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[109 House Committee Prints]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:29862.wais]
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ANNUAL REPORT
2006
=======================================================================
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 20, 2006
__________
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
29-862 PDF WASHINGTON : 2006
_________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate
House
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska, Chairman JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa, Co-Chairman
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas DAVID DREIER, California
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
MEL MARTINEZ, Florida ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
MAX BAUCUS, Montana SANDER LEVIN, Michigan
CARL LEVIN, Michigan MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
STEVEN J. LAW, Department of Labor
PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State
FRANKLIN L. LAVIN, Department of Commerce
CHRISTOPHER R. HILL, Department of State
BARRY F. LOWENKRON, Department of State
David Dorman, Staff Director (Chairman)
John Foarde, Staff Director (Co-Chairman)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
I. Commission Finding............................................ 1
II. Executive Summary............................................ 2
III. List of Recommendations..................................... 16
IV. Introduction................................................. 22
V. Monitoring Compliance With Human Rights....................... 25
(a) Special Focus for 2006: Freedom of Expression............ 25
(b) Rights of Criminal Suspects and Defendants............... 42
(c) Protection of Internationally Recognized Labor Rights.... 60
(d) Freedom of Religion...................................... 75
(e) Status of Women.......................................... 97
(f) The Environment.......................................... 100
(g) Public Health............................................ 104
(h) Population Planning...................................... 109
(i) Freedom of Residence and Travel.......................... 113
VI. Political Prisoner Database.................................. 118
VII. Development of the Rule of Law and Institutions of
Democratic Governance.......................................... 119
(a) Development of Civil Society............................. 119
(b) Institutions of Democratic Governance and Legislative
Reform..................................................... 124
(c) Access to Justice........................................ 131
(d) Commercial Rule of Law and the Impact of the WTO......... 142
VIII. Tibet...................................................... 160
IX. North Korean Refugees in China............................... 172
X. Developments in Hong Kong..................................... 175
XI. Appendix: Commission Activities in 2005 and 2006............. 178
XII. Endnotes.................................................... 180
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
2006 ANNUAL REPORT
I. Commission Finding
The Commission is deeply concerned that some Chinese
government policies designed to address growing social unrest
and bolster Communist Party authority are resulting in a period
of declining human rights for China's citizens. The Commission
identified limited improvements in the Chinese government's
human rights practices in 2004, but backward-stepping
government decisions in 2005 and 2006 are leading the
Commission to reevaluate the Chinese leadership's commitment to
additional human rights improvements in the near term. In its
2005 Annual Report, the Commission highlighted increased
government restrictions on Chinese citizens who worship in
state-controlled venues or write for state-controlled
publications. These restrictions remain in place, and in some
cases, the government has strengthened their enforcement.
The Communist Party's concern with growing social unrest
dominated its policy statements over the past year, and served
as
justification for increased government interference with, and
intimidation and harassment of, individuals and groups that the
Party believes may threaten its authority or legitimacy. The
government targeted social, political, and legal activists, as
well as
religious believers who violated strict government limitations
on religious practice. In the past year, government efforts to
maintain social stability have led to a greater reliance on the
coercive powers of the police to subdue potential threats to
Party rule. Chinese officials have also taken additional steps
in the past year to curb the growth of China's emerging civil
society. New government and Party controls have been imposed on
courts and judges that may further weaken the independence of
the Chinese judiciary. Moreover, the Chinese government
continues to use its regulatory control over the Internet and
print publishing to censor political and religious expression,
to imprison journalists and writers, and to prevent Chinese
citizens from having access to independent news sources.
The Commission notes the progress that the Chinese
government has made over the past 25 years in beginning to
build a political system based on the rule of law and on
respect for basic human rights. The twin demands of social
stability and continued economic progress have spurred legal
reforms that may one day be the leading edge of constraints on
the arbitrary exercise of state power. The Chinese government
continues to pursue judicial and criminal reforms, often in
cooperation with international partners, that could lead to
further protection of citizen rights. The government's
achievements in the economic realm are impressive, none more so
than its success in lifting more than 400 million Chinese
citizens out of extreme poverty since the early 1980s. Economic
reforms have also contributed to a growing middle class,
expected to total 170 million people by 2010. China's WTO
accession commitments have resulted in gradual improvements in
transparency at all levels of government. Elections at the
village level are now commonplace in China, and limited
experiments with popular participation continue at other levels
of government. Average Chinese citizens are free to discuss
sensitive issues in a way that would have been unimaginable two
decades ago.
While all of these changes are important, the gap between
forward-looking economic freedoms and a backward-looking
political system remains significant. There are leaders now
within China who comprehend the need for change, and who
understand that inflexibility, secretiveness, and a lack of
democratic oversight pose the greatest challenges to continued
development. These leaders will need to gather considerable
reformist courage to overcome obstacles and push for continued
change. Such changes will not occur overnight, but rather in
ways that Chinese society, culture, infrastructure, and
institutions must be prepared for and willing to accept.
II. Executive Summary
China has an authoritarian political system controlled by
the Communist Party. Party committees formulate all major state
policies before the government implements them. The Party
dominates Chinese legislative bodies such as the National
People's Congress (NPC), and fills all important government
positions in executive and judicial institutions through an
internal selection process. Party control extends throughout
institutions of local government. Chinese authorities have
ruled out building representative democratic institutions to
address citizen complaints about corruption and abuse of power,
and instead are recentralizing government posts into the hands
of individual Party secretaries. The absence of popular and
legal constraints to check the behavior of Party officials has
led to widespread corruption and citizen anger. The Party has
strengthened the role of internal responsibility systems to
moderate official behavior, but these systems have provided
some local Party officials with new incentives to conceal
information and abuse their power. In 2005, the central
leadership called for strengthened controls over society to
address mounting social unrest and to suppress dissent.
Since the 1980s, officials have introduced limited reforms
to allow citizens to vote in village elections. While these
reforms are a step forward in permitting citizen participation
at the local level, the reforms are designed to strengthen
Party governance and do not represent Party acceptance of
representative government. Since the late 1990s, the Party has
experimented with reforms that allow a limited degree of
citizen participation in the selection of local Party cadres,
but the Party retains tight control over the candidate pool and
the selection process. Since 2000, Chinese authorities have
experimented with the use of legislative hearings to solicit
public views on pending legislation, and the NPC held its first
controlled public hearing in September 2005. In March 2005, the
central government announced new transparency requirements for
local governments. The requirements mandate county and
provincial governments to increase transparency and popular
participation in government decisionmaking. Implementation of
these ``open government'' requirements varies, but some local
governments have taken steps toward greater transparency.
The Chinese government continues to engage the
international community on human rights and rule of law issues
to varying degrees. The government announced in 2006 that it
plans to amend its Criminal, Civil, and Administrative
Procedure Laws and reform the judiciary to prepare for
ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. The government hosted visits by the UN
Special Rapporteur on Torture in late 2005 and the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees in March 2006. Both UN officials
commended the Chinese government for its open attitude toward
increased dialogue, but Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on
Torture, also reported that his work was monitored and
obstructed by Chinese authorities. In May 2006, China was
elected to serve for a three-year term on the newly established
UN Human Rights Council. The government's application for
membership in the Council noted that it has acceded to 22
international human rights accords. As a member of the new
Council, the government has pledged to fulfill its obligations
under the terms of these accords, and is obligated under the
rules of the Council to submit to peer review of its human
rights record.
Chinese scholars and officials continued to engage foreign
governments and legal experts on a range of criminal justice
issues during late 2005 and 2006. Chinese law enforcement
agencies expressed a growing interest in cooperating with other
countries to combat transnational crime, and in expanding
cooperation with U.S. law enforcement agencies on money
laundering, fighting terrorism, and other issues. Numerous
international conferences and legal exchanges with Western
NGOs, judges, and legal experts took place, including programs
on public accountability, pretrial discovery, evidence
exclusion, criminal trials and procedure, bail, capital
punishment, and prison reform. In 2006, the U.S. and Chinese
governments continued to conduct a series of bilateral
cooperative activities on wage and hour laws, occupational
safety and health, mine safety and health, and pension program
oversight.
Government censorship, while not total, is pervasive and
highly effective, and denies Chinese citizens the freedoms of
speech and of the press guaranteed to them in the Chinese
Constitution. The government has imprisoned journalists who
provide news to foreigners, such as Zhao Yan, Shi Tao, and
Ching Cheong. Editors of publications that criticize government
policies, such as Yang Bin of the Beijing News and Li Datong of
the China Youth Daily, have been dismissed. The government
blocks the Web sites and radio and television broadcasts of
foreign news organizations, such as those of the British
Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Asia, and the Voice of
America. In 2005, the government banned dozens of newspapers
and confiscated almost one million ``illegal'' political
publications. Beginning in May 2005, the government blocked the
Commission's Web site from being viewed in China.
Modern telecommunications technologies such as the
Internet, cell phones, and satellite broadcasts, allow Chinese
citizens access to more information sources, both state-
controlled and non-state-controlled. But government
restrictions on news and information media, including on these
new information sources, do not conform to international human
rights standards for freedom of expression. The Chinese
government imposes a strict licensing scheme on news and
information media that includes oversight by government
agencies with discretion to grant, deny, and rescind licenses
based on political and economic criteria. The Chinese
government's content-based restrictions include controls on
political opinion and religious literature that are not
prescribed by law, and whose primary purpose is to protect the
ideological and political dominance of the Communist Party.
The government's restrictions on religious literature do
not conform to international human rights standards. Only
government-
licensed printing enterprises may print religious materials,
and then only with approval from both the provincial-level
religious affairs bureau and the press and publication
administration. In addition to confiscating religious
publications, the Chinese government also has fined, detained,
and imprisoned citizens for publishing, printing, and
distributing religious literature without government
permission. Cai Zhuohua, a house church pastor in Beijing, and
two of his family members were imprisoned in 2005 for printing
and giving away Bibles and other Christian literature. In Anhui
province, house church pastor Wang Zaiqing was arrested in May
2006 on the same charges.
