China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau)
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2002
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 31, 2003
(Note: Also see the section for Tibet, the report for Hong Kong, and the report for Macau.)
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP or Party) is the paramount source of power. Party members held almost all top government, police, and military positions. Ultimate authority rested with members of the Politburo. Leaders stressed the need to maintain stability and social order and were committed to perpetuating the rule of the CCP and its hierarchy. Citizens lacked both the freedom to peacefully express opposition to the party-led political system and the right to change their national leaders or form of government. Socialism continued to provide the theoretical underpinning of national politics, but Marxist economic planning had given way to pragmatism, and economic decentralization increased the authority of local officials. The Party's authority rested primarily on the Government's ability to maintain social stability; appeals to nationalism and patriotism; party control of personnel, media, and the security apparatus; and continued improvement in the living standards of most of the country's 1.3 billion citizens. The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary; however, in practice the Government and the CCP, at both the central and local levels, frequently interfered in the judicial process and directed verdicts in many high-profile cases.
The security apparatus is made up of the Ministries of State Security and Public Security, the People's Armed Police, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and the state judicial, procuratorial, and penal systems. Security policy and personnel were responsible for numerous human rights abuses.
The country's transition from a centrally planned to a market-based economy continued. Although state-owned industry remained dominant in key sectors, the Government privatized many small and medium state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and allowed private entrepreneurs increasing scope for economic activity. Rising urban living standards, greater independence for entrepreneurs, and the expansion of the nonstate sector increased workers' employment options and significantly reduced state control over citizens' daily lives. The country had large industrial and agricultural sectors and was a leading producer of coal, steel, textiles, and grains. Major exports included electronic goods, toys, apparel, and plastics. The official gross domestic product growth rate for the year was approximately 8 percent.
The country faced many economic challenges, including reform of SOEs and the banking system, growing unemployment and underemployment, the need to construct an effective social safety net, and growing regional economic disparities. In recent years, between 80 and 130 million persons voluntarily left rural areas to search for better jobs and living conditions in the cities, where they were often denied access to government-provided economic and social benefits, including education and health care. In the industrial sector, continued downsizing of SOEs contributed to rising urban unemployment that was widely believed to be higher than the officially estimated 7 percent, with many sources estimating the actual figure to be 15 to 25 percent. Income gaps between coastal and interior regions, and between urban and rural areas, continued to widen. Urban per capita income in 2001 was $830 and grew by 8.5 percent over the previous year, while rural per capita income was $286 and grew by 4.2 percent. Official estimates of the number of citizens living in absolute poverty showed little change from the previous year, with the Government estimating that 30 million persons lived in poverty and the World Bank, using different criteria, estimating the number to be 100 to 150 million persons.
The Government's human rights record throughout the year remained poor, and the Government continued to commit numerous and serious abuses. However, the Government took some steps to address international concerns about its human rights record during the year: A number of prominent dissidents were released; senior representatives of the Dalai Lama were allowed to visit the country; the Government agreed to extend, without conditions, invitations to visit to the U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Torture and Religious Intolerance and the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; reform of the legal system continued; and the scope of religious activity allowed in Tibetan areas expanded slightly. Late in the year, these positive developments were undermined by arrests of democracy activists, the imposition of death sentences without due process on two Tibetans, and the trials of labor leaders on "subversion" charges. Authorities were quick to suppress religious, political, and social groups, as well as individuals, that they perceived to be a threat to government power or to national stability. Citizens who sought to express openly dissenting political and religious views continued to face repression.
Abuses included instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process. Conditions at most prisons remained harsh. In many cases, particularly in sensitive political cases, the judicial system denied criminal defendants basic legal safeguards and due process because authorities attached higher priority to suppressing political opposition and maintaining public order than to enforcing legal norms or protecting individual rights. The Government infringed on citizens' privacy rights. The Government continued to implement its coercive policy of restricting the number of children a family could have. The Government maintained tight restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press; self-censorship by journalists and writers also continued. The Government continued and at times intensified its efforts to control and monitor the Internet. The Government severely restricted freedom of assembly and continued to restrict freedom of association and freedom of movement. While the number of religious believers continued to grow, government respect for religious freedom remained poor and crackdowns against Muslim Uighurs, Tibetan Buddhists, and unregistered groups, including underground Protestant and Catholic groups, continued. The Government denied the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) permission to operate along its border with North Korea and deported thousands of North Koreans, many of whom faced persecution upon their return. Citizens did not have the right peacefully to change their Government. The Government did not permit independent domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to monitor human rights conditions. Violence against women (including imposition of a birth limitation policy coercive in nature that resulted in instances of forced abortion and forced sterilization), prostitution, discrimination against women, abuse of children, and discrimination against persons with disabilities and minorities all were problems. In Xinjiang, where security remained tight, human rights abuses intensified. The Government continued to deny internationally recognized worker rights, and forced labor in prison facilities remained a serious problem. Trafficking in persons was a serious problem. The Government's violation of internationally accepted human rights norms stemmed from the authorities' extremely limited tolerance of public dissent, fear of unrest, and the limited scope or inadequate implementation of laws protecting basic freedoms.
The authorities released several prominent political prisoners before their terms were over. Tibetans Ngawang Choephel, Jigme Sangpo, Ngawang Sangdrol, Tenzin Thubten, Ngawang Choekyi, Ngawang Choezom and Gyaltsen Drolkar were released early (see Tibet Addendum). Also released was China Democracy Party co-founder Xu Wenli. Nonetheless, at year's end several thousand others, including China Democracy Party co-founders Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin, Internet activists Yang Zili and Huang Qi, Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, journalist Jiang Weiping, labor activist Liu Jingsheng, political activist Han Chunsheng, Catholic Bishop Su Zhimin, house church leader Xu Guoxing, Tibetan nun Phuntsog Nyidrol, Uighur historian Tohti Tunyaz, and political dissident Yang Jianli, remained imprisoned or under other forms of detention.
