gong practitioners, whom
authorities sometimes describe as ``diehard'' \88\ or
``obsessed,'' \89\ and close potential openings for the
movement to grow. The Ministry of Commerce reported in November
2009 that a county-level commerce bureau in Hunan province had
established an internal ``610 work leading group'' that feeds
intelligence reports to the 6-10 Office and ``stability
maintenance office'' (weiwenban).\90\ Assessing the results of
10 years of the ``strike hard'' campaign against Falun Gong, a
December 2009 report from the director of a district-level 6-10
Office in Beijing listed the decline in ``registered'' Falun
Gong practitioners living in the district from a number in the
thousands (the actual number was removed) in 1999 to a number
in the hundreds in 2009 as a factor in the office's
``significant victory'' over Falun Gong.\91\
Islam
Chinese authorities maintained tight controls over Islam in
China. Authorities across the country used the specter of
``extremism'' to bolster state interference in how Muslims
interpreted and practiced their religion. The state-controlled
Islamic Association of China (IAC) continued to align aspects
of Islamic practice with government and Party policy through
its work to train religious leaders, interpret theology, draft
sermons, and lead overseas pilgrimages. During the Commission's
2010 reporting year, the IAC published its fourth collection of
sermons as part of an ongoing project that one government
official described as putting forth ``authentic
interpretations'' of Islam that placed Muslims on the ``road to
adapting to socialism'' and led them to uphold the state-
defined goals of ``unification of the country, ethnic unity,
and social stability.'' \92\ One sermon published in the past
year called on Muslims to ``unite love of country with love of
Islam'' and ``believe in the Communist Party and government''
instead of ``rumors'' deemed to spark unrest.\93\
Throughout the year, government officials in some
localities reported strengthening oversight of Muslim
communities and blocking religious activities, groups, and
venues they deemed ``illegal.'' Various government sources
described steps to stop religious ``infiltration'' and
``illegal'' outreach and preaching activities.\94\ A report
from the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region also described
``improving and rectifying'' Arabic schools and scripture
classes, as part of steps to ``resist religious infiltration.''
A Communist Party report from Wulan county in Qinghai province
noted the county had strengthened steps to deal with illegal
sites of worship in recent years and had banned two privately
established mosques.\95\
ISLAM IN THE XINJIANG UYGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION
Conditions for religious freedom for Muslims in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) continued to worsen.
XUAR authorities increased repressive security campaigns in the
region in the aftermath of demonstrations and riots in July
2009 and continued to identify ``religious extremism'' as one
source of the unrest, as well as an ongoing threat to the
region's stability.\96\ As in the past, authorities singled out
aspects of Islam in particular in campaigns targeting
``religious extremism'' and ``illegal religious activities.''
They defined such terms to encompass religious practices, group
affiliations, and viewpoints protected under international
human rights guarantees for freedom of religion, expression,
and association that the Chinese government is bound to
uphold.\97\ In the aftermath of the demonstrations and riots,
XUAR government chairperson Nur Bekri called for strengthening
management of religion and ``bringing into full play the
special role of patriotic religious figures in maintaining
ethnic unity.'' \98\ Authorities carried out a new cycle of
training for religious leaders in the past year, calling on
them to raise their ``consciousness and firmness'' in the
``battle against extremism.'' \99\ The region's 2009 work
report called for strengthening management of religion through
measures including preventing ``religious forces'' from
``infiltrating schools,'' punishing underground religious
schools, and increasing management of pilgrimages.\100\
Authorities in the XUAR implemented various campaigns in
the past year to restrict religious practice, singling out
aspects of Islam and tightening controls in some cases. The
Party-controlled XUAR Women's Federation carried out a wide-
scale campaign in 2009 to ``weaken religious consciousness''
among women \101\ and campaigns to dissuade Muslim women from
wearing veils.\102\ One Women's Federation report described
veiling as a form of ``extreme religion'' and ``an expression
of a type of ignorant and backward way of thinking.'' \103\
Following a proposal in early 2009 to draw Muslim women
religious specialists known as buwi under government and Party
management,\104\ the XUAR Women's Federation also reported
increasing oversight of these women.\105\ The XUAR government
targeted ``illegal religious materials'' in 2009 censorship
campaigns and reportedly issued multiple directives singling
out ``illegal'' religious and political materials.\106\ In
March 2010, state media reported confiscating 13 tons of
``illegally printed religious books'' and detaining a Uyghur
man who had received the shipment of books from another
province.\107\
Local governments at the prefectural level and below
reported taking a range of steps to restrict religious freedom.
The Aqsu municipal government, Aqsu district, reported in
January on strengthening implementation of and refining its
``two systems'' program of maintaining regular government
contact with mosques and religious figures. Steps taken include
formulating measures to preexamine sermons and monitoring
conditions at religious venues daily.\108\ The Ili Kazakh
Autonomous Prefecture government formulated a set of measures
to manage Muslim women religious specialists (buwi).\109\ A
Communist Party office in Kashgar district
reported it would increase oversight of groups including buwi,
people who have gone on unauthorized pilgrimages, and people
dismissed from their posts as religious personnel, as part of
work to ``safeguard stability.'' \110\ In line with XUAR
government direction, various local authorities pledged to
continue curbing unauthorized religious pilgrimages.\111\
Government offices in Turpan district and Shule (Qeshqer
Yengisheher) county, Kashgar district, posted job
advertisements that required that candidates ``not believe in a
religion'' or ``participate in religious activities.'' \112\
Government authorities in the XUAR continued to restrict
children's freedom of religion. Authorities adopted a new
regulation on the protection of minors, effective December
2009, that restricts children's religious activities.\113\
While the regulation excludes a previously codified ban (now
void) on parents ``permitting children to engage in religious
activities,'' \114\ it broadens an earlier provision to
prohibit people from ``luring or forcing minors to participate
in religious activities.'' \115\ The regulation lacks criteria
for determining what acts constitute ``luring'' or ``forcing,''
leaving wide latitude to interpret the terms in a manner that
constrains children's exercise of freedom of religion and
parents' right to impart a religious education. The provisions
on children's religious activities appear to remain the most
detailed in China and to lack a clear basis in Chinese
law.\116\ Authorities in Nilka county, Ili Kazakh Autonomous
Prefecture, launched a campaign in March to spread government
policies including the ``six forbiddens'': forbidding students
from believing in religion, participating in religious
activities, fasting, wearing clothes with a ``religious hue,''
viewing or listening to audio-video products with ``reactionary
content,'' and disseminating ``separatist thought.'' \117\
Amid government calls to curb ``illegal'' religious
activities, overseas media reported in the past year on cases
of Muslims detained for practicing their religion. Radio Free
Asia reported in May on a series of religion-related detentions
in July 2009 in one township in Yining (Ghulja) county, Ili
Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, involving 10 people in two sets
of cases. According to sources cited in the RFA reports, the
people were detained for teaching unauthorized classes on
religion and reading certain religious publications.\118\ Most
of those detained reportedly remained in detention, with
details of charges against them unknown.\119\ Authorities
reportedly detained 32 women in a Quran study group in Bachu
(Maralbeshi) county, Kashgar district, around early June.