The Communist Party's concern with growing social
instability dominated its policy statements over the past year,
and served as justification for increased government vigilance
over activities and groups that potentially threaten Party
legitimacy. Top Party, court, and law enforcement officials
repeatedly linked the government's policy of pursuing periodic
anti-crime campaigns, referred to as ``Strike Hard'' campaigns,
to the goal of maintaining social stability. Government efforts
to maintain social stability have led to a greater reliance on
the coercive powers of the police to subdue
potential threats to Party rule.
Abuse of power by local police forces remains a serious
problem. The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has
acknowledged the existence of continuing and widespread abuses
in law enforcement, including illegal extended detentions and
torture. New SPP regulations that detail the criteria for
prosecuting official abuses of power went into effect in July
2006, and establish standards for the prosecution of police who
abuse their power to hold individuals in custody beyond legal
limits, coerce confessions under torture, acquire evidence
through the use of force, maltreat prisoners, or retaliate
against those who petition the government or file complaints
against them.
The Chinese government continues to apply vague criminal
and administrative provisions to justify detentions based on an
individual's political opinions or membership in religious,
ethnic, or social groups. These provisions allow for the
targeting and punishment of activists for crimes that
``endanger state security'' or ``disturb public order'' under
the Criminal Law. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture
concluded in his March 2006 report to the UN Commission on
Human Rights that the vague definition of these crimes leaves
their application open to abuse, particularly of the rights to
freedom of religion, speech, and assembly.
Chinese authorities use reeducation through labor and other
forms of administrative detention to circumvent the criminal
process and imprison offenders for ``minor crimes,'' without
judicial review and the procedural protections guaranteed by
the Chinese Constitution and Criminal Procedure Law. The UN
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded in 2004 that the
Chinese government has made no significant progress in
reforming the administrative detention system to ensure
judicial review and to conform to international law. Although
proposed reforms would provide some added procedural
protections, they would still not provide an accused individual
the opportunity to dispute the alleged misconduct and contest
law enforcement accusations of guilt before an independent
adjudicatory body.
Although illegal in China, torture and abuse by law
enforcement officers remain widespread. Factors that perpetuate
or exacerbate the problem of torture include a lack of
procedural safeguards to protect criminal suspects and
defendants, over reliance on confessions of guilt, the absence
of lawyers at interrogations, inadequate complaint mechanisms,
the lack of an independent judiciary, and the abuse of
administrative detention measures. The Chinese government
emphasizes its ongoing efforts to pass new laws and
administrative regulations preventing, punishing, and
compensating cases of torture by law enforcement officers. Both
the SPP and the Ministry of Public Security have announced
their support for audio and video taping of interrogations of
criminal suspects accused of a limited number of crimes. The
Chinese government recognizes that problems of misconduct,
including physical abuse, exist within Chinese prisons and
reeducation through labor centers, and it is making progress
toward increasing accountability for such behavior.
In 2006, Chinese authorities increased restrictions on
lawyers who work on politically sensitive cases or cases that
draw attention from the foreign news media. Law enforcement
officials also intimidated lawyers defending these cases by
charging them, or threatening to charge them, with various
crimes. Since mid-2005, local authorities have also used
harassment and violent measures against those who participated
in criminal or civil rights defense in sensitive matters.
Beijing lawyer Zhu Jiuhu was detained during the past year.
Self-trained legal advocate Chen Guangcheng was sentenced on
August 24, 2006, to four years and three months' imprisonment,
and Shanghai lawyer Zheng Enchong is currently under house
arrest after being released from prison on June 5, 2006.
Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng has been held incommunicado since
authorities reportedly abducted him on August 15 from his
sister's home in Shandong province. Guo Feixiong, who served as
a legal advisor to Gao's law firm, was arrested and later
released in late 2005, and is currently in detention after
being taken from his home on September 14.
Chinese criminal law includes 68 capital offenses, over
half of which are non-violent crimes. The Chinese government
reportedly has adopted an ``execute fewer, execute cautiously''
policy. In 2006, the Chinese judiciary made reform of the death
penalty review process a top priority and introduced new
appellate court procedures for hearing death penalty cases. The
Supreme People's Court announced that it would consolidate and
reclaim the death penalty review power from provincial-level
high courts. These reforms are designed to limit the use of
death sentences, consolidate criteria used by courts to
administer those sentences, and ensure constitutionally
protected human rights.
The Vice Minister of Health acknowledged that the majority
of human organs used in transplants in China originate from
executed prisoners. Under the World Health Organization's
guiding principles on human organ transplantation, organ
donations by prisoners, even when reportedly voluntary, may
nonetheless violate international standards if the organs are
obtained through undue influence and pressure. New Ministry of
Health regulations include medical standards for organ
transplants, but do not provide guidance on what type of
consent is required for taking organs from
executed prisoners.
The Chinese government does not respect the internationally
recognized right of workers to organize their own unions. The
All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), a Party-led mass
organization, is the only legal labor federation in China. It
controls local union branches and aligns worker and union
activity with government and Party policy. The ACFTU began a
campaign in March 2006 to establish union branches in foreign
enterprises doing business in China. Chinese workers who
attempt to form independent workers' organizations, or whom the
government suspects of being leaders of such organizations,
risk imprisonment. The government secretly tried labor rights
activist Li Wangyang and sentenced him to 10 years'
imprisonment in September 2001 for staging a peaceful hunger
strike. Li had previously served most of a 13-year sentence for
organizing an independent union. In May 2003, the government
sentenced labor activist Yao Fuxin to a seven-year prison term
for peacefully rallying workers to demand wage and pension
arrearages from a bankrupt state-owned enterprise. Both Li and
Yao remain in prison.
Weak protection of worker rights has contributed to an
increase in the number of labor disputes and protests.
According to ACFTU figures, the number of labor disputes rose
sharply in 2005. The ACFTU reports that there were 300,000
labor-related lawsuits filed, a 20.5 percent increase over 2004
and a 950 percent increase compared to 1995. Strikes, marches,
demonstrations, and collective petitions increased from fewer
than 1,500 in 1994 to about 11,000 in 2003, while the number of
workers involved increased from nearly 53,000 in 1994 to an
estimated 515,000 in 2003. Poor workplace health and safety
conditions and continuing wage and pension arrearages were the
most prominent issues resulting in labor disputes during the
past year. Chinese industry continues to have a high accident
rate, with death rates in the mining and construction
industries leading other sectors. According to official
statistics, 110,027 people were killed in 677,379 workplace
accidents through December 2005, and more than 10,000 workers
died in the mining and construction sectors during 2005.
Forced labor is an integral part of the Chinese
administrative
detention system. Authorities sentence some prisoners without
judicial review to reeducation through labor (laojiao) centers,
where they are forced to work long hours without pay to fulfill
heavy production quotas, and sometimes are tortured for
refusing to work. China's Labor Law prohibits forced labor
practices in the workplace, and authorities have arrested
employers who trap workers at forced labor sites. In 2002, the
Chinese government began to cooperate with the International
Labor Organization on broad issues of concern regarding forced
labor, including on potential reforms to the reeducation
through labor system, and on improving institutional capacity
to combat human trafficking for labor exploitation.
The use of child labor in some regions of China is
reportedly on the rise. Labor shortages in the economically
developed southern and eastern coastal provinces are causing
employers to turn to child laborers, according to NGO reports.
This development coincides with intensified efforts by the
Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labor and Social
Security to fight the illegal employment of children,
suggesting that the government is more concerned about such
abuses than before. Government authorities
consider statistics on child labor that have not been
officially
approved for release to be state secrets, and this policy
thwarts
efforts to understand the extent and causes of the problem.
Chinese government restrictions on the practice of religion
violate international human rights standards. Freedom of
religious
belief is protected by the Chinese Constitution and laws, but
government implementation of Party policy on religion, and
restrictions elsewhere in domestic law, violate these
guarantees. The
Chinese government tolerates some aspects of religious belief
and practice, but only under a strict regulatory framework that
represses religious and spiritual activities falling outside
the scope of Party-sanctioned practice. Religious organizations
are required to register with the government and submit to the
leadership of ``patriotic religious associations'' created by
the Party to lead each of China's five recognized religions:
Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism. Those
who choose not to register with the government, or groups that
the government refuses to register, operate outside the zone of
protected religious activity and risk harassment, detention,
imprisonment, and other abuses. Registered communities also
risk such abuse if they engage in religious activities that
authorities deem a threat to Party authority or legitimacy.
The 2004 Regulation on Religious Affairs (RRA) has not
afforded greater religious freedom to Chinese citizens, despite
government claims that it represented a ``paradigm shift'' by
limiting state control over religion. Like earlier local and
national regulations on religion, the RRA emphasizes government
control and restrictions on religion. The RRA articulates
general protection only for freedom of ``religious belief,''
but not for expressions of religious belief. Like earlier
regulations, it also protects only those religious activities
deemed ``normal,'' without defining this term. Although the RRA
includes provisions that permit registered religious
organizations to select leaders, publish materials, and engage
in other affairs, many provisions are conditioned on government
approval and oversight of religious activities.
Chinese government enforcement of Party policy on religion
creates a repressive environment for the practice of Tibetan
Buddhism. Party policies toward the Dalai Lama and Panchen
Lama, the second-ranking Tibetan spiritual leader, seek to
control the fundamental religious convictions of Tibetan
Buddhists. Government actions to implement Party policies
caused further deterioration in some aspects of religious
freedom for Tibetan Buddhists in the past year. Officials began
a patriotic education campaign in Lhasa-area monasteries and
nunneries in April 2005. Expressions of resentment by Tibetan
monks and nuns against the continuing campaign resulted in
detentions, expulsions, and an apparent suicide. Chinese
officials continue to hold Gedun Choekyi Nyima, the boy the
Dalai Lama recognized as the Panchen Lama in May 1995, in
incommunicado custody along with his parents.
Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns constituted 21 of the 24
known political detentions of Tibetans by Chinese authorities
in 2005, compared to 8 of the 15 such known detentions in 2004,
based on data available in the Commission's Political Prisoner
Database. None of the known detentions of monks and nuns in
2005 took place in Sichuan province, a shift from the previous
three years, but known detentions of monks and nuns in Qinghai
and Gansu provinces increased during the same period. Based on
data available for 50 currently imprisoned Tibetan monks and
nuns, their average sentence length is approximately nine years
and six months. In one positive development, the government
permitted the resumption of a centuries-old Tibetan Buddhist
tradition of advanced study that leads to the highest level of
scholarly attainment in the Gelug tradition.
Government repression of unregistered Catholic clerics
increased in the past year. Based on NGO reports, officials in
Hebei and Zhejiang provinces detained a total of 38
unregistered clerics in 13 incidents in the last year, while in
the previous year officials detained 11 clerics in 5 incidents.
The government targets Catholic bishops who lead large
unregistered communities for the most severe punishment. Bishop
Jia Zhiguo, the unregistered bishop of Zhengding diocese in
Hebei province, has spent most of the past year in detention.
Bishop Jia has been detained at least eight times since 2004.
Government harassment and abuse of registered Catholic
clerics also increased in the past year. In November and
December 2005, three incidents were reported in which officials
or unidentified
assailants beat registered Catholic nuns or priests after they
demanded the return of church property. In April and May 2006,
officials began a campaign to increase control over registered
Catholic bishops. Officials detained, sequestered, threatened,
or exerted pressure on dozens of registered Catholic clerics to
coerce them into participating in the consecration of bishops
selected by the state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association
but not approved by the Holy See. Government authorities also
restricted contact between registered clergy and the Holy See,
denying bishops permission to travel to Rome in September 2005
to participate in a meeting of Catholic bishops. Authorities
continued to permit some registered priests and nuns to study
abroad.
The Chinese government also strictly controls the practice
of Islam. Muslims face the same rigorous registration
requirements as other religious groups. The state-controlled
Islamic Association of China aligns Islamic practice to Party
goals by directing the training and confirmation of religious
leaders, the publication of religious materials, the content of
sermons, and the organization of Hajj pilgrimages, as well as
by indoctrinating religious leaders and adherents in Party
ideology and government policy.
The government severely represses Islamic practice in the
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), especially among the
Uighur ethnic group. Local regulations in the XUAR impose
restrictions on religion that are not found in other parts of
China. The government's religious repression in the XUAR is
part of a broader policy aimed at diluting expressions of
Uighur identity and tightening government control in the
region. The government continues to imprison Uighurs who engage
in peaceful expressions of dissent and other non-violent
activities. Writer Nurmemet Yasin and historian Tohti Tunyaz
remain in prison for writing a short story and conducting
research on the XUAR.
The Chinese government continues to repress Chinese
Protestants who worship in house churches. From May 2005 to May
2006, the government detained nearly 2,000 house church
members, according to one U.S. NGO. Almost 50 percent of the
reported detentions of Protestant house church members and
leaders took place in Henan province, where the house church
movement is particularly strong. In June 2006, Pastor Zhang
Rongliang, the leader of one of China's largest house churches,
was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison for
``illegally crossing the national border'' and ``fraudulently
obtaining a passport.'' Authorities have detained or imprisoned
Pastor Zhang multiple times since 1976. Pastor Gong Shengliang
is serving a life sentence in declining health, and was beaten
in prison during the past year.
The Chinese government continues to maintain strict control
over the registered Protestant church. The RRA requires that
all Protestants worship at registered churches, regardless of
their differences in doctrine and liturgy. The state-controlled
Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which leads the registered
Protestant church in China, continues to impose a Party-defined
theology, called ``theological construction,'' on registered
seminaries that is intended to ``weaken those aspects within
Christian faith that do not conform with the socialist
society.'' In the past year, authorities detained a registered
Protestant pastor in Henan province for conducting a Bible
study meeting at a registered Protestant church outside his
designated geographic area.
The Chinese government continues to disrupt the
relationships that many house churches maintain with co-
religionists outside China, including raiding meetings between
house church leaders and overseas Protestants, and preventing
foreign travel by house church leaders. The Chinese government
also continues to restrict and monitor the ties between the
registered Protestant Church and foreign denominations.
Government persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual movement
continued during the past year. Authorities use both criminal
and administrative punishments to punish Falun Gong
practitioners for peacefully exercising their spiritual
beliefs. The state-controlled press has reported on at least
149 cases of Falun Gong practitioners currently in prison, but
Falun Gong sources estimate that up to 100,000 practitioners
have been detained since 1999. Manfred Nowak, UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture, reported after his November 2005 visit
to China that Falun Gong practitioners account for two-thirds
of victims of alleged torture by Chinese law enforcement
officers. Tsinghua University student Wang Xin was sentenced to
nine years' imprisonment in 2001 for downloading Falun Gong
materials from the Internet and printing leaflets.
Despite strict government controls on the practice of
religion, Chinese authorities accommodate the social programs
of Buddhist, Catholic, Daoist, Muslim, and Protestant
communities when these programs support Party goals. For
example, domestic Muslim civil society organizations carry out
social welfare projects, and international Muslim charities
have supported projects in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, as well
as in the XUAR. The Amity Foundation, affiliated with the
registered Protestant Church, sponsors projects in social
services and development aid, including education, health care,
and care for the elderly.
The Chinese Constitution and national laws provide that men
and women should enjoy equal rights and list protections for
the economic and social rights of women, but vague language and
inadequate implementation hinder the effectiveness of these
legal protections. Some provincial and municipal governments
have passed regulations to strengthen the implementation of
national laws. A 2005 amendment to the Law on the Protection of
Rights and Interests of Women prohibits sexual harassment and
domestic violence, promotes a greater voice for women in the
government, and charges several government organizations with
responsibility for preventing human trafficking and
rehabilitating victims.
Civil society groups in China advocate on behalf of women's
rights within the confines of government and Party policy. The
All-China Women's Federation, a Party-led mass organization,
works with the Chinese government to support women's rights,
implement programs for disadvantaged women, and provide a
limited measure of legal counseling and training for women.
Women,
however, have limited earning power compared to men, despite
government policies that guarantee women non-discrimination in
employment and occupation.
The Chinese government strictly controls the reproductive
lives of Chinese women. Since the early 1980s, the government's
population planning policy has limited most women in urban
areas to bearing one child, while permitting many women in
rural China to bear a second child if their first child is
female. Officials have coerced compliance with the policy
through a system marked by pervasive propaganda, mandatory
monitoring of women's reproductive cycles, mandatory
contraception, mandatory birth permits, coercive fines for
failure to comply, and, in some cases, forced sterilization and
abortion. The Chinese government's population planning laws and
regulations contravene international human rights standards by
limiting the number of children that women may bear, by
coercing compliance with population targets through heavy
fines, and by discriminating against ``out-of-plan'' children.
Local officials have violated Chinese law by punishing
citizens, such as legal advocate Chen Guangcheng, who have
drawn attention to population planning abuses by government
officials.
Human trafficking remains pervasive in China despite
efforts by government agencies to combat trafficking, a
framework of domestic laws to address the problem, and ongoing
cooperation with international anti-trafficking programs. The
government's population planning policy has created a severe
imbalance in the male-female birth ratio, and this imbalance
exacerbates trafficking of women and girls for sale as brides.
Between 10,000 and 20,000 men, women, and children are victims
of trafficking within China each year, and NGOs estimate that
90 percent of those victims are women and children trafficked
for sexual exploitation. Authorities are working with the
International Labor Organization to build anti-trafficking
capacity and raise domestic awareness of the problem.
The Chinese government acknowledges the severity of China's
environmental problems and has taken steps to curb pollution
and environmental degradation. Since 2001, it has formulated or
revised environmental protection laws, administrative
regulations, and standards, and has worked to strengthen
enforcement of anti-pollution rules. The Chinese government has
also welcomed international technical assistance to combat
environmental degradation, and has increased cooperation with
the U.S. government on environmental protection over the past
year.
Despite these initiatives, local enforcement of
environmental laws and regulations is poor, and under funding
of environmental protection activities continues to hinder
official efforts to prevent environmental degradation. A lack
of transparency hampers the Chinese government's ability to
respond to civil emergencies, including environmental
disasters. Government efforts to impose greater control over
environmental civil society groups during the past year have
stifled citizen activism.
The central government strengthened its commitment during
the past year to address the severe shortage of affordable
health care in rural China. Since the collapse of the rural
public health infrastructure in the 1980s, the disparity in the
availability and affordability of health care between urban and
rural areas has increased. As a result, the medical needs of
China's rural poor, including the diagnosis and treatment of
infectious diseases, often go unaddressed. The government,
however, has pledged to accelerate the establishment of rural
health cooperatives and invest more than 20 billion yuan
(US$2.5 billion) over the next five years to modernize
hospitals, clinics, and medical equipment at the village,
township, and county levels.
The central government continued to take steps over the
past year to prevent and control the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Although the estimated number of HIV/AIDS cases nationwide has
decreased, health officials still consider the disease to be a
grave problem. Government efforts to prevent and control the
transmission of HIV/AIDS continue to face serious challenges,
as local implementation of national policy lags far behind
central government attention to the problem. Victims of HIV/
AIDS and other infectious diseases also continue to face
harassment and discrimination, despite legal protections.
Chinese public health officials have shown increased
commitment and responsiveness in their efforts to prevent and
control the spread of avian flu, and have taken steps to
improve government transparency following the mishandling of
the SARS epidemic in 2003. International health experts,
however, still consider China to be among the most likely
incubators of a potential human influenza pandemic. Central
government cooperation in sharing information and virus samples
with international health organizations has been inconsistent,
and international health organizations and central government
officials continue to express concern about the speed and
accuracy of local reporting on outbreaks among both humans and
poultry.
