Human rights in China
Human rights in the People's Republic of China are poor, as per reviews by international bodies, such as human rights treaty bodies and the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review. The Chinese Communist Party, the government of the People's Republic of China, their supporters, and other proponents claim that existing policies and enforcement measures are sufficient to guard against human rights abuses . However, Western countries, international non-governmental organizations including Human Rights in China and Amnesty International, as well as citizens, lawyers, and dissidents inside the country, state that the authorities in mainland China regularly sanction or organize abuses .
Independent NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, regularly present evidence of China violating the freedoms of speech, movement, and religion of its citizens and of others within its jurisdiction. Chinese authorities claim improvement in human rights, as they define them differently, so as to be dependent on "national culture" and the level of development of the Chinese politicians have repeatedly maintained that, according to an addition to the Chinese Constitution in 1982, the Four Cardinal Principles supersede citizens' rights. Chinese officials interpret the primacy of the Four Cardinal Principles as a legal basis for the arrest of people who the government says seek to overthrow the principles; Chinese nationals whom authorities perceive to be in compliance with these principles, on the other hand, are permitted by the Chinese authorities to enjoy and exercise all the rights that come with Chinese citizenship, provided they do not violate Chinese laws in any other manner. The Four Cardinal principles include upholding the socialist road, upholding the people's democratic dictatorship, upholding the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and upholding Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
Numerous human rights groups have publicized human rights issues in mainland China that they consider the government to be mishandling, including the death penalty, the one-child policy, the political and legal status of Tibet, neglect of freedom of the press in mainland China, the lack of an independent judiciary, rule of law, and due process, the severe lack of workers' rights, the absence of labour unions independent of the CCP, allegations of discrimination against rural workers and ethnic minorities, the lack of religious freedom rights groups have highlighted repression of the Christian, Tibetan Buddhist, Uyghur Muslim, and Falun Gong religious groups. Some Chinese activist groups are trying to expand these freedoms, including Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Chinese human rights attorneys who take on cases related to these issues, however, often face harassment, disbarment, and arrest.
In a human rights report that assesses social, economic, and political freedoms, China has received the lowest ranking globally for safety from state actions and the right to assemble.
Legal system
Since the legal reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s, the CCP has officially moved to embrace the language of the rule of law, and it has also attempted to establish a modern court system. During this process, it has enacted thousands of new laws and regulations, and it has begun to train more legal professionals. The concept of 'rule of law' has been emphasized in the constitution, and the ruling party has embarked on campaigns to promote the idea that citizens have protection under the law. At the same time, however, a fundamental contradiction exists in the constitution itself, in which the Communist Party insists that its authority supersedes that of the law. Thus, the constitution enshrines the rule of law, yet simultaneously stresses the principle that the "leadership of the Communist Party" holds primacy over the law and the legal system.The judiciary is not independent of the CCP, and judges face political pressure; in many instances, private party committees dictate the outcome of cases. In 2007, law and the judiciary were further subordinated to the interests of the CCP under the doctrine of the Three Supremes. In 2013, Document Number Nine detailed the CCP’s antipathy toward the rule of law. This has produced a system often described as "rule by law", rather than rule of law. Moreover, the legal system lacks protections for civil rights, and often fails to uphold due process. This is opposed to a system of checks and balances or separation of powers. Scholars have noted that these characteristics of the legal system in China often undermine due process in practice, particularly in politically sensitive criminal cases handled by defense lawyers, as analyzed in Criminal Defense in China.
Foreign experts estimate that in 2000, there were between 1.5 million and 4 million people in prison in mainland China. The PRC does not allow outsiders to inspect its penal system.
Civil liberties
Freedom of speech
Although the 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the "subversion of state power" and "protection of state secrets" clauses in their law system to imprison those who criticize the government. Another crime used to jail critics such as Sun Dawu is "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".During the 2008 Summer Olympics, the government promised to issue permits authorizing people to protest in specifically designated "protest parks" in Beijing. However, a majority of the applications were withdrawn, suspended, or vetoed, and the police detained some of the people who applied.
References to certain controversial events and political movements, as well as access to web pages considered by the PRC authorities to be "dangerous" or "threatening to state security", are blocked on the internet in the PRC; and content disputed by or critical of PRC authorities is absent from many publications, and subject to the control of the CCP within mainland China. An unsanctioned protest during the Olympics by seven foreign activists at the China Nationalities Museum, protesting for a free Tibet and blocking the entrance, was cleared and the protesters deported.
Foreign Internet search engines including Microsoft Bing, Yahoo!, and Google China have come under criticism for aiding these practices. Yahoo!, in particular, stated that it will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its Chinese customers from the authorities.
In 2005, after Yahoo! China provided its personal emails and IP addresses to the Chinese government, reporter Shi Tao was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years for releasing an internal Communist Party document to an overseas Chinese democracy site. Skype president Josh Silverman said it was "common knowledge" that TOM Online had "established procedures to...block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities".