Authorities said the women were engaged in illegal religious
activities and formally detained two of them, releasing the
others after levying fines.\120\
Protestantism
The Chinese government and Communist Party continued to
restrict the religious activities and doctrine of Chinese
Protestants who worship in the state-controlled church, a
network of at least 20 million citizens and 50,000
churches.\121\ In addition, they continued to arbitrarily
harass, intimidate, detain, or imprison some of the estimated
50 to 70 million Chinese Protestants who worship in China's
unregistered congregations (house churches),\122\ communities
that have been growing larger and more conspicuous over the
past few decades.\123\ The government made strong efforts to
interfere with the internal affairs of some unregistered
congregations through such means as the arbitrary detention of
religious leaders, violent raids, destruction of worship sites,
attempts to prevent members from gathering, and the labeling of
some Protestant organizations as ``cults.''
PATRIOTIC RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS AND THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION
China's state-controlled Protestant church continued to
dictate the terms by which it allowed Protestants to interpret
doctrine and theology, in an effort to eliminate elements of
the Christian faith that the Party regards as incompatible with
its goals and ideology. The government and Party call this
process ``theological reconstruction.'' \124\ The Three-Self
Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the China Christian Council (CCC)
are the official organizations that manage registered
Protestants,\125\ and government and Party officials continued
to emphasize the role of those organizations in promoting Party
policies. For example, during an early February 2010 meeting
with the TSPM and CCC, top Party and government leaders
commended the two organizations for their ``positive function
in safeguarding social harmony and stability while maintaining
smooth, relatively rapid economic development''; \126\ for
``resolutely resisting various forms of foreign religious
infiltration activities''; \127\ and for ``achieving positive
results through continuing to promote theological
reconstruction, strengthening the building of their
organizations, and vigorously launching trainings [for
pastors].'' \128\ In February 2010, Jia Qinglin, the fourth-
highest ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee,
called on the patriotic religious organizations to ``diligently
train a corps of qualified religious personnel who are
politically reliable . . . .'' \129\ In line with these
sentiments, government entities from localities across the
country stressed the importance of theological reconstruction
and political training for pastors in various government
meetings and work reports.\130\
MAJOR CASES OF HARASSMENT, DETENTION, AND INTERFERENCE WITH PLACES OF
WORSHIP
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, authorities
continued to harass and detain arbitrarily members of house
churches throughout China and interfere with their places of
worship.\131\ Local government reports throughout China called
on authorities to monitor and control house churches,\132\ and
authorities targeted several prominent house church leaders and
large house church congregations that had already lost their
indoor meeting spaces, which some reports suggest may have been
a result of government pressure on their landlords.\133\ For
example, on November 8, 2009, authorities prevented pastor Jin
Tianming of the Shouwang Church in Beijing from leaving his
home to attend worship and then prevented the congregation from
gathering in a park to worship.\134\ On November 22, 2009,
authorities detained four members of the clergy and two other
members of the Wanbang Church in Shanghai \135\ as members of
the congregation were planning to meet outdoors to
worship.\136\ Wanbang pastor Cui Quan said that police accused
the church of being ``illegal,'' questioned those detained
about its operations, and then released all six later that
day.\137\ On May 8, 2010, authorities put pastor Wang Dao--a
participant in the 1989 Tiananmen protests and leader of the
Liangren Church in Guangzhou--under criminal detention and
dispersed the congregation as they attempted to worship in a
park.\138\ Wang was released on bail on June 13 to await his
trial.\139\ On August 13, authorities in Guangzhou summoned him
to a police station in Panyu district in Guangzhou, attempted
to pressure him to join the state-controlled church, and
released him on the same day.\140\ On June 13, authorities
detained pastor Zhang Mingxuan and his wife in a hotel in
Zhengzhou city, Henan province for two days. Authorities
questioned them about their connection with a U.S. citizen who
is a Christian in Beijing and a church in Yancheng city,
Jiangsu province that local authorities had scheduled for
demolition.\141\
In some cases, authorities levied criminal penalties or
used violence against members of house churches. In the early
morning hours of September 13, 2009, over 400 public security
officers conducted a violent raid against the Linfen-Fushan
Church, an unregistered Protestant church in Fushan county,
Linfen municipality, Shanxi province.\142\ Two bulldozers
reduced the building to rubble,\143\ and public security
officers wounded at least 100 church members,\144\ striking
some with blunt objects such as bricks, iron bars, and garden
hoes.\145\ The congregation site was located inside a shoe and
clothing factory,\146\ and Linfen municipal officials
characterized the raid as an effort to ``ban illegal
buildings.'' \147\ Two official reports posted in August 2009
on the Web site of the Linfen Municipal People's Government
foreshadowed the crackdown against unregistered churches, as
the reports featured statements from top Communist Party
leaders calling for tighter control of religious activities.
According to one of the reports, dated August 18, Ding Wenlu,
the local head of the Party's United Front Work Department,
inspected the municipality's religious affairs work on June 16
and urged officials to recognize the ``high degree of political
sensitivity'' surrounding their work.\148\ Ding issued a
``clear demand'' that officials must ``pay close attention to .
. . and promptly dispose of . . . illegal religious activities
according to the law.'' \149\ At a government meeting on
``safeguarding stability'' held in Linfen on June 25, reported
in an August 18 article, Xie Hai, the Secretary of the
Municipal Party Committee, emphasized the need to ``strengthen
management of religious and ethnic affairs work,'' which he
characterized as ``having extraordinarily important
significance for safeguarding the overall stability of the
entire city.'' \150\ Xie called for officials to ``go a step
further to strengthen punishment of illegal religious
activities and strike hard against those who wear the cloak of
religion and use religion to conduct various divisive sabotage
activities.'' \151\
On September 25, 2009, authorities detained Linfen pastors
Wang Xiaoguang and Yang Rongli, along with three other church
leaders, as they attempted to petition central government
authorities for redress.\152\ On October 11, public security
officials also detained an additional 10 Linfen-Fushan Church
members \153\ and, on November 30, ordered five church members
to serve two years of reeducation through labor.\154\ On
November 25, the Yaodu District People's Court variously
convicted the five church leaders of
``illegally occupying farm land'' and ``gathering a crowd to
disturb transportation order'' \155\ in a trial that was
reportedly marked by procedural irregularities that restricted
the defense counsel's access to evidence.\156\ Yang received
the longest prison sentence: seven years.\157\ Authorities also
interfered with the efforts of Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences (CASS) researcher Fan Yafeng and Beijing lawyer Zhang
Kai to provide legal assistance to members of the church. In
November 2009, after Fan attempted to provide legal assistance
to the church, the Party Secretary at CASS reportedly told Fan
that he would not be permitted to continue working at
CASS.\158\ In July 2010, police barred Zhang from entering a
Linfen court as he attempted to file an administrative lawsuit
on behalf of the convicted church leaders.\159\ [See Section
III--Access to Justice for more information.]