Since its implementation in the 1950s, the Chinese
household registration (hukou) system has limited the rights of
ordinary Chinese citizens to choose their permanent place of
residence, receive equal access to social services, and enjoy
equal protection of the law. Economic changes and relaxation of
some hukou controls have eroded previously strict limits on
citizens' freedom of movement, but these changes have also
exported a discriminatory urban-rural social division to
China's cities. Migrants who lack a local hukou for their new
city of residence face legal discrimination in employment,
education, and social services.
Chinese leaders called for reforms to the hukou system
during the past year. Central government interest in reform
stems not only from concern over migrant rights and economic
inequality, but also from concern over growing social
instability and a desire for stronger government control over
China's internal migrant population. New national goals for
hukou reform, like similar proposals implemented periodically
since the late 1990s, call for streamlined hukou categories,
elimination of discriminatory regulations on employment, and
improved migrant access to social services. Local governments
and urban residents have resisted reforms to the hukou system
because of the potential budgetary impact, fears of increasing
population pressure in cities, and discriminatory attitudes
toward migrants. Local opposition has limited the ability of
central government authorities to achieve national reform
goals.
The number of civil society organizations in China is
growing, with many organizations undertaking projects such as
poverty alleviation, faith-based social work, and legal efforts
to protect citizen rights. These organizations include national
mass organizations that the Party created and funds, smaller
citizen associations
registered under national regulations, and loose networks of
unregistered grassroots organizations. In February 2006, the
China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation selected six groups as
the first civil society organizations to receive Chinese
government funding to run experimental anti-poverty programs,
including the China office of a U.S.-based rural development
organization.
Central authorities seek to maintain control over civil
society groups, halt the emergence of independent
organizations, and prevent what they have called the
``Westernization'' of China. While recognizing the utility of
civil society organizations to address social problems, Chinese
authorities use strict regulations to limit the growth of an
independent civil society. Some Chinese citizens who attempt to
organize groups outside of state control have been imprisoned.
These include individuals who have attempted to establish
independent labor unions and political associations, such as
China Free Trade Union Preparatory Committee member Hu Shigen,
and China Democracy Party member Qin Yongmin; or young
intellectuals who organize informal discussion groups, such as
New Youth Study Group members Jin Haike, Xu Wei, Yang Zili, and
Zhang Honghai.
Chinese officials have taken additional steps to curtail
civil society organizations in the past year, but authorities
are undecided on how to proceed. Since early 2005, Ministry of
Civil Affairs (MOCA) officials have been researching a new
administrative system to monitor and control civil society
organizations. Many details of the new system are undetermined,
such as who will conduct the required evaluations of civil
society groups, how the evaluation results will be used, and
who will fund the evaluations. At the same time, Chinese
authorities have supported limited reforms to the status of
civil society organizations. MOCA officials are advocating
changes to the tax code to encourage private donations to civil
society organizations. Central Party officials have expressed
support for the creation of rural farmer cooperatives in annual
policy guidelines issued each year since 2004.
International human rights standards require effective
remedies for official violations of citizen rights. Despite
these guarantees, Chinese citizens face formidable obstacles in
seeking remedies to government actions that violate their legal
rights and constitutionally protected freedoms. External
government and Party controls continue to limit the
independence of the Chinese judiciary. Party officials control
the selection of top judicial personnel in all courts,
including the Supreme People's Court, China's highest judicial
authority. Since 2005, the government has restricted the
efforts of private lawyers and human rights defenders who
challenge government abuses. The All China Lawyers Association
issued a guiding opinion that restricts the ability of lawyers
to handle cases involving large groups of people. Local Chinese
authorities have imposed additional restrictions on lawyer
advocacy efforts.
The constitutional and administrative mechanisms in Chinese
law that allow citizens to challenge government actions do not
provide effective legal remedies, and Chinese citizens seldom
use them. Chinese citizens rarely submit proposals to the
National People's Congress for constitutional and legal review
because the review process lacks transparency and citizens
cannot compel review. Administrative court challenges to
government actions have not increased since 1998. Provincial
authorities report an overall decline between 2003 and 2005 in
applications for administrative reconsideration, and the total
numbers of such applications in major Chinese municipalities is
a few hundred per year.
Chinese law also permits citizens to petition government
officials directly to redress their grievances through the
``letters and visits'' (xinfang) system. Official news media
report that Chinese citizens presented 12.7 million petitions
to county-level and higher xinfang bureaus during 2005, in
contrast to the 8 million total court cases handled by the
Chinese judiciary during the same period. Local officials are
disciplined more severely for high incidences of petitioning.
Absent alternative political or legal channels to check the
power of local officials and obtain redress, this punishment
structure provides an incentive for Chinese citizens to take
their grievances to the streets in order to force local
officials to act. But this punishment structure also gives
local authorities an interest in suppressing mass petitions and
preventing petitioners from approaching higher authorities. A
December 2005 study of the xinfang system by a U.S. NGO found
that some local authorities have resorted to ``rampant violence
and intimidation'' to abduct or detain petitioners in Beijing
and force them to return home.
The Supreme People's Court 2004-2008 court reform program
imposes stronger external and internal controls that may
further weaken the independence of courts and judges. The court
reform program, however, also sets some positive long-term
goals for judicial reform in the areas of court financing,
adjudication, retrial procedures, and juvenile justice. Party
efforts to address growing
social unrest have resulted in new government programs to
strengthen institutions that assist citizens with legal claims
and disputes. Official Chinese statistics show that the number
of government legal aid centers rose from 2,774 in 2003 to
3,081 in 2005. The total number of cases handled by these
centers rose from about 166,000 in 2003 to an estimated 250,000
in 2005, or roughly 3 percent of all cases handled by the
Chinese courts in 2005.
In 2005, the Dalai Lama increased his efforts to explain
that he does not seek Tibetan independence from China. The
Dalai Lama's envoys traveled to China for a fifth round of
dialogue with Chinese officials in February 2006, relaying a
request to Chinese leaders to permit the Dalai Lama to visit
China as a religious pilgrim. Tibetans could benefit from full
implementation of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law, but the
lack of local self-government in Tibetan autonomous areas of
China creates mistrust in the dialogue and demonstrates that
authorities are not implementing this law.
The Chinese government favors accelerating implementation
of development initiatives, especially the Great Western
Development program, that already erode Tibetan culture and
heritage. The Qinghai-Tibet railway began passenger service in
July 2006, increasing Tibetan concerns about the railway's
potential effects on Tibetan culture and the environment.
Education levels among Tibetans are much lower than those of
ethnic Han Chinese, undermining the ability of Tibetans to
compete for employment and other economic advantages in an
emerging market economy that attracts an increasing number of
Han.
The Chinese government strictly limits the rights of
Tibetans to exercise the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms
of religion, speech, and assembly. Communist Party political
campaigns promote atheism and strengthen government efforts to
discourage
Tibetan aspirations to foster their unique culture and
religion. Chinese authorities have punished Tibetans, such as
Jigme Gyatso, a former monk imprisoned in 1996 who is serving a
17-year sentence and Choeying Khedrub, a monk serving a life
sentence since 2000, for peaceful expressions and non-violent
actions that officials believe could undermine Party rule. The
Commission's Political Prisoner Database listed 103 known cases
of current Tibetan political detention or imprisonment as of
August 2006, a figure that is likely to be lower than the
actual number of Tibetan political prisoners. Based on sentence
information available for 70 of the current prisoners, the
average sentence is approximately 10 years and 11 months.
The Chinese government forcibly repatriates North Korean
refugees facing starvation and political and religious
persecution in their homeland, contravening its obligations
under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees
and its 1967 Protocol. Chinese authorities detained and
returned to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)
thousands of North Koreans in 2005. The government classifies
all North Koreans who enter China without documents as illegal
economic migrants and claims it must return them to the DPRK,
even though North Korean defectors meet the definition of
refugees under international law. Repatriated North Koreans
face long prison sentences, torture, and execution.
Without legal status, North Korean refugees in China are
vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. There are an estimated
20,000 to 50,000 North Koreans currently hiding in northeastern
China, and some NGOs estimate that the number of refugees is
much higher. The government refuses the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) access to North Korean refugees, and fines
and imprisons humanitarian workers who assist North Koreans in
China.
Officials in Beijing met with UNHCR Antonio Guterres in March
2006 during the first UNHCR visit to China since 1997. In July
2006, the Chinese government for the first time allowed three
North Korean refugees to travel directly from the U.S.
Consulate in Shenyang, Liaoning province, to the United States
to seek asylum.
The people of Hong Kong continue to enjoy the benefits of
an independent judiciary and an open society in which the
freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly are respected. The
Commission strongly supports the provisions of the Basic Law
that provide for the election of the chief executive and the
entire Legislative Council through universal suffrage, and
highlights the importance of the central government's
obligation to give Hong Kong the ``high degree of autonomy''
promised in the Basic Law. The Commission notes, however, that
during the past year, no steps were taken that would move Hong
Kong closer to the ``ultimate aim'' of universal suffrage as
specified in the Basic Law.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's
Constitutional Development Task Force issued its fifth report
in October 2005, which proposed modest measures to expand
citizen participation in selecting the chief executive in 2007
and forming the Legislative Council in 2008. A vigorous public
debate on the merits of the Task Force proposals, and their
lack of a timetable for universal suffrage, culminated in a
December 2005 march by tens of thousands to protest the slow
pace of democratization. Twenty-four Legislative Council
members voted against the report in late December, blocking its
passage. A last-minute package of adjustments offered by the
government did not meet the lawmakers' demand for a specific
timetable to realize universal suffrage.