The judiciary was not independent, and the lack of due process in the judicial system remained a serious problem. Few Chinese lawyers were willing to represent criminal defendants. During the year, defendants in only one of every seven criminal cases had legal representation, according to credible reports citing internal government statistics. A number of attorneys were detained for defending their clients. The authorities routinely violated legal protections in the cases of political dissidents and religious leaders and adherents. Over 200,000 persons were serving sentences, not subject to judicial review, in reeducation-through-labor camps. The country's criminal procedures were not in compliance with international standards, and new regulations and policies introduced in recent years were not widely implemented. Some lawyers, law professors, and jurists continued to press publicly for improvements of the criminal defense system, including a more transparent system of discovery, abolition of coerced confessions, a presumption of innocence, an independent judiciary, the right to remain silent, mechanisms for judicial review, appropriate protections for criminal defense lawyers, and improved administrative laws giving citizens recourse against unlawful acts by the Government.
Approximately 1,300 individuals were serving sentences under the Law Against Counterrevolutionary Activity, a law that no longer existed; many of these persons were imprisoned for the nonviolent expression of their political views. Credible sources estimated that as many as 2,000 persons remained in prison for their activities during the June 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. Since December 1998, at least 38 leaders of the China Democracy Party have been given long prison sentences on subversion charges.
Throughout the year, the Government continued a national "strike hard" campaign against crime, characterized by round-ups of suspects who were sometimes sentenced in sports arenas in front of thousands of spectators. At year's end, this campaign, which was originally scheduled to last for 3 months at its inception in April 2001, showed no signs of abating in some areas. Some dissidents, "separatists," and underground church members were targeted. The campaign has been especially harsh in Xinjiang, where those deemed to be "splittists" by the Government were targeted. As part of the campaign, officials reportedly carried out over 4,000 executions during the year, frequently without due process. Amnesty International reported that the country executed more persons than all other countries combined. Moreover, the actual number of persons executed likely was far higher than the number of reported cases. The Government regarded the number of death sentences it carried out as a state secret.
Many observers raised concerns about the Government's use of the international war on terror as a justification for cracking down harshly on suspected Uighur separatists expressing peaceful political dissent and on independent Muslim religious leaders. According to reports from Xinjiang's Uighur community, authorities continued to search out and arrest Uighurs possessing written or recorded information containing unapproved religious material. The human rights situation in Tibet and in some ethnically Tibetan regions outside Tibet also remained poor, and the Government continued to impose restrictions on some forms of religious practice (see Tibet Addendum).
Labor protests occurred with increasing size and frequency. For example, thousands of workers in the northeast protested such problems as nonpayment of back wages, loss of benefits, reduced severance pay, and managerial corruption. Leaders of the largest of these demonstrations--Yao Fuxin, Xiao Yunliang, Wang Zhaoming, and Pang Qingxiang--were detained by officials. Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang were charged with subversion after the Government alleged that the two had made contact with international organizations and with the China Democracy Party several years before the labor protests occurred.
While the number of religious believers in the country continued to grow, some religious groups, including unregistered Protestant and Catholic congregations and members of nontraditional religious groups, continued to experience varying degrees of official interference, harassment, and repression. However, other religious groups noted a greater freedom to worship than in the past. The Government continued to enforce regulations requiring all places of religious activity to register with the Government or to come under the supervision of official, "patriotic" religious organizations. In some areas, authorities made strong efforts to control the activities of unapproved Catholic and Protestant churches; religious services were broken up and church leaders or adherents were harassed, and, at times, fined, detained, beaten, and tortured. At year's end, some religious adherents remained in prison because of their religious activities. No progress was made in improving relations between the Government and the Vatican, although both sides claimed to be ready to resume negotiations aimed at establishing diplomatic relations.
The Government continued its crackdown against the Falun Gong (FLG) spiritual movement. Thousands of practitioners were incarcerated in prisons, extrajudicial reeducation-through-labor camps, psychiatric facilities or special deprogramming centers. FLG adherents conducted far fewer public demonstrations than in past years, which some observers attributed to the effectiveness of the Government's crackdown. Several hundred Falun Gong adherents reportedly have died in detention due to torture, abuse and neglect since the crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999.
The Government strictly regulated the establishment and management of publications, controlled the broadcast media, censored foreign television broadcasts, and at times jammed radio signals from abroad. During the year, publications were disciplined for publishing material deemed objectionable by the Government, and journalists, authors, and researchers were harassed, detained, and arrested by the authorities. Internet use continued to grow in the country, even as the Government continued, and in some periods intensified, efforts to control and monitor such use. During the year, the Government blocked many Web sites, using increasingly sophisticated technology; led a drive to close unlicensed Internet cafes, in part to address safety concerns after a deadly fire; and urged Internet companies to pledge to censor objectionable content. At year's end, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 36 journalists were imprisoned in the country, including 14 Internet journalists.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:
a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
The official press reported a number of extrajudicial killings, but no nationwide statistics were available. During the year, deaths in custody due to police use of torture to coerce confessions from criminal suspects continued to be a problem. Several hundred Falun Gong adherents reportedly have died in detention due to torture, abuse and neglect since the crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999. For example, Zheng Fangying of Weifang, Shandong Province, was arrested in December 2001 after she tried to unfurl a pro-FLG banner in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Zheng was taken to a detention center where she was punched and shocked with electric batons. Police released her after she staged an 18-day hunger strike. Three days later, she reportedly died from her injuries at her home.
During the year, officials reportedly carried out over 4,000 executions after summary trials as part of a nationwide strike hard campaign against crime. The actual number of persons executed likely was far higher than the number of reported cases. Some foreign academics estimated that as many as 10,000 to 20,000 persons are executed each year. The Government regarded the number of death sentences it carried out as a state secret.
Trials involving capital offenses often took place under circumstances where the lack of due process or a meaningful appeal bordered on extrajudicial killing. For example, according to domestic press reports, 23 suspects in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, were sentenced to death in front of 5,000 spectators in April 2001. Seven of the condemned were immediately taken to an execution ground where they were shot.
b. Disappearance
There were reports of temporary disappearances during the year. For example, dissidents Wang Bingzhang, Zhang Qi and Yue Wu were reported missing on June 26 in Vietnam. They were held incommunicado and their whereabouts were unknown until December, when Chinese authorities confirmed that the three were in China, where they had been in custody for several months. Zhang Qi and Yue Wu were released, but Wang Bingzhang was still in custody at year's end, detained on charges of espionage and terrorism.