Alimjan Yimit (Himit)--a Protestant house church leader in
the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) whom the Kashgar
Intermediate People's Court convicted of ``leaking state
secrets to overseas organizations'' in October 2009 \160\--was
moved from the Kashgar Municipal Detention Center to a prison
in Urumqi after the XUAR People's High Court upheld his 15-year
sentence on appeal on March 16, 2010.\161\ According to his
lawyer, Li Baiguang, the charges against Alimjan Yimit stemmed
from his talking with visiting Christians from the United
States,\162\ and Li reported that, in his view, the court's
decision did not successfully prove that Alimjan Yimit supplied
state secrets to people overseas.\163\ Alimjan Yimit had
previously worked for a foreign-owned company that was shut
down for ``illegal religious infiltration activities'' \164\
after public security officials accused the company of
preaching Christianity to Uyghurs in 2007.\165\
BANNED PROTESTANT GROUPS AND THE DESIGNATION OF GROUPS AS ``CULTS''
The government and Party continued to prohibit
categorically some Protestant groups from exercising religious
freedom by criminalizing their communities as ``cult
organizations.'' \166\ The government has banned at least 18
Protestant groups with adherents in multiple provinces, as well
as many more congregations and movements that are active in
only one province.\167\ Examples of groups that have been
banned in previous years include the South China Church (SCC);
\168\ the Local Church, a group that officials refer to as the
``Shouters''; \169\ and the Disciples Association.\170\ Two
weeks after the September 13, 2009, raid on the Shanxi Linfen-
Fushan Christian Church,\171\ officials met to discuss whether
or not to classify the Linfen-Fushan Church as a ``cult''
organization.\172\ According to a ChinaAid report, the
officials decided not to label the church a ``cult''
organization but resolved not to allow what they characterized
as the ``abuses and legal violations of Pastor Yang Rongli and
her `foolish and misguided followers.' '' \173\ In another
case, after a November 18, 2009, raid on a Protestant house
church congregation in Shuozhou city, Shanxi province,
authorities detained six church members,\174\ five of whom were
formally arrested on charges of ``cult'' involvement.\175\ On
August 2, 2010, the Weidu District Court of Xuchang city, Henan
province reportedly refused to hear an administrative lawsuit
filed by Gao Jianli and Liu Yunhua, two members of a Henan
house church that authorities in Shangqiu municipality had
deemed a ``cult'' on the basis of an internal document, thereby
effectively upholding an administrative punishment of one year
of reeducation through labor (RTL) for each of the two
men.\176\ The court had previously upheld the RTL order in July
on the basis of a prior administrative lawsuit that Gao and Liu
filed against the Shangqiu Municipal Reeducation Through Labor
Committee.\177\
Taoism
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, the Chinese
government and Communist Party continued to exercise control
over the scope of Taoist \178\ religious activities in much the
same way that they do for other religious communities in China.
The government requires Taoist groups and religious personnel
to register with the state-controlled Chinese Taoist
Association (CTA) in order to legally perform ritual services
and hold Taoist ceremonies,\179\ and authorities tend to allow
a wider scope of activities for Taoist groups that work more
closely with them.\180\ Authorities also continued to exercise
control over the scope of religious freedom for Taoists by
emphasizing the role of the CTA in promoting government and
Party policy. For example, the CTA's official Web site
described the theme of the June 21, 2010, Eighth National
Conference of the CTA in the following way:
[R]aising high the banner of loving the country and
loving religion, as well as the banner of solidarity
and progress, deeply implementing the scientific
development concept, implementing the Party's basic
policy on religious work, vigorously strengthening
self-construction, [and] making efforts to play a
positive role in advancing social harmony and economic
and social development . . . .\181\
In addition, various government reports throughout China
called on local officials to monitor and control the
``indiscriminate'' construction of temples and statues,\182\ as
well as ``feudal, superstitious'' Taoist activities.\183\ One
April 2010 report from the Wuxi Municipal Park Administration
specifically called on local authorities to strengthen the
management of Taoist sites and prevent Taoists from engaging in
various forms of fortunetelling and other ``feudal,
superstitious'' activities during the Shanghai 2010 World
Expo.\184\
Other Religious Communities
The Chinese government maintained its framework for
recognizing only select religious communities and did not
enlarge this framework to recognize additional groups. Legal
regulations allowed foreign religious communities, including
communities not recognized as domestic religions by the
government, to hold services for expatriates, but forbade
Chinese citizens from participating.\185\ In August, leaders of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported
holding meetings with a high-level Chinese official and said
church leaders ``established a relationship'' that they
``expect will lead to regularizing the activities of The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in China.'' \186\ Some
local governments recognized the Orthodox church within local
legislation.\187\ Chinese citizens reportedly were unable to
attend Orthodox services in Beijing, however, because the
services were set up for foreigners, and seminary graduates
reportedly have been unable to work as religious leaders.\188\
The State Administration for Religious Affairs has engaged in
talks with officials from the Orthodox church in recent years
and met with Russian Orthodox Church officials in November
2009.\189\ In recent years, some local governments have issued
measures to register venues for folk belief activities.\190\ No
national legal measures govern folk belief activities in China.
Ethnic Minority Rights
Chinese law provides for a system of ``regional ethnic
autonomy'' in designated areas with ethnic minority
populations,\1\ but shortcomings in the substance and
implementation of this system have prevented these groups from
enjoying meaningful autonomy in practice. The Chinese
government maintained policies during the Commission's 2010
reporting year that prevented ethnic minorities from
``administering their internal affairs'' as guaranteed in
Chinese law \2\ and from enjoying their rights in line with
international human rights standards.\3\ International human
rights standards stipulate that ethnic, religious, and
linguistic minorities within a state ``shall not be denied the
right, in community with the other members of their group, to
enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own
religion, or to use their own language.'' \4\ While the
government maintained some protections in law and practice for
minority rights, it continued to impose the fundamental terms
upon which Chinese citizens could express their ethnicity and
to prevent ethnic minorities from enjoying their cultures,
religions, and languages free from state interference.\5\ Among
the 55 groups designated as minority ``nationalities'' or
``ethnicities'' (shaoshu minzu \6\), state repression was
harshest toward groups deemed to challenge state authority,
especially in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Tibet Autonomous Region and
other Tibetan autonomous areas.
State Policies and Ethnic Unity Campaigns
The Chinese government continued in the past year to assert
the effectiveness of state laws and policies in upholding the
rights of ethnic minorities, following domestic protests and
international criticism of the government's treatment of ethnic
minorities. A September 2009 State Council Information Office
white paper on the topic described state policy as the
``correct'' approach ``in keeping with . . . the common
interests of all ethnic groups'' and guiding Chinese citizens
to ``[safeguard] national unification, social stability and
ethnic unity.'' \7\ Authorities defended state policy in the
aftermath of demonstrations and riots in Tibetan areas in 2008
and in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 2009 that
highlighted deep tensions in ethnic minority areas and citizen
grievances toward government policy. Authorities denied the
events had domestic political roots and instead attributed
conflict to factors such as interference from outside forces
and ``contradictions'' among the people.\8\ Some academics
affiliated with state universities or think tanks, along with
some lower level officials, openly criticized government policy
toward ethnic issues in the past year.\9\ Although the ultimate
impact of such criticism is unknown, it may signal growing room
for debate and reconsideration of aspects of government policy
in this area.