The Chinese government has made progress in bringing its
laws and regulations into compliance with its World Trade
Organization (WTO) commitments. Although significant flaws
remain, the new body of commercial laws has improved the
business climate for foreign companies in China. With new, more
transparent rules, the Chinese trade bureaucracy has reduced
regulatory and licensing delays in many sectors. The Chinese
commercial regulatory regime remains, however, largely opaque
to both domestic and foreign businesses. When China joined the
WTO in December 2001, the government committed to establishing
an official journal that would publish drafts of trade-related
measures for notice and comment, and to publish trade-related
measures no later than 90 days after they become effective.
Although the government has acted to improve transparency, some
central government agencies and many local governments are not
consistent in publishing trade-
related measures in the official journal.
The Chinese government tolerates intellectual property
rights (IPR) infringement rates that are among the highest in
the world. The Chinese government has not introduced criminal
penalties sufficient to deter IPR infringement, and steps taken
by Chinese government agencies to improve the protection of
foreign intellectual property have not produced any significant
decrease in infringement activity. The Chinese government's
failure to provide effective criminal enforcement of IPR has
led foreign companies to turn to civil litigation to obtain
monetary damages or injunctive relief. Civil litigants continue
to find, however, that most judges lack the necessary training
and experience to handle IPR cases, and damage awards are too
low to be an effective deterrent.
Since acceding to the WTO, the Chinese government has used
technical, regulatory, and industrial policies, some of which
appear to conflict with its WTO commitments, to discriminate
against foreign producers and investors and limit their access
to the domestic market. U.S. rights holders and industry groups
have complained that the government's censorship regime serves
as a barrier to entry and encourages IPR violations. In 2005,
the American Chamber of Commerce in China wrote that censorship
clearance procedures severely restrict the ability to
distribute CD, VCD, and DVD products in China and provide an
``unfair and unnecessary advantage to pirate producers who
bring their products to market long before legitimate copies
are available for sale.''
III. List of Recommendations
The Commission is working to implement the recommendations
made in its 2002-2005 Annual Reports. Based on the information
presented in this report and the Commission's belief that the
United States must continue to pursue a dual policy of high-
level advocacy on human rights issues and support for legal
reform efforts, the Commission makes the following additional
recommendations to the President and the Congress for 2006:
Human Rights for China's Citizens
The UN Human Rights Council held its first
session from June 19 to June 30 in Geneva. As a
responsible member of the international community and
one of the 47 members of the new Council, China must
abide by the international norms of behavior
articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and international covenants, and submit to peer
review of its human rights record. The President and
the Congress should continue to urge the Chinese
government to ratify the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, and to adopt such
legislative and other measures as may be necessary to
give effect to the rights recognized in the Covenant.
The President and the Congress should also encourage
the Council to fight human rights abuses and to speak
on behalf of Chinese prisoners of conscience who have
had their voices silenced, including: democracy and
labor activist Hu Shigen (imprisoned for helping to
establish an independent political party and trade
union), members Jin Haike, Xu Wei, Yang Zili, and Zhang
Honghai of the New Youth Study Group (imprisoned for
participating in a university discussion group), former
monk Jigme Gyatso (imprisoned for printing leaflets and
distributing posters), Uighur publisher Korash Huseyin
(imprisoned for publishing a short story), Uighur
writer Nurmemet Yasin (imprisoned for writing a short
story), democracy activist Qin Yongmin (imprisoned for
serving as a China Democracy Party spokesman), poet and
journalist Shi Tao (imprisoned for investigative
journalism), Uighur historian Tohti Tunyaz (imprisoned
for historical research), U.S. permanent resident and
democracy activist Yang Jianli (whose detention was
found to be arbitrary by the UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention), freelance writer Yang Tianshui
(imprisoned for writing articles critical of
authoritarian rule), labor rights activist Yao Fuxin
(imprisoned for rallying workers to seek back wages),
and New York Times researcher Zhao Yan (imprisoned for
investigative journalism).
China's leaders say they are committed to
building a fair and just society based on the rule of
law, and, in an effort to control social unrest, have
moved toward strengthening government institutions that
assist citizens with legal claims. Over the past year,
however, prominent Chinese criminal and civil rights
defense lawyers who have worked to advance the
development of the rule of law under the rubric of
``rights defenders'' have met with government
intimidation, harassment, and imprisonment. The
President and the Congress should continue to discuss
with China's leaders the importance of an effective,
robust, and transparent legal defense in protecting
civil and political rights, and recall the 1998 UN
General Assembly declaration calling for the protection
of human rights defenders worldwide. The President and
the Congress should also continue to emphasize that
continued detention and imprisonment of rights
defenders such as Chen Guangcheng (sentenced in August
for speaking out against population planning abuses)
will only undermine the legitimacy of government
actions and of China's developing legal system. A full
commitment to the rule of law will also require the
Chinese government to cease its harassment,
surveillance, and abuse of citizens such as legal
advocates Guo Feixiong and Zhao Xin, who have suffered
repeated violence for working peacefully to defend
citizen rights, and to allow courageous lawyers such as
Gao Zhisheng and Zheng Enchong to resume their
important legal advocacy.
The future of Tibetans and their religion,
language, and culture depends on fair and equitable
decisions about future policies that can only be
achieved through dialogue. The Dalai Lama is essential
to this dialogue. To help the parties build on dialogue
held during visits by the Dalai Lama's representatives
each year since 2002, the President and the Congress
should continue to urge the Chinese government to
invite the Dalai Lama to visit China, so that he can
see for himself the changes and developments in China,
and so that he can seek to build trust through direct
contact with the Chinese leadership.
Rapid economic development without effective
environmental safeguards has resulted in severe
environmental degradation throughout China, poor air
and water quality in many areas, and increased risk of
disease. The Chinese government has acknowledged the
severity of China's environmental problems and has
taken steps to curb pollution. The United States and
China share a common interest in protecting the
environment, and the Chinese government has welcomed
international technical assistance to combat
environmental degradation. The President and the
Congress should discuss with China's leaders the
importance of citizen activism in protecting the
environment and in challenging governments to provide
clean air and drinking water. The President and the
Congress should also provide funding to support the
full range of activities envisioned in new Sino-U.S.
bilateral and international efforts to protect the
environment like the Joint Committee on Environmental
Cooperation and the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean
Development and Climate.
The Chinese government continues to apply
vague criminal and administrative provisions to justify
detentions based on an individual's political opinions
or membership in religious, ethnic, or social groups.
These provisions allow for the targeting and punishment
of activists for crimes that ``endanger state
security'' or ``disturb public order'' under the
Criminal Law. They also allow for administrative
detention for ``minor crimes'' in centers where
prisoners can be subjected to forced labor without
judicial review and the procedural protections
guaranteed by the Constitution and Criminal Procedure
Law. The President and the Congress should raise these
issues in discussions with UN oversight agencies and
the Chinese government, and recommend that the Criminal
Law be amended to define these crimes in precise terms,
and to create exceptions for the peaceful exercise of
fundamental rights guaranteed under the Chinese
Constitution and international declarations and
treaties. The President and the Congress should also
recommend that the administrative detention system be
reformed to conform to international law, including the
abolition of forced labor practices. Reforms should
ensure that Chinese citizens have the opportunity to
dispute any alleged misconduct and contest law
enforcement accusations of guilt before an independent
adjudicatory body.
Freedom for Religious Believers in China
Freedom of religion is a fundamental human
right. The freedom to believe and to practice one's
religion includes the right of religious adherents to
interact freely with their co-religionists abroad, and
to choose where they worship, who will teach them, the
texts they study, and whom they accept as their
leaders. The President and the Congress should continue
to foster the development of freedom of religion in
China by encouraging the Chinese government to
recognize that this freedom includes the right of
Tibetan Buddhists to freely express their religious
devotion to the Dalai Lama, of Chinese Catholics to
worship with bishops selected by the Holy See, of
Muslims to participate in religious pilgrimages without
government interference, of Protestants to worship in
house churches, and of adherents of spiritual belief
systems, like Falun Gong, to freely practice their
beliefs. In addition, the President and the Congress
should continue to encourage the Chinese government to
end the harassment, detention, and abuse of leaders and
members of unregistered religious organizations; raise
cases of religious imprisonment with the Chinese
government; and call for the immediate release of
religious prisoners of conscience, including house
church pastor Cai Zhuohua (imprisoned for printing and
giving away Bibles), Tibetan monk Choeying Khedrub
(sentenced to life imprisonment for printing leaflets),
South China Church leader Gong Shengliang (sentenced to
life imprisonment based on tortured confessions),
Catholic bishop Jia Zhiguo (detained for unauthorized
Catholic ministry), Catholic bishop Su Zhimin (held
incommunicado since 1997), and Tsinghua University
student and Falun Gong practitioner Wang Xin
(imprisoned for downloading Internet materials). The
President and the Congress should also continue to urge
the Chinese government to allow the UN Special
Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance to visit China
without conditions, as the Chinese government has
committed to the U.S. government and to the Special
Rapporteur.
Chinese central government policy, and some
local regulations, only recognize five government-
defined religions. This restriction is neither
contained in national law nor in China's new Regulation
on Religious Affairs. In some parts of China,
Protestant communities that are not affiliated with the
state-controlled patriotic religious association have
been allowed to register with the government. Although
the government does not recognize Orthodox Christianity
as a religion, some Orthodox communities in China have
registered with a local government. These are welcome
developments, but they have been limited in scope. The
President and the Congress should continue to encourage
the Chinese government to eliminate its policy
restrictions on religion and to guarantee citizens
freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief in
accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights; to allow all religious and spiritual
groups to form independent organizations and practice
their faith free from interference by the government
and state-controlled religious associations; to remove
registration requirements or amend them so that the
government does not have the discretion to deny
registration to certain groups; and to provide
protections for individuals who choose to worship
outside the framework of organized
religion.