File:屠夫.jpg|thumb|upright|Chinese blogger and human rights activist Wu Gan was sentenced to 8 years in prison in December 2017
In June 2020, Cai Xia, a retired professor of CCP's Central Party School, criticized CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, called him a "mafia boss" and the ruling Communist Party a "political zombie". In a 20-minute audio on social networking sites, she said that everyone is Xi's slave, and there is no human rights and rule of law, She suggested that Xi should retire. On 17 August 2020, Cai Xia was expelled from the CCP's Central Party School and her retirement pensions were cancelled. On 24 July 2020, the CCP expelled an outspoken and influential property tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang, who denounced the country's authoritarian leader Xi Jinping. He went missing in March after criticizing Xi, and later his case was passed to the judiciary system
for criminal investigation.
In July 2025, Chinese authorities arrested Zhang Yadi, a 22-year-old student and advocate for Tibetan rights, in Shangri-La, Yunnan province, while she was visiting from France. Zhang was detained under Article 103 of China's Criminal Law for allegedly "inciting separatism," a charge that carries a sentence of up to 15 years. She was involved with Chinese Youth Stand for Tibet, a group promoting Tibetan rights and interethnic dialogue. Human Rights Watch and other organizations called for her immediate release, urging international governments to intervene as she was due to begin graduate studies in London.
Freedom of the press
Critics argue that the CCP has failed to live up to its promises about the freedom of the mainland Chinese media. The US-based NGO Freedom House consistently ranks China as "Not Free" in its annual press freedom survey, including the 2014 report. PRC journalist He Qinglian says that the PRC's media are controlled by directives from the Communist Party's Publicity Department, and are subjected to intense monitoring which threatens punishment for violators, rather than to pre-publication censorship. In 2008, ITV News reporter John Ray was arrested while covering a "Free Tibet" protest. International media coverage of Tibetan protests only a few months before the Beijing Olympics in 2008 triggered a strong reaction inside China. Chinese media practitioners took the opportunity to argue with propaganda authorities for more media freedom: one journalist asked, 'If not even Chinese journalists are allowed to report about the problems in Tibet, how can foreign journalists know about the Chinese perspective about the events?' Foreign journalists also reported that their access to certain websites, including those of human rights organizations, was restricted. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge stated at the end of the 2008 Olympic Games that 'The regulations might not be perfect but they are a sea-change compared to the situation before. We hope that they will continue.' The Foreign Correspondents Club of China issued a statement during the Olympics that "despite welcome progress in terms of accessibility and the number of press conferences within the Olympic facilities, the FCCC has been alarmed at the use of violence, intimidation, and harassment outside. The club has confirmed more than 30 cases of reporting interference since the formal opening of the Olympic media center on 25 July, and is checking at least 20 other reported incidents."Since the Chinese state continues to exert a considerable amount of control over media, public support for domestic reporting has come as a surprise to many observers. Not much is known about the extent to which the Chinese citizenry believe the official statements of the CCP, nor about which media sources they perceive as credible and why. So far, research on the media in China has focused on the changing relationship between media outlets and the state during the reform era. Nor is much known about how China's changing media environment has affected the government's ability to persuade media audiences. Research on political trust reveals that exposure to the media correlates positively with support for the government in some instances, and negatively in others. The research has been cited as evidence that the Chinese public believes propaganda transmitted to them through the news media, but also that they disbelieve it. These contradictory results can be explained by realizing that ordinary citizens consider media sources to be credible to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the extent to which media outlets have undergone reform.
In 2012 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the Chinese government to lift restrictions on media access to the region and allow independent, impartial monitors to visit and assess conditions in Tibet. The Chinese government did not change its position.
In the first half of 2020, China expelled 17 employees of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. The expulsions came after the U.S. declared that five state-owned Chinese media outlets were operating as foreign missions of the government with their staff being re-designated employees of the Chinese government, requiring approval similar to diplomatic employees. The U.S. also required that the employees at the media outlets be reduced from 160 to 100.
Ursula Gauthier, a journalist from France working for the media organization L'Obs, was sent back to France in 2015 after she commented on China's response to the Paris attacks that happened in November 2015. She noted that China's sympathetic stance wasn't "without ulterior motives."
Gauthier had previously reported on China's persecution of the Uyghur ethnic group, many of whom believe in Islam. China often accuses Uyghur people of terrorism and has set up a system of camps, which they claim are "vocational training centers." However, those who have lived through the camps allege that the authorities torture, rape, and sexually abuse the prisoners as well as force them into unpaid labor and sterilize the women. Moreover, many experts and foreign policymakers consider the detentions arbitrary rather than linked to provable terrorist charges. As such, journalists such as Gauthier have been critical of China's actions.
At the time of Gauthier's expulsion, she was the first journalist to be deported since China expelled Melissa Chan from Al Jazeera in 2012. Chan had reported on China's black jails and government land confiscation. Of her deportation, China Global Television Network's Yang Rui wrote, "We should shut up those who demonize China and send them packing", according to The Wall Street Journal.