The government and Communist Party strengthened ``ethnic
unity'' campaigns as a vehicle for spreading state ethnic
policy throughout Chinese society and for imposing state-
defined interpretations of the history, relations, and current
conditions of ethnic groups in China. The State Council
Information Office white paper stressed the importance of
ethnic unity in meeting state political goals such as social
stability and development, and described ``ethnic unity
education'' as part of ``the whole process of socialist
cultural and ideological construction.'' \10\ Following steps
in 2008 and 2009 to strengthen ethnic unity education,\11\
central government and Party offices issued plans in the past
year to expand the reach of ethnic unity education.\12\
Provincial and local governments also reported strengthening
ethnic unity campaigns.\13\
2009-2010 National Human Rights Action Plan
Chinese leaders pledged to refine laws and improve
conditions for ethnic minorities, within the parameters of
existing Party policy, issuing some policy documents in the
past year which may bring mixed results in the protection of
ethnic minorities' rights. The government's 2009-2010 National
Human Rights Action Plan (HRAP) issued in April 2009 outlined
measures to support legislation, governance, education,
personnel training and employment, language use, and cultural
and economic development among ethnic minorities.\14\ The
government's December 2009 review of the HRAP provided limited
information on the plan's progress, noting work in the areas of
cultural and economic development.\15\ Following that date,
government offices issued an opinion in May and a plan in July
that state more support for ethnic minority languages and for
education among ethnic minorities, respectively, including
support in both documents for ``bilingual education.'' \16\ The
two documents also state support for ethnic minorities' right
to use their own languages,\17\ but ``bilingual education'' as
implemented in some parts of China has marginalized the role of
ethnic minority languages, in contravention of Chinese law.\18\
Economic Development
The government maintained economic development policies
that prioritize state economic goals over the protection of
ethnic minorities' rights. Despite bringing some benefits to
ethnic minority areas and residents, such policies also have
conflicted with ethnic minorities' rights to maintain
traditional livelihoods, spurred migration to ethnic minority
regions, promoted unequal allocation of resources favoring Han
Chinese, intensified linguistic and assimilation
pressures on local communities, and resulted in environmental
damage.\19\ In the past year, the government marked the 10th
anniversary of the Great Western Development project--which is
directed at a number of provinces and regions with large
populations of non-Han ethnic groups--and announced plans to
continue western development in the coming decade.\20\
Authorities also stressed enhancing development work in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibetan areas of China,
where development initiatives have been closely tied to central
government-led political controls and campaigns to ``uphold
stability'' and suppress dissent. [See Section IV--Xinjiang and
Section V--Tibet.]
Human Rights in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
Authorities in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR)
continued in the past year to restrict independent expressions
of ethnic identity among Mongols and to interfere with
traditional livelihoods, while enforcing campaigns to promote
stability and ethnic unity. In a December 2009 interview, the
head of the IMAR Public Security Department likened the
region's public security situation to that in the autonomous
Tibetan areas of China and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,
stating ``enemy forces'' from Western countries aimed to split
the region.\21\ In September 2009, the IMAR Department of
Education issued a detailed plan for strengthening ethnic unity
education in IMAR schools.\22\ Authorities strengthened
``ecological migration'' policies that have required herders to
resettle from pasture land and abandon traditional
livelihoods,\23\ while outside observers and some domestic
scholars have questioned the effectiveness of these government
policies in ameliorating environmental degradation.\24\ Mongols
continued to face the risk of repercussions for peacefully
defending their rights or aiming to preserve their culture. In
a case also illustrating China's influence outside its borders
and contravention of protections for asylum seekers, on October
3, 2009, Chinese security officials inside the country of
Mongolia reportedly joined Mongolian security officials in
detaining Batzangaa, an ethnic Mongol from China. The detention
occurred outside the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office
in Ulaanbaatar, where Batzangaa had applied for refugee status.
Authorities returned him to China and held him in detention.
Batzangaa ran a traditional Mongolian medicine school in Ordos
municipality, IMAR, that reportedly had come under official
scrutiny for its popularity and activities with Mongols and
Tibetans, and he was also involved in a land dispute with local
authorities.\25\ On April 18, 2010, officials at the Beijing
Capital International Airport detained rights advocate
Sodmongol as he was waiting to board a flight to the United
States to attend the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Sodmongol had organized events and led two Web sites--now shut
down--that promoted the protection of Mongols' rights. His
current whereabouts remain unknown.\26\
Population Planning
Introduction
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, central and
local authorities continued to interfere with and control the
reproductive lives of Chinese women through an all-encompassing
system of population planning regulations. Population planning
policies limit most women in urban areas to bearing one child,
while permitting slightly more than half of Chinese women--
located in many rural areas--to bear a second child if their
first child is female.\1\ The Commission notes the emergence of
a growing debate in the Chinese media about possible reform of
these policies, but has not yet seen government action to
introduce national reform measures.\2\
Local officials continue to monitor the reproductive cycles
of Chinese women in order to prevent unauthorized births.\3\
The Chinese government requires married couples to obtain a
birth permit before they can lawfully bear a child and forces
them to employ contraceptive methods at other times.\4\
Although Chinese law prohibits officials from infringing upon
the rights and interests of citizens while promoting compliance
with population planning policies,\5\ reports from recent years
indicate that abuses continue. Violators of the policy are
routinely punished with fines, and in some cases, subjected to
forced sterilization, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and
torture.\6\ In some cases surgical sterilization may be
required of Chinese women following the birth of their second
child.\7\ Mandatory abortion, which is often referred to as
``remedial measures'' (bujiu cuoshi) in government reports, is
endorsed explicitly as an official policy instrument in the
regulations of 18 of China's 31 provincial-level
jurisdictions.\8\ In 2010, the Commission found that local
officials continued to coerce women with unauthorized
pregnancies to undergo abortions in both urban and rural areas
across China's major regions.\9\
China's population planning policies in both their nature
and
implementation violate international human rights standards.
Although implementation tends to vary across localities, the
government's population planning law and regulations contravene
international human rights standards by limiting the number of
children that women may bear and by coercing compliance with
population targets through heavy fines.\10\ For example,
China's Population and Family Planning Law is not consistent
with the standards set by the 1995 Beijing Declaration and the
1994 Programme of Action of the Cairo International Conference
on Population and Development.\11\ Controls imposed on Chinese
women and their families and additional abuses engendered by
the system, from forced abortion to discriminatory policies
against ``out-of-plan'' children, also violate standards in the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women,\12\ the
Convention on the Rights of the Child,\13\ and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights.\14\ China is a state party to these treaties and is
bound to uphold their terms.
Coercive Abortion and Fines
China's 2002 Population and Family Planning Law (PFPL)
states in Article 4 that officials ``shall perform their
administrative duties strictly in accordance with the law, and
enforce the law in a civil manner, and they may not infringe
upon the legitimate rights and interests of citizens.'' \15\
The PFPL also states in Article 39 that ``any functionary of a
State organ who commits one of the following acts in the work
of family planning, if the act constitutes a crime, shall be
investigated for criminal liability in accordance with the law;
if it does not constitute a crime, he shall be given an
administrative sanction with law; his unlawful gains, if any,
shall be confiscated: (1) infringing on a citizen's personal
rights, property rights, or other legitimate rights and
interests; (2) abusing his power, neglecting his duty, or
engaging in malpractices for personal gain . . . .'' \16\
Despite these provisions, abuses continue. The Commission has
reported on a number of cases of violence against women in
connection with officials' enforcement of population planning
policies.\17\ During this reporting year, the use of violence
to coerce compliance with the PFPL was illustrated by family
planning officials in Changfeng county, Anhui province.
According to Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), on July 15,
2010, Changfeng family planning officials kidnapped 23-year-old
Li Hongmei and her three-week-old daughter and took them to a
local hospital where they reportedly held Li's baby hostage
until she signed her consent to undergo sterilization.
According to CHRD, Li remained hospitalized for at least a
month after the procedure due to illness.\18\
In 2010, authorities across a wide range of Chinese
localities launched population planning enforcement campaigns--
often dubbed ``spring family planning service activities''
(chunji jisheng fuwu xingdong) \19\--that employed coercive
measures to terminate ``out-of-plan'' pregnancies. In February,
the Jiangxi provincial government reported that one such
campaign had commenced in Anyi county where officials vowed to
engage in a ``100-day battle'' in which they would ``insist
without wavering on the principle of IUD [intrauterine device]
insertion after the first child, surgical sterilization after
the second child, and abortion of out-of-plan pregnancies.''