Labor Rights for China's Workers
Working conditions in China remain poor, and
Chinese workers are often unaware of the national laws
that protect their rights. The U.S. Department of Labor
has been working with the Chinese Ministry of Labor and
Social Security and the State Administration of Work
Safety to implement activities that focus on such labor
issues as occupational and mine safety and health, wage
and hour law administration, and education for Chinese
workers about national labor laws. The President and
the Congress should support expansion of these
cooperative activities to improve labor conditions for
Chinese workers. The President and the Congress should
also raise with Chinese leaders the critical role that
independent unions can play in achieving safer
workplaces, pressing factory owners to pay workers
fully and on time, and reducing accidents and
countering official corruption in the mining sector.
Human trafficking is a serious problem in
China. The government is cooperating with the
International Labor Organization's (ILO) Special Action
Program to Combat Forced Labor to strengthen the law
enforcement aspects of the trafficking cycle, but
government institutions lack the knowledge and capacity
to combat these practices effectively. China's Criminal
Law does not specifically address the issue of human
trafficking as it relates to forced labor, and although
the Labor Law outlaws forced labor practices in the
workplace, it only provides light penalties for
violators. The President should continue to support,
and the Congress should continue to fund, U.S.
assistance to the ILO's cooperative programs with China
on forced labor and trafficking; should urge the
Chinese government to ratify the two protocols to the
UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
concerning trafficking in persons and smuggling of
migrants; and should encourage bilateral discussions on
ways that government agencies, domestic law, and
employers and business groups can deter human
trafficking more
effectively.
Free Flow of Information for China's Citizens
The National People's Congress is considering
a draft ``Law on the Handling of Sudden Incidents''
that, in its current form, restricts domestic and
foreign news media reporting on natural and man-made
disasters. If passed, this law would not only impose a
prior restraint on the press that is inconsistent with
international human rights standards, but also impede
the efficiency of the Global Public Health Intelligence
Network, an electronic surveillance system used by the
World Health Organization to monitor the Internet for
reports of communicable diseases and communicable
disease syndromes. The President and the Congress
should continue to raise with China's leaders the
global nature of public health emergencies, the
importance of complete transparency in the
administration of public health, and the importance of
an unimpeded press in monitoring government performance
on public health and providing critical information to
the public in a timely manner.
The Chinese government uses technology, prior
restraints, intimidation, detention, imprisonment, and
vague and arbitrarily applied censorship regulations to
suppress free expression and control the news media.
Because the government
restricts the free flow of information, many Chinese
citizens are unaware that official censorship policies
violate their rights to freedom of speech and freedom
of the press. The President and the Congress should
urge the Chinese government to eliminate prior
restraints on publishing, cease detaining journalists
and writers, stop blocking foreign news broadcasts and
Web sites, and specify precisely what kind of political
content is illegal to publish. The President should
propose, and the Congress should appropriate, funds to
support U.S. programs to develop technologies that
would help Chinese citizens access Internet-based
information currently unavailable to them, as well as
educational materials about their rights under
international law to freedom of speech and freedom of
the press.
Rule of Law and the Development of Civil Society
Chinese officials have taken additional steps
in the past year to curb the growth of China's emerging
civil society. Ministry of Civil Affairs officials are
currently researching a new administrative system to
supervise, control, and ``rate'' civil society
organizations. Many details of the plan, such as who
will conduct the evaluations and how the results will
be used, are not yet determined. The President and the
Congress should encourage bilateral discussion on the
issue of official control over civil society
organizations; reiterate statements made by Chinese
officials and scholars regarding the important role
independent civil society organizations can play in
resolving
conflict, protecting citizen rights, and maintaining
social stability; and encourage the Chinese government
to take steps that would promote the development of an
independent civil society, such as removing the sponsor
organization requirement.
The Chinese government forcibly repatriates
North Koreans seeking refuge in China and denies the
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
access to this vulnerable population, contravening its
obligations under the 1951 Convention relating to the
Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, as well as
the Chinese government's 1995 Agreement with the UN.
The State Council is currently considering new
Regulations on the Administration of Refugees. These
regulations could provide new protections for the
vulnerable North Korean refugee population, but little
is known about their contents. The President and the
Congress should continue to press the Chinese
government to immediately cease repatriation of North
Korean refugees and grant the UNHCR unimpeded access to
screen North Korean refugee petitions. The President
and the Congress should also encourage the Chinese
government to be transparent as it progresses in
drafting and adopting its new regulations on refugees,
and to work closely with the UNHCR to ensure that this
legislation will protect North Korean refugees in full
accordance with international law.
Abuse of power by local police forces remains
a serious problem throughout China. The Supreme
People's Procuratorate has acknowledged the existence
of continuing and widespread abuses in law enforcement,
including illegal extended detentions and torture. The
President and the Congress should work to expand
programs, such as funding a permanent Resident Legal
Advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, that will help
foster dialogue between Chinese and U.S. counterparts,
and encourage Chinese procuratorates to exercise
greater oversight over police abuses. These programs
should encourage the Chinese government to continue
reform efforts such as providing criminal defense
lawyers with greater access to their clients and case
files, audio and video taping law enforcement
interrogations of criminal suspects, and excluding
evidence at trial that was obtained through torture or
other illegal means.
Upon joining the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the Chinese government committed to increasing
regulatory transparency, improving the protection of
intellectual property rights, and ensuring non-
discrimination in administering trade-related measures.
The government has achieved incremental improvements in
regulatory transparency since WTO accession, but
continues to tolerate rampant infringement of
intellectual property rights. In addition, government
industrial policies promote and protect many domestic
industries, in some cases in a manner that appears to
contravene China's WTO commitments. The President and
the Congress should continue to urge the Chinese
government to ensure that relevant authorities publish
all measures affecting trade in a timely manner; to
enact and impose criminal and civil penalties severe
enough to deter intellectual property infringement; and
to
remove all non-prudential barriers to U.S. and other
foreign participation in those market sectors governed
by WTO commitments.
The Commission's Executive Branch members have participated
in and supported the work of the Commission, including the
preparation of this report. The views and recommendations
expressed in this report, however, do not necessarily reflect
the views of individual Executive Branch members or the
Administration.
This report was approved by a vote of 22 to 1.
IV. Introduction
Domestic Challenges Growing Out of Economic Restructuring
Since the beginning of the ``reform and opening up'' period
in 1978, Chinese government policies have raised the national
standard of living and lifted more than 400 million citizens
out of extreme poverty, according to Chinese and World Bank
statistics. This is an impressive achievement. But as incomes
have risen, so too have inequalities created by economic
restructuring policies that have favored urban over rural
development. In 2005, the average income of China's urban
residents was more than three times that of rural residents, an
increase from two and one-half times in 1978. China's ethnic
minorities, who live primarily in rural areas, constitute less
than 10 percent of China's population, but represent more than
40 percent of the nation's poorest citizens. The government
also faces a growing population of new urban poor. Millions of
Chinese citizens who lost their jobs and pensions because of
the collapse of state-owned enterprises have not found new
jobs. In addition, many rural to urban migrants survive in the
low-wage informal economy without access to public services of
any kind.
Chinese leaders face enormous domestic challenges. The
government estimated that it needs to create 25 million new
urban jobs in 2006 just to keep unemployment levels in check.
The dual problems of urban unemployment and growing rural-urban
inequality have created diverse and competing societal
interests that increasingly clash, fueling social unrest
throughout China, and complicating the government's efforts to
find solutions. Officials reported that ``disturbances of
public order'' rose to a total of 87,000 in 2005, a 6.6 percent
increase over the figure in 2004. Citizen protests broke out in
several provinces during the past year over land
expropriations, official corruption and abuse, low wages and
poor working conditions in factories, and environmental
degradation. In September 2005, police clashed with hundreds of
residents in Taishi village, Guangdong province, over citizen
attempts to remove a local official from office for embezzling
land compensation funds. In October, police in Chongqing
municipality broke up one of the largest worker protests in
China in more than a decade. In December, forces from the
paramilitary People's Armed Police shot at thousands of
villagers and killed as many as 20 in Shanwei city, Guangdong
province, in response to protests against the pollution and
displacement caused by construction of a power plant. In July
2006, hundreds of citizens rioted in Guiyang city, Guizhou
province, after officials beat a migrant worker lacking a
temporary residence permit.
Rural Inequality and Social Unrest
Concerns about mounting social unrest because of rural-
urban inequality have reached the top levels of the Chinese
leadership. In late 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao warned senior
rural bureaucrats that more violence would result if they
continued to commit the ``historic mistake'' of failing to
protect farmers and their lands. Party and government leaders
used the first major policy document of 2006 to announce a
campaign for ``construction of a new socialist countryside.''
This campaign seeks to address the growing inequalities between
rural and urban residents and commits the central government to
increasing services to rural areas in health, education, and
employment. In March, Wen told the National People's Congress
(NPC) that the central government will invest more than 20
billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) over the next five years to
modernize hospitals, clinics, and medical equipment at the
village, township, and county levels. Chinese officials also
promised to spend 218 billion yuan (US$27.25 billion) over the
next five years to improve rural education. In January, the
central government stopped levying agricultural and livestock
taxes on farmers in an effort to boost rural incomes. Although
Chinese authorities remain sensitive to farmers' efforts to
organize collectively to protect their interests, central
policy documents issued each year since 2004 have given a
limited degree of support to establishing farmer cooperatives,
and the 2006 legislative calendar for the NPC contains a
proposal for a national law on these organizations.
The central government has also called for increased
protections for the rights of migrant workers as part of its
effort to increase social stability. The Central Party
Committee and State Council issued a joint circular on social
stability in October 2005 calling, in part, for greater
protections of migrant rights and the creation of a permanent
mechanism to address worker claims for unpaid wages, a problem
that disproportionately affects migrants. China's Communist
Party-led labor union federation responded to the new central
government mandate by creating programs to help migrants avoid
abuse and exploitation by employers. In the past year, the
labor union federation has announced new programs to assist
migrants in signing labor contracts with employers, recovering
unpaid wages, improving work safety, and securing legal aid and
job training. Concerns over social unrest growing out of rural-
urban inequality also have compelled the government to consider
reforming some of the political tools it has used to control
society. Chinese
authorities announced in October 2005 that they were
considering national reforms to the Chinese household
registration (hukou) system, and have taken steps to remove
restrictions on migrant
employment in urban areas.