In addition, the Government has not provided a comprehensive, credible accounting of all those missing or detained in connection with the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
The law prohibits torture; however, police and other elements of the security apparatus employed torture and degrading treatment in dealing with some detainees and prisoners. The Prison Law forbids prison guards from extorting confessions by torture, insulting prisoners' dignity, and beating or encouraging others to beat prisoners. While senior Chinese officials acknowledged that torture and coerced confessions were chronic problems, they did not take sufficient measures to end these practices. Former detainees reported credibly that officials used electric shocks, prolonged periods of solitary confinement, incommunicado detention, beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse. Persons detained pending trial were particularly at risk due to systemic weaknesses in the legal system and lack of implementation of the Criminal Procedure Law. Reports of torture increased during the ongoing strike hard campaign against crime in which police were encouraged to achieve quick results.
During the year, deaths in custody due to police use of torture to coerce confessions from criminal suspects continued to be a problem. For example, Zeng Lingyun, a villager in Longxing Town, Chongqing Municipality, was detained by public security personnel on July 26 on suspicion of petty theft. On July 28, Zeng's family was informed that Zeng had died. When they examined the body, they noticed extensive bruises and a bullet wound. Local officials initially told Zeng's family that he had been shot by police. They later claimed to be investigating the case, but refused to answer questions posed by foreign NGOs. As of year's end, the case had not been resolved. Since the crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999, there reportedly have been several hundred deaths in custody of FLG adherents, due to torture, abuse, and neglect. A 2001 pilot program in Liaoning Province, intended to institute the right to remain silent in criminal trials as a way to combat torture, was discontinued. In September 2000, the National People's Congress (NPC) carried out an independent study of the use of torture in Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Hebei, and Shaanxi. The group discovered 221 cases of confessions coerced by torture and 21 criminal suspects who died as a result of the torture.
During the year, there were many reports of persons, especially FLG adherents, sentenced to psychiatric hospitals for expressing their political or religious beliefs (see Section 1.d.).
Conditions in penal institutions for both political prisoners and common criminals generally were harsh and frequently degrading. Prisoners and detainees often were kept in overcrowded conditions with poor sanitation, and their food often was inadequate and of poor quality. Many detainees relied on supplemental food and medicines provided by relatives, but some prominent dissidents reportedly were not allowed to receive supplemental food or medicine from relatives. According to released political prisoners, in many provinces it was standard practice for political prisoners to be segregated from each other and placed with common criminals. Released prisoners reported that common criminals have beaten political prisoners at the instigation of guards. However, some prominent political prisoners received better than standard treatment.
The 1994 Prison Law was designed, in part, to improve treatment of detainees and increase respect for their legal rights. Some prisoners were able to use administrative procedures provided for in this law to complain about prison conditions. The Government has created some "model" facilities, where inmates generally received better treatment than those held in other facilities.
Adequate, timely medical care for prisoners continued to be a serious problem, despite official assurances that prisoners have the right to prompt medical treatment if they become ill. Nutritional and health conditions were often grim. Political prisoners who continued to have difficulties in obtaining medical treatment, despite repeated appeals on their behalf by their families and the international community, included China Democracy Party co-founders Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai, labor activist Hu Shigen, Liberal Democratic Party activist Kang Yuchun, labor activist Liu Jingsheng, and Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer. Zhang Shanguang, who was serving a 10-year sentence for disclosing news of labor demonstrations to Radio Free Asia, suffered from tuberculosis. Prison officials in Xinjiang have not allowed family members of businesswoman and prominent Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer to bring her medicine for heart disease since her arrest in August 1999. Chinese authorities claimed Kadeer was in good health and received special medical treatment, but others claimed that she continued to be in poor health. There also were allegations that she had been abused physically. Officials reportedly denied repeated requests for her to be hospitalized. In July Hunan officials rearrested political activist Li Wangyang, who had demanded that the Government pay his medical bills to treat ailments he contracted while serving an earlier 13-year prison sentence. However, in December the Government released China Democracy Party co-founder Xu Wenli, who suffered from Hepatitis B.
Conditions in administrative detention facilities, such as reeducation-through-labor camps and "custody and repatriation" centers, were similar to those in prisons.
Forced labor in prisons and reeducation-through-labor camps was common. At the Xinhua Reeducation-Through-Labor Camp in Sichuan Province, inmates were forced to work up to 16 hours per day breaking rocks or making bricks, according to credible reports. Former inmates reported that there were several deaths from overwork, poor medical care, and beatings by guards in 2000.
The Government did not permit independent monitoring of prisons or reeducation-through-labor camps, and prisoners remained inaccessible to international human rights organizations. By year's end, Chinese officials had not announced any progress in talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on an agreement for ICRC access to prisons. However, limited cooperation was renewed on the U.S.-China Prison Labor Memorandum of Understanding, and U.S. officials inspected one prison where prison labor had allegedly occurred (see Section 6.c).
d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile
Arbitrary arrest and detention remained serious problems. The law permits authorities, in some circumstances, to detain persons without arresting or charging them, and persons may be sentenced administratively to up to 3 years in reeducation-through-labor camps and other similar facilities without a trial. Because the Government tightly controlled information, it was impossible to determine accurately the total number of persons subjected to new or continued arbitrary arrest or detention. Official government statistics indicated that there were 230,000 persons in reeducation-through-labor camps. According to a 2001 article by the official news agency, 300 reeducation-through-labor facilities have held more than 3.5 million prisoners since 1957. In addition, it was estimated that before 1996 as many as 1.7 million persons per year were detained in a form of administrative detention known as custody and repatriation; the number of persons subject to this form of detention reportedly has grown since 1996 to approximately 2 million per year. The Government also confined some Falun Gong adherents and labor activists to psychiatric hospitals. Although the crime of being a "counterrevolutionary" was removed from the criminal code in 1997, western NGOs estimated that as many as 1,300 persons remained in prison for the crime. Another 600 were serving sentences under the State Security Law, which covers the same crimes as the repealed law on "counterrevolution."
In some cases, police could unilaterally detain a person for up to 37 days before releasing him or formally placing him under arrest. Once a suspect is arrested, the Criminal Procedure Law allows police and prosecutors to detain him for months before trial while a case is being "further investigated." The Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that authorities must notify a detainee's family or work unit of his detention within 24 hours. However, in practice failure to provide timely notification remained a serious problem, especially in sensitive political cases. Under a sweeping exception, officials were not required to provide notification if doing so would "hinder the investigation" of a case. Police continued to hold individuals without granting access to family members or lawyers, and trials continued to be conducted in secret.