\20\ In March 2010, a local official in Ezhou city, Hubei
province, instructed cadres preparing for a spring campaign to
``immediately adopt remedial measures against those with out-
of-plan pregnancies, follow procedures to terminate the
pregnancy . . . and forcefully ensure implementation in order
to reduce the birth rate.'' \21\ Regulations published in 2009
in Zhanjiang city in Guangdong province spell out penalties for
violators of the policy and explicitly call for officials to
``force'' (qiangxing) abortion of ``extra births'':
Strictly prohibit out-of-plan second births or multiple
births; those who have out-of-plan pregnancies must
adopt abortion measures, force those who exceed birth
limits to have an abortion. Out-of-plan children will
not be allowed to enjoy benefits for villagers; for a
period of 15 years, parents of out-of-plan children
will not be allowed to enjoy benefits for villagers,
gain employment at a village-run enterprise, or be
granted documents.\22\
In 2010, the Commission analyzed government reports from
nine provinces that used the phrase ``by all means necessary''
(qian fang bai ji) to signify intensified enforcement measures
and less restraint on officials who oversee coerced
abortions.\23\ Between January and March 2010, city and county
governments in at least four provinces (Henan, Hubei,
Guangdong, and Jiangsu) and at least one provincial-level
government (Jiangxi) vowed to ``by all means necessary,
stabilize the low birth level.'' \24\ In March, Panjin
municipal authorities in Liaoning province expressed their
resolve to crack down on population planning violations ``in
order to stabilize a low birth rate . . . continuously
strengthen measures . . . [and] by all means necessary, drive
population and family planning work into the `fast lane.' ''
\25\ In addition to mandating abortion of pregnancies that
exceed fertility limits, all pregnancies that occur without an
official permit, including first pregnancies, are regarded by
the government as ``out-of-plan'' and subject to ``remedial
measures.'' In Jiangxi province, a Xingzi county official
highlighted this point in responding to an anonymous citizen's
online inquiry in March 2010. Noting that there are 10
circumstances in which a couple may apply for a permit to have
a second child in Jiangxi, the official told the citizen that
``even if you conform to some of the stipulated conditions, you
must first obtain a `repeat birth permit,' then you may remove
the IUD and become pregnant; otherwise, it would be considered
an out-of-plan pregnancy.'' \26\ For women who give birth to an
out-of-plan child before authorities discover the pregnancy,
the government imposes penalties known as ``social compensation
fees'' (shehui fuyang fei). For certain couples, these fines
pose a dilemma between undergoing an unwanted abortion and
incurring potentially overwhelming financial costs.\27\ In some
cases, authorities not only levy fines against violators, but
also punish them through job dismissal and other penalties.\28\
Some children may go without household registration (hukou) in
China because they are born out of plan and their parents do
not pay the necessary fines.\29\ Lack of a valid hukou raises
barriers to access to social benefits typically linked to the
hukou, including subsidized healthcare and public
education.\30\ [For additional discussion of China's hukou
system, see Section II--Freedom of Residence and Movement.]
The U.S. State Department, reporting on China's ``high
female suicide rate'' in its 2009 Human Rights Report noted
that ``(m)any observers believed that violence against women
and girls, discrimination in education and employment, the
traditional preference for male children, birth-limitation
policies, and other societal factors contributed to the high
female suicide rate. Women in rural areas, where the suicide
rate for women was three to four times higher than for men,
were especially vulnerable.'' \31\
Targeting Migrant Workers
The Commission observed during its 2010 reporting year a
greater number of reports confirming its 2009 finding that some
local governments are specifically targeting migrant workers
for forced abortions.\32\ [For more information on
discrimination against migrant workers, see Section II--Freedom
of Residence and Movement.] In April 2010, the National
Population and Family Planning Commission released an
``implementation plan'' for enforcing population planning
regulations for migrant workers within a 10-province region
called the Bohai Rim.\33\ This plan calls for governments where
migrant workers reside to ``persuade and educate'' those with
out-of-plan pregnancies to ``promptly adopt remedial
measures.'' If a migrant worker refuses, local authorities are
instructed to coordinate with the migrant's home government
(place of household registration) to ``launch unified
enforcement work.'' \34\ Strengthening family planning
enforcement through coordination between governments where
migrants work and where their households are registered, as
described in the Bohai plan, was also the chief goal behind a
cooperation agreement that 10 district and county-level
governments in Shanghai and Fuzhou municipalities signed in
March 2010.\35\ In the migrant-rich factory city of Kunshan on
the outskirts of Shanghai, the government launched a ``special
rectification operation'' for the ``floating population'' in
December 2009 that set ``raising the implementation rate of
remedial measures for out-of-plan pregnancies'' as one of its
primary objectives.\36\ Anhui provincial family planning
measures for migrant workers require officials to ``mobilize
pregnant migrant workers without a birth permit to adopt
remedial measures.'' \37\ Those who initially refuse are fined
repeatedly until they terminate the pregnancy, or if they fail
to abort within a designated period of time, officials are
required to ``order them to adopt remedial measures on the
spot.'' \38\
Coercive Sterilization
When women reach the state-imposed limit on number of
births, local authorities often mandate surgical sterilization
to prevent ``out-of-plan'' pregnancies. In February 2010, the
Qiaojia county government in Yunnan province issued a directive
that urged officials to ``by all means necessary, raise the
rate of surgical sterilization after the second birth and IUD
insertion after the first birth.'' \39\ The directive also
warns that the government will ``stop salary payments without
exception'' for government workers who fail to adopt
contraception measures within a specified time period.\40\ In
March 2010, the Qianxi county government in Guizhou province
issued a similar directive authorizing ``special rectification
activities'' to sterilize women with two children.\41\ Qianxi
officials face a penalty of 1,000 yuan (US$147) for each woman
with two children that they fail to sterilize, and conversely,
they are promised a reward of the same amount for each tubal
ligation that they see through to completion.\42\
In some areas, coerced sterilization is accomplished
through punitive action taken against the family members of
targeted women, which can include extended periods of
detention. In April 2010, the Puning city government in
Guangdong province launched a ``special operation to sterilize
women with two children'' in which officials were authorized to
``adopt measures that exceed conventional practices.'' \43\ The
impetus for the operation came from Guangdong provincial
authorities who identified Puning as a problematic area that
``lagged behind'' other localities in meeting population
planning goals.\44\ Puning authorities indicated that the
operation's initial sweep, conducted from April 7 to April 26,
resulted in 5,601 surgical sterilizations.\45\ The government
reportedly set 9,559 tubal ligations as its target to achieve
before the end of April.\46\ As of April 12, Puning authorities
had detained 1,377 people--many of whom were elderly relatives
of unsterilized women--in extralegal ``study classes'' in order
to force women who had left Puning for work purposes to return
and undergo sterilization.\47\ In addition to detentions,
