Civil Society

Citing government pressure, prominent Chinese AIDS activist Hu Jia resigned from Loving Source, an AIDS organization he helped found in 2003 to assist the orphans of AIDS victims, according to a February 7 Reuters report. Hu said, "I left to avoid trouble for Loving Source."

Sun Weilin, director general of the Bureau of NGO Administration at the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA), said on December 14 that the State Council is currently examining revised civil society regulations that will apply the same registration requirements to domestic and foreign organizations, according to a December 15 China Daily article. Sun stated that the regulations are expected to be published early next year.

Officials in Changzhou city, Jiangsu province, announced in November that the city government would no longer enforce regulatory documents [guifanxing wenjian] that have not been published first in the local newspaper, the government's gazette, or another publication specified by the city government, according to a December 8 article (in Chinese) in the Legal Daily. The new policy is consistent with the key WTO principle of transparency.

Official abuse of Chinese petitioners is rampant, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) press statement and report released on December 8. Chinese citizens often petition Party and government xinfang ("letters and visits") bureaus for redress of their grievances. The HRW report notes that petitioners rarely succeed in obtaining redress, and also cites first-hand interviews with Chinese petitioners detailing official abuses, including beatings and torture.

Social service organizations [fuli yuan] were involved in two child trafficking cases in November. Officials in Hunan province broke up a trafficking ring that included orphanage employees, according to a December 2 Xinhua article, and a court in Inner Mongolia sentenced traffickers who bought infants from medical clinics, according to a November 22 Xinhua article.

Jilin provincial authorities will allow citizens to challenge internal, nonpublic regulations that administrative agencies often rely on as a legal basis for government action, according to a report appearing on the Ministry of Justice Web site. Media reports and scholars have criticized the use of such internal regulations, which are often drafted without citizen participation.

The Jilin measures allow citizens to apply to the provincial legal affairs office for review of internal local regulations and require the review to be completed within two months. The measures also authorize the legal affairs office to declare invalid those regulations that fail the review.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA) has begun preparing proposals for revising laws on villagers and urban residents committees (VCs, RCs), the lowest level of governance in China. Provincial MOCA officials convened in Qingdao in late October to prepare proposals for draft amendments to the Organic Law on Villagers Committees, according to a November 3 article posted on the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) Web site. A November 7 Legal Daily article notes that MOCA has submitted draft amendments to the Organic Law on Urban Residents Committees to the State Council.

Five members of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee have expressed support for holding public hearings for all draft laws that are of interest to the general public, according to an October 25 China Youth Daily report posted on the Xinhua Web site.