The Criminal Procedure Law does not address the reeducation-through-labor system, which allows nonjudicial panels of police and local authorities, called Labor Reeducation Committees, to sentence persons to up to 3 years in prison-like facilities. The committees could also extend an inmate's sentence for an additional year. Defendants were legally entitled to challenge reeducation-through-labor sentences under the Administrative Litigation Law. They could appeal for a reduction in, or suspension of, their sentences; however, appeals rarely were successful.
The Criminal Procedure Law also does not address the custody and repatriation system, which allows authorities to detain persons administratively without trial to "protect urban social order." Until they were returned to their home provinces, those detained were held in custody and repatriation centers, and could be required to pay for the cost of their detention and repatriation by working while in detention. Persons who could be detained under this provision included the homeless, the unemployed, petty criminals, Falun Gong practitioners, persons without permission to live or work in urban areas, and, in some provinces, additional categories of persons such as the mentally ill and persons with mental disabilities. According to one report, as many as 20 percent of those detained were children. If the location to which they were to be repatriated could not be determined, or if they could not be repatriated for financial reasons, persons could be sent to "resettlement farms." Those unable to work could be sent to "welfare centers." Many other persons were detained in similar forms of administrative detention, known as "custody and education" (for prostitutes and their clients) and "custody and training" (for minors who committed crimes). Persons could be detained for long periods under these provisions, particularly if they could not afford to pay fines or fees.
According to researchers, the country had 20 "ankang" institutions, high-security psychiatric hospitals for the criminally insane, directly administered by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Dissidents and other targeted individuals were housed with mentally ill patients in these institutions. The regulations for committing a person into an ankang psychiatric facility were not clear. Credible reports indicated that a number of political and trade union dissidents, "underground" religious believers, persons who petitioned the Government for redress of grievances, and hundreds of Falun Gong adherents were incarcerated in such facilities during the year. For example, political activist Wang Wanxing, originally held for trying to unfurl a banner on Tiananmen Square to commemorate the third anniversary of the June 4, 1989 massacre, was confined in a Beijing ankang facility. Huang Jinchun, a judge in Beihai, fired from his job and admitted to a psychiatric hospital in November 1999 for refusing to renounce his belief in Falun Gong, also remained in an ankang facility at year's end. He reportedly displayed no signs of mental illness but was given daily injections of narcotics. According to NGO reports, more than 30 persons were committed during the year to the Harbin Psychiatric Hospital against their will after petitioning authorities for redress of various personal grievances. In August The Royal College of Psychiatrists sponsored a motion to expel China from the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) for using psychiatric facilities to incarcerate political prisoners; a decision was pending at year's end.
The campaign that began in 1998 against the China Democracy Party (CDP), an opposition party, continued during the year. Scores of CDP leaders, activists, and members were arrested, detained, or confined as a result of this campaign. Since December 1998, at least 38 core leaders of the CDP have been given severe punishments on subversion charges. For example, Hu Mingjun and Wang Sen, CDP leaders in Sichuan, were sentenced in May to 10- and 11-year sentences, respectively (see Section 3). In what some experts described as an attempt by authorities to tarnish the public image of the democracy movement, officials accused a number of democracy activists of soliciting prostitutes, distributing pornographic videos, or committing petty theft or other crimes unrelated to their political activities. For instance, in September Shanghai CDP activist Yao Zhenxiang was sentenced to 3 years of reeducation-through-labor for soliciting prostitutes.
Immediately before and after the 16th Party Congress in November, authorities rounded up a number of activists who had signed an open letter calling for political reform and a reappraisal of the official verdict on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. At years end, a number of these persons, including He Depu, Sang Jianchen, Zhao Changqing, Ouyang Yi, Dai Xuezhong and Jiang Lijun, remained in detention.
The authorities also used laws on subversion, endangering state security, and common crimes to arrest and imprison political dissidents, activists, and others. Li Wangyang, released from prison in June 2000 and rearrested on subversion charges in May 2001, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in September 2001 for "incitement to subvert state power." Li had served 11 years in prison for his role in presiding over the Shaoyang Workers Autonomous Federation, a Tiananmen-era free trade union.
Police sometimes detained relatives of dissidents (see Section 2.a.).
Persons critical of official corruption or malfeasance also frequently were threatened, detained, or imprisoned. On January 25, Jiang Weiping, who had written a series of articles exposing official corruption, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for "subverting state power" (see Section 2.a.).
The police continued to target minority activists. As part of the nationwide strike hard campaign, many seeking to express legitimate political grievances or views were labeled splittists or separatists. For example, Xinjiang official Abulahat Abkurixit told the newspaper Xinjiang Legal in April 2001 that authorities would use the campaign to strike at Muslim separatists and illegal religious activities. After a January incident in which a jobless worker read a poem at the end of a concert in the Xinjiang People's Hall in Urumqi that allegedly obliquely advocated a separate Uighur state, Abkurixit further announced that artists, writers, performers, historians, and others who advocated separatism through art would be strike hard targets. As part of the campaign, local courts in Xinjiang meted out death sentences or long prison terms to those persons accused of separatist activity. In November 2001, Abdehelil Zunun, who had translated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into Uighur, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In early 2000, a court sentenced Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer to 8 years in prison for passing "state intelligence" information to foreigners. The state intelligence she was accused of attempting to pass consisted of newspaper articles published in the official press and a list of individuals whose cases had been handled by judicial organs.
The strike hard campaign was characterized by large-scale sentencing rallies and parades of condemned prisoners through the streets of major cities, followed by public executions. More than 4,000 persons reportedly were executed as part of the strike hard campaign during the year. According to local newspapers, on June 29, in Toksu County, Xinjiang, 5,000 persons attended a public sentencing rally in which 13 suspects were arrested on the spot, 6 common criminals were sentenced to 2 to 7 year terms, and 5 political offenders were sentenced to 3 to 5 year terms. The rally concluded when three brothers, Turdi, Muhammad, and Imin Hashim, were sentenced to death for killing two persons and executed the next day. In November harsh sentences were given to 28 Uighurs accused of separatist and terrorist activities at a combined Aksu and Uchturpan county mass rally. In April 2001, local newspapers in Sichuan Province reported that more than 3,000 criminals were sentenced publicly in 123 rallies held across the province. Of those more than 900 were "severely punished," a category that includes the death sentence and lengthy prison terms.