Puning authorities employed a series of other ``measures that
exceed conventional practice'' such as nullification of
household registration (hukou) for unsterilized women, refusal
to grant household registration to their children, and punitive
actions taken against their relatives such as cancellation of
state benefits and permits.\48\ As of April 12, 63 officials
who failed to adopt these measures were reportedly subjected to
disciplinary action, including one township Communist Party
secretary who was suspended.\49\ Puning is not exceptional in
its use of coercive ``measures that exceed conventional
practices,'' as the Commission analyzed official government
reports containing the same phrase in provinces such as
Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Anhui, Gansu, and the Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region.\50\
Prospects for Policy Reform
Growing awareness of the demographic and social
consequences of China's population planning policy is giving
rise to public discussion of the need for policy reform. In
2010, Chinese experts and officials engaged in a relatively
open exchange in the state-run media about how to address
demographic trends that are expected to detrimentally impact
China's future development.\51\ The Beijing News reported in
January that the municipal government would soon allow all
couples to have two children, but within hours, the Beijing
Population and Family Planning Commission denied the
earlier report.\52\ The central government reportedly
commissioned feasibility studies in 2009 to assess the possible
effects of a change in policy.\53\ Top Party and government
leaders, however, continue to publicly defend the policy and
rule out reform in the near-term.\54\
Demographic Consequences
Chinese society is aging at a rapid pace and is expected to
undergo a challenging demographic transformation in the next
two decades. In 2008, China had 169 million citizens over the
age of 60, constituting 13 percent of the total population and
surpassing the UN's threshold for classification as an ``aging
society.'' \55\ By 2030, some Western demographers estimate
that the number of elderly Chinese could soar to as high as 350
million and account for 25 percent of the population.\56\ An
economist with the Asian Development Bank projects that one in
five urban Chinese will be over 65 years of age by 2025.\57\
China's total fertility rate has dropped from 6.1 births
per woman in 1949 to an estimated 1.5 births per woman in
2010.\58\ Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice Premier Li Keqiang called
on separate occasions in 2010 for officials to maintain China's
low birth rate for the foreseeable future.\59\ Cai Fang, the
Director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), characterizes
this decline in the working-age population as the ``greatest
threat to China's economic prosperity'' and predicts labor
shortages in China as soon as 2013.\60\
An imbalanced sex ratio remains one of China's major
demographic challenges and recent data indicate that it is
worsening. In response to government-imposed birth limits and
in keeping with a traditional cultural bias for sons, Chinese
parents often engage in sex-selective abortion, especially
rural couples whose first child is a girl.\61\ In January 2010,
CASS published a comprehensive study that placed the male-to-
female sex ratio for the infant-to-four-year-old age group in
China at 123.26 males for every 100 females.\62\ Some provinces
have ratios exceeding 130.\63\ This is far above the global
norm of roughly 103 to 105 males for every 100 females and
represents growth of nearly two and a half points from the 2000
census ratio.\64\ CASS estimates that, by 2020, the number of
Chinese males of marriageable age will exceed the number of
Chinese females of marriageable age by 30 to 40 million.\65\
[For additional discussion of China's imbalanced sex ratio, see
Section II--Status of Women.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case Update: Chen Guangcheng--Human Rights Defender
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Authorities in Linyi city, Shandong province, released rights defender
Chen Guangcheng from prison on September 9, 2010, after he completed a
four-year, three-month sentence for exposing widespread abuses by local
officials responsible for implementing China's one-child policy.\66\
During the period of his imprisonment, authorities reportedly denied
Chen Guangcheng, who is blind, adequate medical treatment despite his
reported deteriorating health.\67\ Authorities also repeatedly denied
requests filed by both Chen and his wife, Yuan Weijing, on his behalf
for his medical parole.\68\
According to several media and non-governmental organization reports,
Chen returned home under police escort on the morning of September 9,
2010, to heightened police surveillance, including a number of
plainclothes and uniformed guards around Chen's home and at the
entrance to his village,\69\ disconnection of the family's telephone
and cell phone service,\70\ and newly installed 24-hour closed-circuit
surveillance cameras by which security agents monitor his and his
family's activities.\71\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case Update: Chen Guangcheng--Human Rights Defender-- Continued
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1996, Mr. Chen began defending the rights of disabled peasants and
providing legal advice as a self-trained legal advocate focusing on
antidiscrimination.\72\ Over the next decade, his legal advocacy was
recognized in China and internationally.\73\ In 2005, Mr. Chen's rights
defense work drew international news media attention to population
planning abuses in Linyi city, Shandong province.\74\ Local authorities
placed Chen under house arrest in September 2005 and formally arrested
him on June 21, 2006.\75\ On the eve of his August 18, 2006, trial,
three of his defense lawyers were taken into custody.\76\ The Yinan
County People's Court first tried and sentenced Chen on August 24,
2006, to four years and three months in prison for ``intentional
destruction of property'' and ``organizing a group of people to disturb
traffic order.'' \77\ Li Jinsong, lead counsel on Chen's criminal
defense team, filed an appeal in September 2006 arguing that at trial,
the court had illegally deprived Chen of the right to be represented by
criminal defense lawyers of his own choosing.\78\ On October 31, 2006,
the Linyi Intermediate People's Court vacated the original trial court
judgment and remanded the case for a retrial.\79\ The retrial took
place on November 27, 2006,\80\ and on December 1, 2006, the Yinan
court handed down the same judgment as before,\81\ which the appeals
court affirmed on January 12, 2007.\82\ Chen's retrial prompted
repeated criticism for its criminal procedure violations.\83\ In June
2007, Chen reportedly informed his wife and brother that he had been
beaten by fellow inmates.\84\
In August 2007, Chen received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for ``his
irrepressible passion for justice in leading ordinary Chinese citizens
to assert their legitimate rights under the law.'' \85\ His wife, Yuan
Weijing, attempted to travel to the Philippines to accept the award on
behalf of Chen, but Chinese authorities intercepted her before leaving
the country and reportedly forcibly returned her to her village.\86\ At
other times during Chen's imprisonment, authorities also repeatedly
subjected Yuan and their two children to harassment, home confinement,
surveillance, and other abuses,\87\ including reportedly preventing the
children from enrolling in school.\88\ The Commission will continue to
monitor and report on the conditions surrounding Chen Guangcheng and
his family in the coming year.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Freedom of Residence and Movement
Freedom of Residence
The Chinese government continued to enforce the household
registration (hukou) system it first established in the
1950s.\1\ Hukou regulations limit the right of Chinese citizens
formally to establish their permanent place of residence.