Political and Religious Repression and Social Unrest
The largely positive government response to social unrest
growing out of rural inequality stands in sharp contrast to the
government response to citizen grievances over political and
religious repression. The Chinese government has punished
citizens who press for change and challenge government abuses,
in disregard of the peaceful nature of their activities and in
contravention of international human rights standards. The same
October joint circular that detailed positive measures to help
migrants and the rural poor also called for stronger controls
over society. The central government has imposed
countermeasures to rein in the Chinese press and to exercise
greater control over the Internet. Officials are currently
evaluating new measures to control civil society organizations.
Party officials have warned about foreign ``hostile forces''
that push for ``color revolutions'' and ``infiltrate'' the
press, civil society, the legal profession, and the Uighur and
Tibetan autonomous areas of China.
In the absence of a free press, civil society, democratic
governance, and other mechanisms to allow citizens to press for
change, Chinese human rights defenders have used legal advocacy
and civil disobedience to promote democracy and the development
of the rule of law. Wang Yi, a Chinese law professor and rights
defender, said at a May 3 Congressional Human Rights Caucus
roundtable, ``If even the rights defense movement cannot
succeed, then there is really no hope for China.'' In February,
Beijing lawyer and rights defender Gao Zhisheng began a hunger
strike relay following months of government violence against
large numbers of Chinese citizens. The hunger strike called
attention to the illegal persecution and violent beatings of
many groups in China, including workers, farmers,
intellectuals, religious believers, petitioners, activists, and
journalists. These groups suffered from government repression
despite having maintained a strict policy of peaceful protest
against government abuses. In response to his citizen activism
and peaceful defense of basic human rights, authorities
stripped Gao Zhisheng of his ability to practice law, targeted
him for government intimidation and harassment, and accused him
of criminal activity.
The Chinese government's repressive measures threaten the
Party's goal of maintaining social stability. The failure to
provide effective mechanisms for citizens to voice their
grievances and protect their civil and political rights fuels
citizen anger and ultimately unrest, the very condition that
China's leaders are seeking to prevent. Such a result can only
undermine China's progress. Freedom of the press, a vibrant
civil society, and democratic governance are the primary means
for keeping officials accountable to the citizens they serve.
They are also the essential building blocks for any long-term
and successful system of government.
V. Monitoring Compliance with Human Rights
V(a) Special Focus for 2006: Freedom of Expression
findings
Government censorship, while not total, is
pervasive and highly effective, and denies Chinese
citizens the freedoms of speech and of the press
guaranteed to them in the Chinese Constitution. The
government has imprisoned journalists who provide news
to foreigners, such as Zhao Yan, Shi Tao, and Ching
Cheong. Editors of publications that criticize
government policies, such as Yang Bin of the Beijing
News and Li Datong of the China Youth Daily, have been
dismissed. The government blocks the Web sites and
radio and television broadcasts of foreign news
organizations, such as those of the British
Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Asia, and the
Voice of America. In 2005, the government banned dozens
of newspapers and confiscated almost one million
``illegal'' political publications. Beginning in May
2005, the government blocked the Commission's Web site
from being viewed in China.
Modern telecommunications technologies such as
the Internet, cell phones, and satellite broadcasts
allow Chinese citizens access to more information
sources, both state-controlled and non-state-
controlled. But government restrictions on news and
information media, including on these new information
sources, do not conform to international human rights
standards for freedom of expression. The Chinese
government imposes a strict licensing scheme on news
and information media that includes oversight by
government agencies with discretion to grant, deny, and
rescind licenses based on political and
economic criteria. The Chinese government's content-
based restrictions include controls on political
opinion and religious literature that are not
prescribed by law, and whose primary purpose is to
protect the ideological and political dominance of the
Communist Party.
The government's restrictions on religious
literature do not conform to international human rights
standards. Only government-licensed printing
enterprises may print religious materials, and then
only with approval from both the provincial-level
religious affairs bureau and the press and publication
administration. In addition to confiscating religious
publications, the Chinese government also has fined,
detained, and imprisoned citizens for publishing,
printing, and distributing religious literature without
government permission. Cai Zhuohua, a house church
pastor in Beijing, and two of his family members were
imprisoned in 2005 for printing and giving away Bibles
and other Christian literature. In Anhui province,
house church pastor Wang Zaiqing was arrested in May
2006 on the same charges.
Government Censorship in China
Government censorship in China, while not total, is
pervasive and highly effective, and denies Chinese citizens the
freedom of the press guaranteed to them in the Chinese
Constitution.\1\ As 13 Chinese scholars, lawyers, and editors
wrote in a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao after the
Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department (CPD) shut down
a popular news weekly in February 2006, the CPD ``manipulates
and controls the range of speech, and it has become the sole
criterion for measuring truth.'' \2\ Another group, composed of
13 former senior government, Party, and news media officials,
wrote in an open letter regarding the same event that the CPD
has ``stripped away freedom of speech in order to quash public
opinion.'' \3\
The Chinese government has imprisoned journalists who
provide news to foreigners, such as Zhao Yan, Shi Tao, and
Ching Cheong. Editors of publications that criticize government
policies, such as Yang Bin of the Beijing News and Li Datong of
the China Youth Daily, have been dismissed. The government
blocks the Web sites and radio and television broadcasts of
foreign news organizations, such as those of the British
Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Asia, and the Voice of
America. In 2005, the government banned dozens of newspapers
and confiscated almost one million ``illegal'' political
publications. Beginning in May 2005, the government blocked the
Commission's Web site from being viewed in China. The heads of
government and Party agencies responsible for enforcing China's
media regulations emphasize press control, not press freedom:
Liu Yunshan, director of the CPD, told
attendees at the National Propaganda Directors Seminar
in August 2005 that they should increase their
supervision of the media, impose content controls
earlier in the editorial process, and coordinate the
application of administrative, economic, legal,
ideological, and other controls.\4\ In a speech to the
same group the previous year, Liu said that no change
to the role of the news media as the mouthpiece of the
Party, or the Party's supervision of the media, would
be tolerated.\5\
Long Xinmin, Director of the General
Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), said in
a speech to the National Press and Publication
Directors Conference in December 2005 that Party
leaders had ordered press and publication officials to
increase their administration of press and publishing.
Long said that the key was to strengthen the leadership
of the Party and establish a ``grand cadre'' of
``politically strong'' press and publication
workers.\6\
Liu Yuzhu, head of the Ministry of Culture's
Market Department, wrote in the January 2005 edition of
Seeking Truth, the official journal of the Chinese
Communist Party Central Committee, that Web sites
located in foreign countries such as the United States
represent a threat to China's political structure. He
encouraged increased censorship of foreign Web sites
and called on domestic Web site operators to step up
their self-censorship.\7\
Despite pervasive censorship, state control of domestic
news media is now less severe than before the ``reform and
opening up'' period began in the late 1970s. Modern
telecommunications technologies such as the Internet, cell
phones, and satellite broadcasts allow Chinese citizens access
to more information sources, both state-controlled and non-
state-controlled. More information is also available as a
result of a dynamic domestic newspaper and book publishing
industry. China also has a thriving underground publishing
industry, and citizens may easily purchase many banned books
from unlicensed publishers and retailers.\8\ By forcing
unlicensed publishers to break the law, however, the government
erodes respect for intellectual property rights and the rule of
law because illegal publishers are also de facto copyright
violators (the illegal works are ``pirated,'' and authors
cannot collect royalties on them) and must bribe officials to
keep operating.
Chinese leaders and officials maintain that citizens enjoy
freedom of the press, and that government restrictions on that
freedom conform to international standards.\9\ While the Party
does not screen content before publication to the same degree
as in the past, the government continues to impose
administrative restrictions on who may publish and what they
may publish (``prior restraints'') that do not conform to the
international human rights standards set forth in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights\10\ and the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).\11\ These standards
require the elimination of registration systems for the print
media that grant government agencies the discretion to approve,
deny, or rescind licenses based on the political and financial
qualifications of the applicant (``licensing schemes'').\12\
These standards also prohibit government restrictions on the
publication of political and religious ideas and information,
other than restrictions that are both prescribed by law and
necessary to protect an important state interest (``content-
based restrictions''). As two Chinese legal scholars noted in
their study of the ICCPR:
This principle [that the ICCPR prohibits prior
restraints] requires that government power may not be
employed to suppress expressive activities before they
are carried out, and no licensing measures or
ideological
content restrictions may be imposed on speech, books,
periodicals, or radio or television programs prior to
their dissemination, publication, distribution, or
broadcast.\13\
The Chinese government imposes a strict licensing scheme on
all newspaper, magazine, and book publishing and printing
(public and private, for-profit and non-profit). The government
uses this licensing scheme, as well as post-publication
punishments, to enforce content-based restrictions that include
prohibitions on the publication of political opinion and
religious literature. These content-based restrictions on
political opinion and religious literature are neither
prescribed by law nor necessary to protect a legitimate state
interest. Government and Party leaders state that these
restrictions are intended to protect the ideological and
political dominance of the Party.