Journalists also were detained or threatened during the year, often for reporting on subjects that met with the Government's or the local authorities' disapproval (see Section 2.a.).
Local authorities used the Government's campaign against cults to detain and arrest large numbers of religious practitioners and members of spiritual groups (see Section 2.c.).
Throughout the year, the official press published numerous articles to raise public awareness of recent laws meant to enhance the protection of citizens' rights, including the Criminal Procedure Law, the State Compensation Law, the Administrative Procedure Law, and others. A number of citizens used the State Compensation Law, which provides a legal basis for citizens to recover damages for illegal detentions, to sue the Government for damages. According to a March 12 China Youth Daily article, in 2001 courts nationwide handled 6,753 such cases, and compensation was granted in 777 cases. Legal experts acknowledged that the introduction of the new law was a positive step but called on the Government to increase the amount of compensation provided to victims.
The law neither provides for a citizen's right to repatriate nor otherwise addresses exile. The Government continued to refuse reentry to numerous citizens who were dissidents and activists. For example, Chinese consular officers repeatedly refused U.S.-based dissident Yang Jianli's requests for a renewal of his passport.
The Government's refusal to permit some former reeducation-through-labor camp inmates to return to their homes constituted a form of internal exile.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The Constitution states that the courts shall, in accordance with the law, exercise judicial power independently, without interference from administrative organs, social organizations, and individuals. However, in practice the judiciary received policy guidance from both the Government and the Party, whose leaders used a variety of means to direct courts on verdicts and sentences, particularly in politically sensitive cases. At both the central and local levels, the Government and the CCP frequently interfered in the judicial system and dictated court decisions. Corruption and conflicts of interest also affected judicial decisionmaking. Judges were appointed by the people's congresses at the corresponding level of the judicial structure, which sometimes resulted in local politicians exerting undue influence over the judges they appointed.
The Supreme People's Court (SPC) is the highest body of the criminal and civil court system, followed in descending order by the higher, intermediate, and basic people's courts. There were special courts for handling military, maritime, and railway transport cases.
Corruption and inefficiency in the judicial system were serious problems. Safeguards against corruption were vague and poorly enforced. According to Zhu Mingshan, Vice President of the SPC, in 2001 114 presidents of local courts had to make self-criticisms for "errors" ranging from nepotism to a lack of due diligence in supervising corrupt subordinates. In 2001 the SPC punished 1,292 judges for violating party or administrative regulations, while 46 were prosecuted for violating the law.
In recent years, the Government has taken steps to correct systemic weaknesses in the judicial system and to make the system more transparent and accountable to public scrutiny. In 1999 the Supreme People's Court issued regulations requiring all trials to be open to the public, except for those involving state secrets, personal privacy, or minors; divorce cases in which both parties request a closed trial; and cases involving commercial secrets. In practice, many trials were not open. Several courts reportedly did open their proceedings to the public as required by law. The legal exception for cases involving state secrets, privacy, and minors was used to keep politically sensitive proceedings closed to the public and closed even to family members in some cases. Under the new regulations, "foreigners with valid identification" are to be allowed the same access to trials as citizens. As in past years, foreign diplomats and journalists sought permission to attend a number of trials only to have court officials reclassify them as "state secrets" cases, thus rendering them closed to the public. Since 1998 trials have been broadcast, and court proceedings have become a regular television feature. In 2000 courts in Shanghai became the first to publish verdicts on the Internet.
Lawsuits against the Government continued to increase as a growing number of persons used the court system to seek legal recourse against government malfeasance. In 1998, the last year for which statistics were available, Chinese citizens brought almost 98,000 cases against the Government, a 10-fold increase from 1989. The Beijing Higher People's Court reported that when Beijing citizens sued the Government, citizen plaintiffs won in 23 percent of cases (832 of 3,632) between 1990 and 1999. In addition, a large percentage of such cases were settled out of court. The term "administrative omission" refers to cases in which government organizations do not respond or delay response to applications lodged by citizens. According to SPC statistics, the number of administrative omission lawsuits filed by individuals against government organizations rose 7.6 times between 1990 and 1998. In July the SPC established guidelines, which went into effect on October 1, setting out the rights of litigants to access government files to facilitate lawsuits against government bodies.
Although some plaintiffs have successfully filed suit against the Government, decisions of any kind in favor of dissidents remained rare. In particular, appeals of prison sentences by dissidents rarely were granted.
Court officials continued efforts to enable the poor to afford litigation by exempting, reducing, or postponing court fees. In 2001 the courts reduced, exempted or postponed more than $100 million (RMB 839 million) in litigation costs for more than 300,000 litigants.
According to the SPC's annual report to the NPC, in 2001 the country's courts handled 5,927,660 cases, 730,000 of which were criminal cases, a 33 percent increase over the previous year, as well as more than 100,000 appeals of administrative decisions. According to the report, more than 340,000 criminal cases were adjudicated in 2001, and more than 150,000 criminal defendants were sentenced to jail terms of 5 years or more, life imprisonment, or death, a 15 percent increase over 2000 that may be due to the ongoing strike hard campaign.
Police and prosecutorial officials often ignored the due process provisions of the law and of the Constitution. For example, police and prosecutors subjected many prisoners to severe psychological pressure to confess, and coerced confessions frequently were introduced as evidence. The Criminal Procedure Law forbids the use of torture to obtain confessions but does not expressly bar the introduction of coerced confessions as evidence. Defendants who failed to show the correct attitude by confessing their crimes received harsher sentences. During the year, the conviction rate in criminal cases remained at approximately 90 percent, and trials generally were little more than sentencing hearings. In practice criminal defendants only were assigned an attorney once a case was brought to court; some observers noted that at this point, it was too late for an attorney to assist a client in a meaningful way, since the verdict often had already been decided. The best that a defense attorney generally could do for a client was to get a sentence mitigated. In many politically sensitive trials that rarely lasted more than several hours, the courts handed down guilty verdicts immediately following proceedings. There was an appeals process, but in practice appeals rarely resulted in reversed verdicts.