Initially used to control migration of the rural population to
China's cities, ``[t]oday it is one of the most important
mechanisms determining entitlement to public welfare, urban
services and, more broadly, full citizenship.'' \2\ The hukou
regulations classify Chinese citizens as either rural or urban
hukou holders and local governments restrict access to some
social services based on the classification. The implementation
of these regulations discriminates against rural hukou holders
who migrate to urban areas by imposing significant constraints
on rural hukou holders' ability to obtain healthcare benefits,
education, and other social services in urban locations where
they reside but lack legal residency status. The hukou
regulations appear to contradict the freedoms guaranteed in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which include ``the
right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his
residence.'' \3\
The discriminatory effect is especially prominent in the
area of education. In many cases, migrant children, who live in
urban areas but lack urban hukous, cannot attend local public
schools. The estimated number of migrant children affected by
hukou regulations ranges from 14 million to 19 million.\4\
Chinese law and regulations call for nine years of compulsory
education and equal treatment of all children.\5\ In practice,
however, many migrant children are systematically excluded from
urban public schools, where resources are more abundant than in
urban private schools or rural schools.\6\ Many resort to
substandard, often unlicensed but relatively affordable urban
private schools, those with more means offer a special
``donation'' to public schools in order to gain access, and
some send their children back to their place of rural hukou,
relying on relatives to raise their children.\7\ Some migrant
children who have gained access to urban public school systems
report unequal treatment. According to a 16-year-old middle
school graduate, migrant and local students ``from the two
sides of the school never communicate . . . . Class starting
time, lunch time and dismissal time are different for students
of the two parts. The eastern part's [local] students are going
to visit the expo site, but the western part [migrant students]
doesn't have the chance.'' \8\ Most migrant students are
``housed in a separate school building, wear an alternative
uniform and have different teachers and textbooks.'' \9\ School
teachers tell the local children to ``stay clear of the migrant
children'' because they are ``wild, lacking in manners and
poor.'' \10\ In addition, migrant children cannot attend high
school or sit for the crucial college entrance exam in the
cities where they reside, but in which they do not possess a
valid hukou.\11\ Instead, they generally are required to return
to their hukou locations where they may experience significant
alienation or have little knowledge of the local academic
culture.\12\
In recent years, local governments have instituted a series
of policies intended to reform the hukou system. While details
vary by location, the key provisions of these reforms allow
people to transfer hukou from rural to urban status based on
certain criteria.\13\ These criteria usually include income,
education, and special skills aimed at attracting elite rural
hukou holders with wealth and education.\14\ The vast majority
of China's over 200 million migrant workers fall outside the
scope of these reforms.\15\
Because the problems the hukou system creates are complex,
any large-scale reform likely will carry sweeping
implications.\16\ Hukou transfer is managed at the local level,
and typically each local government sets its own standard of
admission for rural-to-urban hukou transfers.\17\ Furthermore,
rural hukou holders confront disparate interests. For example,
those with easy access to urban centers may actually prefer
rural hukous over urban hukous due to benefits tied to land
ownership and a higher birth allowance rate.\18\ In addition,
hukou reforms often lack support from the urban hukou class as
the current status quo tips in its favor.\19\
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, authorities
continued to relax certain hukou restrictions consistent with
earlier
reform efforts.\20\ Several high-level officials acknowledged
and publicized the need for hukou reforms.\21\ The Development
Research Center of the State Council published an essay that
advocated for a more inclusive approach to hukou reform in
order to achieve ``substantive equality of rights.'' \22\ The
efficacy of these policies remains unclear.\23\
The government and the Communist Party exercised strict
control over public debate on hukou reforms during this
reporting year. Authorities retracted a joint editorial
published by 13 newspapers that decried the hukou system as
corrupt and in need of speedy reforms. One of the editorial's
co-authors, a deputy editor at one of the newspapers, was
forced to resign.\24\
Significant Household Registration (Hukou) Policies and Regulatory
Developments in 2010
GUANGZHOU MUNICIPALITY
In May 2010, the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau in
Guangdong province directed district- and county-level Party
committees and governments to gradually transform its hukou
system into one that will identify residents as holders of
Guangzhou's residential hukou.\25\ The impact of the reform
remains unclear. One key issue associated with the reform is
the interpretation of its language. A noted hukou scholar
interpreting similar reforms has
argued that the impact of a unified residential hukou system is
negligible on migrant workers. This is because the reform can
be interpreted to include only a small percentage of rural
hukou holders who are already eligible for social benefits,\26\
rendering the reform efforts pro forma at best. According to
one source, the Guangzhou experiment is likely to have a
limited impact on its large migrant population.\27\
CHONGQING MUNICIPALITY
In July 2010, Chongqing municipality initiated gradual
voluntary hukou reforms aimed at increasing the percentage of
urban hukou holders in the municipality.\28\ By 2020, the
reform efforts are intended to gradually turn at least 10
million rural hukou holders into urban hukou holders, thus
potentially allowing them greater access to social services in
exchange for their land allocations.\29\ An unusual feature of
the reform allows rural hukou holders to retain their land
contracting and use rights (cheng bao), among other provisions,
for up to three years after transitioning to urban hukou
status.\30\ It is unclear whether rural hukou holders can
choose to retain their land rights and their rural hukou status
at the end of the three-year transition period should they wish
to do so. If successful, the Chongqing hukou reforms could
significantly remedy a shortage of urban land for construction
and development in the municipality.\31\
THE JOINT EDITORIAL ON HUKOU REFORM
On March 1, 2010, 13 mainland newspapers published a joint
editorial four days before the annual meetings of the National
People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference convened in Beijing.\32\ The joint
editorial demanded a clear timetable for hukou reforms, stating
that freedom of movement is ``an inseparable part of human
rights and personal freedom.'' \33\ Furthermore, it decried the
hukou system as a breeding ground for corruption and urged the
delegates to abolish the system.\34\ Just one day after its
publication, the editorial was removed from many Web sites and
the deputy editor of one of the newspapers was forced to
resign.\35\
Freedom of Movement
There can be little doubt that there is greater freedom of
movement for those Chinese citizens who shun political
engagement outside of government-approved parameters. Unlike 30
years ago, there are many opportunities for travel. Yet,
Chinese rights defenders and advocates who venture beyond
government-sanctioned parameters face frequent restrictions on
their liberty of movement. The Chinese government continues to
impose restrictions on Chinese citizens' liberty of movement
that contravene international standards.\36\
CHINESE CITIZENS BARRED FROM ENTERING AND LEAVING MAINLAND CHINA
Chinese authorities arbitrarily barred rights defenders,
advocates, and critics from entering and leaving China. China's
Passport Law delineates the legal framework for regulating
travel abroad. While providing some procedural safeguards, the
law provides no mechanism for redress. Article 2 of the
Passport Law requires Chinese citizens to have a valid passport
to enter China while Article 13 gives officials the discretion
to refuse the issuance of a passport where ``the competent
organs of the State Council believe that [the applicant's]
leaving China will do harm to the state security or result in
serious losses to the benefits of the state.'' \37\ With
respect to entering China, authorities refuse to renew the
passports of rights advocates and subsequently cite passport
expiration as grounds to prevent entry. Such arbitrary
practices appear to contravene the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights.\38\
There are numerous cases of concern. The following is a
representative sample:
Between June 7, 2009, and February 12, 2010,
on at least eight separate occasions, the Chinese
government prevented Feng Zhenghu, a Shanghai-based
human rights advocate and Chinese citizen, from
returning to China after a temporary visit to Japan. He
spent at least 90 days at Narita Airport, Tokyo's main
airport, before he was allowed to reenter mainland
China.\39\ Since Feng's return to Shanghai in mid-
February, the Chinese government has subjected him to
an array of control measures including surveillance,
confiscation of property, detention, and home
confinement due to his intended publication of 12
instances of injustice to coincide with the Shanghai
2010 World Expo.\40\
During the week of March 22, 2010, Chinese
professor Cui Weiping was banned from leaving China to
travel to the United States, where she planned to
attend an academic conference hosted by the Association
for Asian Studies in Philadelphia and to give lectures
at Harvard University and other schools.\41\ Cui's
travel ban is likely related to a series of Twitter
messages she posted about Liu Xiaobo's 11-year prison
sentence and to her comments commemorating the 1989
Tiananmen protests.\42\
On at least two separate occasions, Chinese
authorities prevented poet, writer, and musician Liao
Yiwu from leaving China. Liao was imprisoned for four
years for reciting his poem ``Massacre'' about the
Tiananmen protests.\43\ In October 2009, authorities
banned Liao from going to the Frankfurt Book Fair,
where China was the ``honored guest.'' \44\ On March 2,
2010, Liao was again banned from attending Germany's
largest literary festival, Lit.Cologne. Authorities
removed him from a plane en route to Germany and placed
him under house confinement.\45\
In April 2010, the Chinese government banned
Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uyghur economist, from
traveling to Turkey to attend an academic
conference.\46\ Ilham Tohti is a professor at Minzu
University of China who also writes an online blog
addressing Uyghur social issues.\47\ Chinese
authorities warned Ilham Tohti against attending the
conference and took him on a ``vacation'' days before
the event.\48\ The ban is one of eight instances where
Ilham Tohti was prevented from traveling abroad since
the July 2009 demonstrations and riots in Urumqi,
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.\49\ At the time of
the April travel ban, Ilham Tohti held a valid Chinese
passport and had already received a Turkish visa to
attend the conference.\50\
Macau customs officials banned ``Long Hair''
Leung Kwok-hung, a member of the Legislative Council of
Hong Kong, from entering Macau in December 2009.\51\
``Long Hair'' Leung, along with other democracy
activists, had planned to press President Hu Jintao on
the issue of universal suffrage in Hong Kong while Hu
was in Macau to attend commemorative ceremonies of
Macau's return to China.\52\ Macau customs authorities
cited Macau's Internal Security Law as grounds for
Leung's ban.\53\ An outspoken lawmaker, ``Long Hair''
Leung had been prevented from entering Macau on
previous occasions.\54\
HOME CONFINEMENT AND SURVEILLANCE OF CHINESE CITIZENS DURING
POLITICALLY SENSITIVE PERIODS
The Chinese government continued to detain, harass, and
restrict the movement of political dissidents and rights
defenders inside China. Restrictions on liberty of movement
within China were especially prominent during politically
sensitive periods. The Commission's 2010 reporting year
coincided with several anniversaries and events: the Shanghai
2010 World Expo, the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic
Dialogue, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's
Republic of China (National Day), and the 21st anniversary of
the 1989 Tiananmen protests.