Government Licensing for Print Media
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights provide that people enjoy the right to seek, receive,
and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers. The Chinese government's licensing
scheme for print media does not conform to international
standards for freedom of the press. Although no absolute
international standard prescribes what constitutes freedom of
the press, international human rights standards set forth a
minimum prerequisite: no legal system can be said to respect
freedom of the press if it subjects the print media to any
prior restraint through a licensing scheme. In 2003, the UN
Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
Representative on Freedom of the Media, and the Organization of
American States (OAS) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of
Expression issued a joint declaration saying that licensing
schemes are unnecessary and subject to abuse.\14\ Many nations,
both developed and developing, have abolished licensing schemes
for the print media. For example, the constitutions of many
countries, including those of Brazil and South Korea,
explicitly prohibit licensing schemes.\15\ In other countries,
such as the United States and India, the right to publish
without first having to obtain government authorization is
protected through a combination of constitutional and court-
made law.\16\ In those countries with registration
requirements, such as Sweden and the United Kingdom, the
government does not have the discretion to refuse
registration.\17\
The Chinese government, like a number of governments in
other countries, including Ethiopia,\18\ Iran,\19\ Jordan,\20\
Syria,\21\ Uzbekistan,\22\ and Yemen,\23\ imposes a strict
licensing scheme on the print media.\24\ No one may legally
publish a book, newspaper, or magazine in China unless they
have a license from the General Administration of Press and
Publication (GAPP).\25\ Chinese law requires that every book,
newspaper, and magazine have a unique serial number, and the
GAPP maintains exclusive control over the distribution of these
numbers.\26\ GAPP officials have explicitly linked the
allotment of book numbers to the political orientation of
publishers.\27\ The Chinese government's licensing scheme
includes substantive conditions on who may publish. To obtain a
license to publish news, applicants must have a government
sponsor.\28\ Although the average annual income in China is
less than 10,000 yuan (US$1,250),\29\ the government also
restricts the right to publish to those who can afford to
invest at least 300,000 yuan (US$37,500) in registered
capital.\30\ The Chinese government says that its licensing
scheme is necessary to regulate the publishing market,\31\ but
such reasoning does not conform to international human rights
standards.\32\
Chinese authorities banned 79 newspapers and periodicals
and seized 169 million publications in 2005.\33\ From 2003 to
2005, the government canceled the registrations of 202 news
bureaus and shut down 73 others.\34\ Other examples of the
government using its licensing authority to violate citizens'
freedom of the press in the past year include:
In August 2005, GAPP officials in Luliang
city, Shanxi province, banned the Luliang Weekly, shut
down its editorial
department, and dismissed its staff. Officials imposed
these sanctions because the weekly had been published
without government authorization, and ``the articles it
carried were mostly negative reports, which severely
violated relevant national regulations, and which had
an adverse effect on society.'' \35\
In September 2005, the Hunan provincial
government shut down the news bureaus of four
publications established without government
permission.\36\
Also in September 2005, the Chinese government
reported that no illegal political materials had been
published in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region city
of Wuhai since 2002.\37\ The report attributed the city
government's ``success'' in part to a rigorous training
regime for publishers and printers and the fact that
authorities had closed 12 illegal printing enterprises.
The report said officials conducted daily inspection
tours and surprise raids to stop unauthorized
publications from entering or leaving the city.
In addition to these administrative measures, Chinese
authorities have used Article 225 of the Criminal Law, which
defines operating a publishing business without government
permission as an illegal business activity,\38\ to fine and
imprison publishers:
In January 2004, authorities in Anhui province
sentenced two men to prison terms of nine and seven
years for publishing collections of love poems.\39\
In September 2004, a court in Xinxiang county,
Henan province sentenced Wang Lelan, a farmer who had
purchased two printing presses, to five years'
imprisonment and an 8,000 yuan (US$1,000) fine for
publishing ``illegal books'' such as ``China's Top
Level'' and ``Confidential Exclusive News.'' \40\
In August 2005, a court in Beijing sentenced
the head of the Beijing representative office of Hong
Kong's Credit China International Media Group Limited
to three years' imprisonment for publishing the
magazine ``Credit China'' without government
authorization.\41\
New rules governing the publication of newspapers and
magazines in China went into effect in December 2005.\42\ In
addition to restricting the right to publish newspapers and
magazines to government licensees, the rules also establish
post-publication content screening and review systems. The
rules require provincial-level GAPP offices to submit regular
written reports to the GAPP and conduct annual ``verification
and examination'' reviews. The rules stipulate that publishing,
printing, and distribution enterprises may not provide services
to any newspaper or magazine unless they have passed the
previous year's inspection. The rules also require each
newspaper and magazine publisher to submit regular reports to
the GAPP, as well as annual ``self-examination reports'' with
copies of its most recently published editions. The rules
require the GAPP to assess the ``publishing quality'' of
newspapers and magazines, and empower it to take the following
actions against any publisher whose contents it deems incorrect
or in violation of regulations:
order it to cease publication and
distribution;
order it to retract entire editions;
order supervising and sponsoring government
agencies to ``rectify'' the publisher;
revoke its publishing license.
The Chinese government's press licensing scheme also
extends to the Internet. According to the state-run media:
Since 1996, 14 agencies, including the Central
Propaganda Department, State Council Information
Office, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of
Culture, and the
General Administration of Press and Publication have
participated in the administration of the Internet,
have promulgated nearly 50 laws and regulations, and
have put
together the world's most extensive and comprehensive
regulatory system for Internet administration. One
scholar who specializes in researching Internet Law
[said] China's emphasis on, and effectiveness of
administration over, the problem of Internet security
is ``rare in this world.'' \43\
The government requires all Web sites in China to be either
licensed by, or registered with, the Ministry of Information
Industry (MII).\44\ Web sites that fail to register or obtain a
license may be shut down and their operators fined.\45\ As part
of the registration process, the MII requires anyone who posts
news on a Web site to confirm that the Chinese government has
authorized him or her to do so.\46\ According to the OpenNet
Initiative, ``In large measure, the registration regulation is
designed to induce website owners to forego potentially
sensitive or prohibited content, such as political criticism,
by linking their identities to that content. The regulation
operates through a chilling effect.'' \47\ In August 2005, the
state-controlled news media reported that over 700,000 Web
sites had registered,\48\ and that authorities had shut down a
``large number of Web sites,'' using ``specialized software to
render them inaccessible.'' \49\ In December 2005, the MII
issued a notice to Internet service providers saying, ``The
campaign to rectify unregistered Web sites has entered a period
of severe sanctions,'' and demanded they shut down all
unregistered Web sites.\50\
In September 2005, the MII and the State Council
Information Office promulgated new rules tightening the
government's control over Internet news services.\51\ These
rules prohibit anyone from using the Internet to post or
transmit news reports or commentary relating to politics and
economics, or military, foreign, and public affairs, without a
government license. Chinese authorities used these rules to
shut down at least five Web sites before the annual plenary
sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference, which concluded in
March 2006.\52\
The MII crackdown coincided with a similar crackdown on the
Internet by branches of China's Ministry of Public Security
(MPS) in major cities.\53\ Throughout 2005 and 2006, public
security bureaus in cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and
Chongqing ordered Web sites to register with public security
authorities or be shut down. In addition, in December 2005, the
MPS promulgated new rules\54\ requiring Internet portals, Web
sites, Web logs (``blogs''), and hosting services to record and
retain any content that news providers post on their Web sites,
as well as the time it was posted.
Finally, the Chinese government instituted a licensing
scheme for journalists in 2005,\55\ even though such schemes
are incompatible with international human rights standards for
freedom of the press.\56\ In January 2005, the GAPP issued two
new regulations limiting ``lawful'' news gathering and
editorial activities to government-licensed journalists.\57\ In
March 2005, the GAPP, Central Propaganda Department, and State
Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) jointly
issued new rules specifying that journalists and editors must
``support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,
support the socialist system . . ., respect the Party's news
propaganda discipline, [and] protect the interests of the Party
and the government.'' \58\ SARFT used its authority to accredit
television hosts to shut down the television show of well-known
economist Lang Xianping (also known as Larry Lang) in February
2006 on the grounds that he lacked required government
certification.\59\
Restrictions on Political and Religious Publishing
The Chinese government's restrictions on the publication of
political opinion and religious literature do not conform to
international human rights standards for freedom of the press
and freedom of religion. Article 19 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the same article of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
provide that people enjoy the right to publish ``information
and ideas,'' and the ICCPR adds ``of all kinds.'' International
human rights standards permit restrictions on the press,
provided they are prescribed by law and are necessary to
prevent the dissemination of speech that is obscene or
defamatory, or that poses a realistic threat to national
security, or that is false and threatens public order.\60\ The
Chinese government's restrictions on the press are not clearly
prescribed in national law. In addition, the government uses
discretionary and extralegal powers to restrict the publication
of information and ideas that conflict with the Party's
political and religious orthodoxy or that threaten its control
over political and religious ideology.
Not Prescribed by Law
National media regulations include vague and sweeping
prohibitions on the publication of material that ``harms the
honor or the interests of the nation,'' \61\ ``spreads
rumors,'' \62\ or ``harms the credibility of a government
agency.'' \63\ The Criminal Law punishes acts said to
constitute ``rumor mongering'' to incite subversion or the
overthrow of the socialist system with sentences of up to five
years' imprisonment.\64\ Nothing in Chinese law specifies what
constitutes the ``interests of the nation,'' a ``rumor,'' or
``harming credibility.'' Chinese laws and regulations provide
lists of what may be deemed a state secret, but these lists are
broad and vague, encompassing essentially all matters of public
concern.\65\ Moreover, Chinese law does not require the
government to show that anyone committing any of these acts
knew that the materials they published fell into one of these
categories.\66\ Finally, Chinese courts do not require the
government to show that the publication of the materials in
question caused, or could have caused, any negative effect on
the national interest.\67\
Government agencies responsible for implementing and
interpreting national security do not balance government
interests against a citizen's right to freedom of the press,
and instead consistently interpret laws in favor of the
government. In recent years, more than 70 percent of all cases
of criminal disclosure of state secrets were the result of a
``faulty understanding of state secrets.'' \68\ None of the 17
or more central government and Party agencies responsible for
enforcing and interpreting national security and state secrets
laws as they relate to freedom of the press has provided any
public guidance about when it will or will not censor
publications or pursue criminal complaints against
publishers.\69\ In 2004, the Chinese government shut down 338
publications for publishing ``internal'' information.\70\ In
addition, the Chinese judiciary is not independent from Party
control and does not issue instructive opinions in criminal
trials (see discussion of Huang Qi below). [For more
information on the Chinese judiciary, see Section VII(c |