The lack of due process was particularly egregious in death penalty cases. There were 65 capital offenses, including financial crimes such as counterfeiting currency, embezzlement, and corruption, as well as some other property crimes. A higher court nominally reviewed all death sentences, but the time between arrest and execution was often days and sometimes less, and reviews consistently resulted in the confirmation of sentences. Minors and pregnant women were expressly exempt from the death sentence. The strike hard campaign begun in April 2001 was characterized by mass arrests, lack of due process, and summary public executions of several thousand persons (see Section 1.d.). In December an appeals court upheld death sentences against Tibetans Tenzin Delek Rinpoche and Lobsang Dhondup, who were arrested and sentenced earlier in the year for alleged involvement in a series of bombings in Sichuan. The two men's trials were closed to the public on "state secrets" grounds. Many observers expressed serious concerns about the lack of due process.
The revised Criminal Procedure Law, which took effect in 1997, gives most suspects the right to seek legal counsel shortly after their initial detention and interrogation. However, police often used loopholes in the law to circumvent a defendant's right to seek counsel, and political activists in particular rarely succeeded in obtaining competent legal representation of their own choosing. In some cases, defendants and lawyers in politically sensitive cases were not allowed to speak during trials. Even in nonsensitive trials, criminal defense lawyers frequently had little access to their clients or to evidence to be presented during the trial.
The Criminal Procedure Law also falls short of international standards in many other respects. For example, it has insufficient safeguards against the use of evidence gathered through illegal means, such as torture. Its appeals process failed to provide sufficient avenue for review, and there were inadequate remedies for violations of defendants' rights. In some cases, police could detain unilaterally a person for up to 37 days before releasing him or formally placing him under arrest. Once a suspect was arrested, the law allowed police and prosecutors to detain him for months before trial while a case was "further investigated." Detained criminal suspects, defendants, their legal representatives, and close relatives were entitled to apply for a guarantor to enable the suspect or defendant to await trial out of custody; however, in practice few suspects were released on bail pending trial. Also, in state secrets cases, the Criminal Procedure Law authorizes officials to deny suspects access to a lawyer while their cases are being investigated. The definition of state secrets is broad, vague, and subject to independent interpretation by police, prosecutors, and judges, throughout the various stages in a criminal case.
Furthermore, under the law, there is no right to remain silent, no right against double jeopardy, and no law governing the type of evidence that may be introduced. The mechanism that allows defendants to confront their accusers was inadequate; according to one expert, only 1 to 5 percent of trials involved witnesses. Accordingly, most criminal "trials" consisted of the procurator reading statements of witnesses whom neither the defendant nor his lawyer ever had an opportunity to question. Defense attorneys have no authority to compel witnesses to testify.
Anecdotal evidence indicated that implementation of the Criminal Procedure Law remained uneven and far from complete, especially in politically sensitive cases. Differing interpretations of the law taken by different judicial and police departments and various implementing regulations contributed to contradictory as well as incomplete implementation. The SPC, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of Justice, and the Legal Work Committee of the NPC issued supplementary implementing regulations to address some of these weaknesses.
Defendants in sensitive political cases frequently found it difficult to find an attorney. Defendants in only one of every seven criminal cases had legal representation, according to credible reports citing internal government statistics. government-employed lawyers still depended on official work units for employment, housing, and other benefits, and therefore many were reluctant to represent politically sensitive defendants. The percentage of lawyers in the criminal bar reportedly declined from 3 percent in 1997 to 1 percent in 2001. However, there were no new reports of the Government revoking the licenses of lawyers representing political defendants, as it sometimes had done in the past.
Lawyers who tried to defend their clients aggressively continued to face serious intimidation and abuse by police and prosecutors. For example, according to Article 306 of the Criminal Law, defense attorneys could be held responsible if their clients commit perjury, and prosecutors and judges in such cases have wide discretion in determining what constitutes perjury. On May 3, Zhang Jianzhong, head of the lawyers' rights committee of the Beijing Lawyers' Association, was detained on such charges and denied the right to counsel. Chinese legal scholars almost uniformly criticized Zhang's detention and claimed he was singled out for being too effective at representing criminal defendants. According to sources at the All-China Lawyers Association, since 1997 more than 400 defense attorneys have been detained on similar perjury charges. Ma Wenlin, a legal advisor in Zizhou County, Shaanxi, continued to serve a 5-year sentence for "disturbing the social order" for having represented peasants in a legal action to reduce taxes. During the year, state secrets arrests and prosecutions were used by officials to suppress political dissent and social advocacy and to intimidate criminal defense lawyers. Lawyers' professional associations called for better protection of lawyers and their legitimate role in the legal process.
In recent years, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has drafted regulations to standardize professional performance, lawyer-client relations, and the administration of lawyers and law firms. The regulations set educational requirements for legal practitioners, encourage free legal services for the general public, grant lawyers formal permission to establish law firms, and provide for the disciplining of lawyers. A growing number of lawyers organized private law firms that were self-regulating and did not have their personnel or budgets determined directly by the State. More than 60 legal aid organizations, many of which handled both criminal and civil cases, have been established around the country, and the MOJ established a nationwide legal services hot line. Government officials also stated that there were insufficient numbers of lawyers to meet the country's growing needs.
The Supreme People's Court, Procuratorate, and the MOJ jointly released a notice in December 2001 stipulating that only those persons who passed an exam and obtained a "Certificate of Legal Profession" could apply for a lawyer's license or serve as a judge or a prosecutor. The regulation entered into force on January 1 but was not widely enforced in practice. In March the first exam was administered. New regulations passed during the year require new judges to pass both a national and a provincial examination and receive specialized training before they could be appointed. Recent regulations also require judicial or prosecutorial appointees to be law school graduates who have practiced law for at least 2 years or postgraduates who have practiced law for at least 1 year. In July SPC President Xiao Yang announced that the Government would trim the number of judges over the next few years to raise professional standards. Coupled with other reforms, the SPC set up a new rank-in-person system with 1 Chief Grand Justice, 41 Grand Justices, 30,000 senior judges, and 180,000 normal judges across the country. However, there were still a great number of sitting judges and procurators, often in positions of authority, who were appointed to their positions before these reforms were enacted and who had little or no legal training.
During the year, some lawyers, law professors, and jurists continued publicly to press for faster and more systemic legal reform. Major newspapers and legal journals called for the introduction of a more transparent system of discovery, the abolition of coerced confessions, a legal presumption of innocence, an independent judiciary, improved administrative laws, and adoption of a plea bargaining system. During the year, Western scholars and journalists also criticized shortcomings of the justice system, such as the use of psychiatric facilities to house political or religious dissidents, absence of legal provisions specifically guaranteeing a suspect's right to remain silent, coerced confessions, torture, and the presumption of guilt.