The Chinese government employs a spectrum of measures to
restrict the movement of dissidents, advocates, and rights
defenders who act outside of approved parameters. During this
reporting year, authorities used methods including
surveillance, police presence outside of one's home,
``invitation'' to tea with police, forced trips during
politically sensitive periods, detention, removal from one's
home, reeducation through labor, and imprisonment.
There are numerous cases of concern. Representative
examples follow.
In connection with October 1, 2009 (National
Day), several dozen activists, dissidents, and rights
defenders saw
increased state intrusion in connection with the 60th
anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of
China. Examples include the following incidents:
Li Hai, a former Tiananmen protest student
leader, disappeared from Beijing for 22 days in
mid-September 2009 after having been
``invited'' by the police to go on a trip. Li's
whereabouts remained unknown as of October 9,
2009.\55\
Domestic security protection personnel forced
Qi Zhiyong to travel to an area outside of
Beijing. Qi is a Beijing activist who is
disabled from the 1989 Tiananmen protest.\56\
He was allowed to return to Beijing to attend
to his daughter but was placed under
residential surveillance and denied access to
foreign media.\57\
Ding Zilin, the leader of the Tiananmen
Mothers, and Liu Xia, wife of imprisoned
intellectual Liu Xiaobo, received orders to
leave Beijing.\58\
In connection with the 21st anniversary of the
1989 Tiananmen protests in June 2010, activists,
dissidents, and rights defenders saw heightened
official intrusion during this period. The following
list highlights the extent and methods employed:
On May 28, 2010, Guiyang Public Security
Bureau personnel in Guizhou province surveyed,
intercepted, and detained a gathering of
Guiyang Human Rights members discussing the
commemoration of the 21st anniversary of the
Tiananmen protests.\59\
On May 24, 2010, domestic security protection
personnel warned Beijing lawyer Li Xiongbing
``not to leave his home in the coming days,''
\60\ and stationed police outside of his
home.\61\
On May 26 and 28, 2010, in Xi'an city,
Shaanxi province, domestic security protection
personnel summoned rights defenders Yang Hai
and Zhang Jiankang to ``tea'' and told them
that they would be forced to travel during the
Tiananmen protest anniversary period.\62\
Several supporters of Internet writer Chen
Yang went missing. Their whereabouts remained
unknown as of June 7. In 2009, Chen was ordered
to serve reeducation through labor for his
Twitter messages mobilizing others to
commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen
protests.\63\
Status of Women
Introduction
During the Commission's 2010 reporting year, Chinese
officials continued to promote existing laws and policies that
aim to protect women's rights in accordance with international
human rights norms. Inconsistent interpretation,
implementation, and enforcement of these laws across
localities, however, limit progress on
concrete protections of women's rights. Recent statistics on
female representation in government show increases in women
holding positions at the central, provincial, and municipal
levels of government; however, female political representation
at the village level remains low and may contribute to
continued violations of women's land rights in rural areas.
Domestic violence remained widespread, highlighting a need for
national-level legislation that provides a clear definition of
domestic violence and standards for prevention and punishment.
Like many countries, China lacks national legislation that
clearly defines sexual harassment and gives guidance on
appropriate measures for prevention and punishment of offenses.
Sex-selective abortion and infanticide continue, despite
Chinese government regulations which aim to deter such
practices, and have contributed to a severely imbalanced gender
ratio, according to a 2010 UN Development Programme report.
Gender discrimination with respect to wages, recruitment, and
retirement age continues; however, authorities promoted women's
employment and took concrete steps to eliminate gender
discrimination in the workplace.
Gender Equality
In its domestic laws and policy initiatives \1\ and through
its ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women \2\ (CEDAW), the Chinese
government has committed to ensuring female representation in
government on equal terms with men. According to a March 2010
Southern Daily report, factors including the costs of giving
birth, family conflict, and even a woman's clothing and makeup
prevent many Chinese women from breaking through the ``glass
ceiling.'' \3\ Official statistics reported in March 2010 show
that female representation in official positions has increased
at central, provincial, and municipal levels of government,\4\
but according to the Southern Daily report, ``compared with
women's political participation internationally, China's
progress in this area is very limited.'' \5\ The report notes
that China's international ranking with regard to female
political participation dropped from 12th place in 1994 to 52nd
in 2009,\6\ and that although women now make up 21.3 percent of
National People's Congress representatives, this is still far
short of the 30 percent standard set by the UN Commission on
the Status of Women in 1990.\7\
Female political representation at the village level also
remains low and may contribute to continued violations of
women's land rights in rural areas. Chen Zhili, Chair of the
All-China Women's Federation, reported in March 2010 that women
make up over 60 percent of the rural workforce, but only just
over 10 percent of village committee members.\8\ In most rural
areas of China, villages have a high rate of ``self-
governance'' with regard to issues such as land contracts,
profit distribution from collectives, and land requisition
compensation.\9\ With limited decisionmaking power in village
committees, women's interests are less likely to be represented
in village rules and regulations.\10\ According to a 2008
report by the non-governmental organization Women's Watch-
China, ``villages deny land rights of women who married . . .
in other villages and the women's sons and daughters in a
variety of ways. Yet, the grassroots government often holds an
equivocal attitude towards land rights disputes.'' \11\
Gender-Based Employment Discrimination
Gender-based employment discrimination with respect to
issues such as wages, recruitment, and retirement age remains
widespread in China, despite government efforts to eliminate it
and promote women's employment. The Chinese government is
committed under Article 7 of the International Covenant of
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to ensuring ``the right of
everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of
work,'' including ``equal pay for equal work,'' and ``equal
opportunity for everyone to be promoted in his employment to an
appropriate higher level, subject to no considerations other
than those of seniority and competence.'' \12\ Several domestic
laws also prohibit gender discrimination and promote gender
equality in the workplace, but lack an enforcement mechanism,
thus providing limited protection and support for those facing
discrimination.\13\ Examples of reports and surveys on gender
discrimination in employment from the 2010 reporting year
include:
According to a September 2009 All-China
Women's Federation survey, over 90 percent of the
female college students interviewed felt they had
experienced gender discrimination in their job
searches.\14\