Government officials denied holding any political prisoners, asserting that authorities detained persons not for their political or religious views but because they violated the law; however, the authorities continued to confine citizens for reasons related to politics and religion. Thousands of political prisoners remained incarcerated, some in prisons and others in labor camps.
The 1997 Criminal Law replaced "counterrevolutionary" offenses, which, in the past, often had been used against political activists, with loosely defined provisions barring "crimes endangering state security." Persons detained for counterrevolutionary offenses included labor activist Hu Shigen, Liberal Democratic Party member Kang Yuchun, and June 4, 1989, dissidents Yu Zhijian, Zhang Jingsheng, and Sun Xiongying. Several foreign governments urged the Government to review the cases of those charged before 1997 with counterrevolution, since the crime was no longer on the books, and to release those who had been jailed for nonviolent offenses under the old statute. Officials indicated that a case-by-case review of appeals filed by individual prisoners was possible under the law, and there was one known case of a successful appeal. However, the Government also indicated that it would neither initiate a comprehensive review of cases nor grant a general amnesty, arguing that there was no law on retroactive decriminalization and that the law against endangering state security covered the same crime. Approximately 1,300 persons remained in prison for the crime.
Amnesty International has identified 211 persons who remained imprisoned or on medical parole for their participation in the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations; other NGOs estimated that as many as 2,000 persons remained in prison for their actions at that time.
The Government released several political prisoners early, including Tibetans Ngawang Choephel, Jigme Sangpo, Ngawang Sangdrol, Tenzin Thubten, Ngawang Choekyi, Ngawang Choezom and Gyaltsen Drolkar, and China Democracy Party co-founder Xu Wenli. However, many others, including China Democracy Party co-founders Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin, Internet activists Yang Zili and Huang Qi, Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, journalist Jiang Weiping, labor activist Liu Jingsheng, political activist Han Chunsheng, Catholic Bishop Su Zhimin, house church leader Xu Guoxing, Tibetan nun Phuntsog Nyidrol, Uighur historian Tohti Tunyaz, and political dissident Yang Jianli remained imprisoned or under other forms of detention during the year. Political prisoners generally benefited from parole and sentence reduction at significantly lower rates than ordinary prisoners.
Criminal punishments could include "deprivation of political rights" for a fixed period after release from prison, during which the individual is denied the rights of free speech and association granted to other citizens. Former prisoners also sometimes found their status in society, ability to find employment, freedom to travel, and access to residence permits and social services severely restricted. Economic reforms and social changes have ameliorated these problems for nonpolitical prisoners in recent years. However, former political prisoners and their families frequently still were subjected to police surveillance, telephone wiretaps, searches, and other forms of harassment, and some encountered difficulty in obtaining or keeping employment and housing.
Officials confirmed that executed prisoners were among the sources of organs for transplant but maintained that consent was required from prisoners or their relatives in advance of the procedure. There was no national law governing organ donations, but a Ministry of Health directive explicitly states that buying and selling human organs and tissues is not allowed. There were no reliable statistics on how many organ transplants occurred each year using organs from executed prisoners, but according to press reports, hundreds of persons from other countries who were unable to obtain transplants at home travel to the country each year for organ transplants. Recipients reported paying for the transplants, and some reported that treatment could be terminated or delayed for a lack of funds or a delay in payment.
f. Arbitrary Interference With Privacy, Family, Home, Correspondence
The Constitution states that the "freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens are protected by law"; however, the authorities often did not respect the privacy of citizens in practice. Although the law requires warrants before law enforcement officials can search premises, this provision frequently was ignored; moreover, the Public Security Bureau and the Procuratorate could issue search warrants on their own authority. During the year, authorities monitored telephone conversations, facsimile transmissions, e-mail, and Internet communications. Authorities also opened and censored domestic and international mail. The security services routinely monitored and entered residences and offices to gain access to computers, telephones, and fax machines. Government security organs monitored and sometimes restricted contact between foreigners and citizens. All major hotels had a sizable internal security presence, and hotel rooms were sometimes searched for sensitive materials.
In urban areas, many persons depended on government-linked work units for housing, healthcare, approval to apply for a passport, and other aspects of ordinary life. However, the work unit and the neighborhood committee, which originally were charged with monitoring activities and attitudes, have become less important as means of social and political control, and government interference in daily personal and family life continued to decline for most citizens. In many areas, citizens still were required to apply for government permission before having a child, and the Government continued to restrict the number of births.
Some dissidents were under heavy surveillance and routinely had their telephone calls monitored. The authorities blocked some dissidents from meeting with foreigners during politically sensitive periods. Police in Beijing ordered several dissidents not to meet with Western journalists or foreign diplomats during the visits of high-level foreign officials. The authorities also confiscated money sent from abroad that was intended to help dissidents and their families.
Major political events and visits by high-ranking foreign officials routinely sparked round-ups of dissidents. For example, immediately before and after the 16th Party Congress in November, authorities detained a number of activists who had signed an open letter calling for political reform and a reappraisal of the official verdict on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre (see Section 1.d.).
Authorities also harassed relatives of dissidents and monitored their activities. Security personnel kept close watch on relatives of prominent dissidents, especially during sensitive periods. For example, security personnel followed the wife of Xu Wenli to meetings with Western reporters and diplomats on numerous occasions. Dissidents and their family members routinely were warned not to speak with the foreign press. Police sometimes detained the relatives of dissidents (see Section 2.a.).
Official poverty alleviation programs and major state projects, such as environmental and reforestation programs, have included forced relocation of persons to new residences. The Government estimated that by the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, at least 1.2 million people will have been relocated for this project alone.
The Government codified its comprehensive birth planning policies, which include coercive elements intended to limit births. The State Family Planning Commission (SFPC), with a staff of 400,000, enforces the law and formulates and implements policies with assistance from the Birth Planning Association, which had 83 million members working part-time at 1 million branches nationwide.
The new Population and Family Planning Law, the country's first formal law on this subject, entered into force on September 1. The law is intended to standardize the implementation of the Government's birth limitation policies. The law grants married couples the right to have a single child and allows eligible couples to apply for permission to have a second child if they meet conditions stipulated in local and provincial regulations. Many existing provincial regulations require women to wait 4 years or more after their first birth before making such an application. The law requires counties to use quotas or other measures to limit the total number of births in each county. The law further requires couples to employ birth control measures and, according to a 2001 SFPC survey, over half of the couples subject to this requirement did not choose their birth control method themselves. The law requires couples who have an unapproved child to pay a "social compensation fee" and grants preferential treatment to couples who abide by the birth limits. Although the law states that officials should not violate citizens' rights, neither those rights nor the penalties for violating them are defined. In contrast, the law provides significant and detailed sanctions for officials who help people evade the birth limitations.
The law delegates to the provinces the responsibility of drafting implementing regulations, including establishing a scale for assessment of social compensation fees, but State Council Decree 357 provides general principles to guide local authorities. This decree also requires birth planning officials to obtain court approval for taking "forcible" action, such as confiscation of property, against families that refuse to pay social compensation fees.
A strict one-child limit applied in the cities, except for couples meeting certain conditions (e.g., both parents are only children). In most rural areas (including towns of under 200,000 people), where almost two-thirds of citizens lived, the policy was often relaxed to a "1+1" limit, generally allowing only one child, but permitting a second if the first was a girl. Families whose first child is disabled also were allowed to have another child. In some other, generally poorer, rural areas, couples were permitted to have two children. Ethnic minorities, such as Muslim Uighurs and Tibetans, were subject to less stringent population controls; however, authorities increasingly pressured minorities to limit births to the same number as Han Chinese. In remote areas, limits generally were not enforced, except on government employees and party members.
Local officials, caught between pressures from superiors to show declining birth rates, and from local citizens to allow them to have more than one child, frequently made false reports. The SFPC estimated fertility at 1.8 births per woman, a figure roughly confirmed by the 2000 census, and claimed that the yearly growth rate of the population has dropped to less than 1 percent per year. However, many Chinese and international demographers estimated the fertility rate to be up to 2.0-2.3 births per woman.
Authorities continued to reduce the use of targets and quotas, although approximately 2,000 of the country's 2,800 counties continued to use such measures. Authorities using the target and quota system required each eligible married couple to obtain government permission before the woman becomes pregnant. Only a limited number of such permits were made available each year, so couples who did not receive a permit were required to wait at least a year before obtaining permission. Counties that did not employ targets and quotas allowed married women of legal child-bearing age to have a first child without prior permission.
The country's population control policy relied on education, propaganda, and economic incentives, as well as on more coercive measures such as the threat of job loss or demotion and social compensation fees. Psychological and economic pressure were very common; during unauthorized pregnancies, women sometimes were visited by birth planning workers who reminded the parents of their potential liability to pay the social compensation fees. The fees were assessed at widely varying levels and were generally extremely high, sometimes equaling several years' wages for an average worker. Additional disciplinary measures against those who violated the limited child policy by having an unapproved child or helping another to do so included the withholding of social services, higher tuition costs when the child goes to school, job loss or demotion, loss of promotion opportunity for 1 or more years, expulsion from the Party (membership in which was an unofficial requirement for certain jobs), and other administrative punishments, including in some cases the destruction of property. Government employees were particularly vulnerable to loss of employment when they had a child without permission. In many provinces, penalties for excess births in an area also can be levied against local officials and the mother's work unit, creating multiple sources of pressure. These Draconian penalties sometimes left expecting mothers with little choice but to undergo abortion or sterilization.
According to previously published local regulations in at least one province, women who do not qualify for a Family Planning Certificate that allows them to have a child must use an intrauterine device (IUD) or implant. The regulations further require that women who use an IUD undergo quarterly exams to ensure that it remains properly in place. Rewards for couples who adhere to birth limitation laws and policies include monthly stipends and preferential medical and educational benefits. In some counties, women of childbearing age were required periodically to undergo pregnancy tests. In the cases of families that already have two children, one of the parents is "encouraged" to undergo sterilization. According to a credible report, the number of couples undergoing sterilization procedures after giving birth to two children increased significantly in at least one province. In another province, rules state that "unplanned pregnancies must be aborted immediately."
At the same time, the Government maintained that due to economic development and other factors such as small houses, both parents working full-time, and high education expenses, couples in major urban centers often voluntarily limited their families to one child. There were indications in recent years that, due to the effectiveness of the one-child policy in urban areas, the Government was beginning to relax its policies in the cities.
The new Population and Family Planning Law delegates to the provinces the responsibility of implementing appropriate regulations to enforce the law. By year's end, several had amended their regulations. Anhui Province, for example, passed a law permitting 13 narrow categories of couples, including coal miners, some remarried divorcees, and some farm couples, to have a second child. The law does not require such amendments, however, unless existing regulations conflict with it. Existing regulations requiring sterilization in certain cases, or mandatory abortion, are not contradicted by the new law, which says simply that compliance with the birth limits should "mainly" be achieved through the use of contraception.
Central Government policy formally prohibits the use of physical coercion to compel persons to submit to abortion or sterilization. However, intense pressure to meet birth limitation targets set by government regulations has resulted in instances in which local birth planning officials reportedly have used physical coercion to meet government goals. Because it is illegal, the use of physical coercion was difficult to document, even for government authorities. Still, it was believed that some isolated incidences may persist, even as the frequency of such cases was believed to be declining. One documented case in 2000 resulted in the arrest and punishment of the involved officials.
Senior officials stated repeatedly that the Government "made it a principle to ban coercion at any level," and the SFPC has issued circulars nationwide prohibiting birth planning officials from coercing women to undergo abortions or sterilization against their will. However, the Government does not consider social compensation fees and other administrative punishments to be coercive. Under the State Compensation Law, citizens also may sue officials who exceed their authority in implementing birth planning policy, and in a few instances, individuals have exercised this right.
Corruption related to social compensation fees was a widespread problem. In response, State Council Decree 357 established during the year that collected "social compensation fees" must be submitted directly to the National Treasury, rather than retained by local birth planning authorities. During the year, SFPC officials reported that they responded to more than 10,000 complaints against local officials.
From 1998 through 2002, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) conducted a 4-year pilot project in 32 counties. Under this program, local birth planning officials emphasized education, improved reproductive health services, and economic development, and they dropped the target and quota systems for limiting births. The SFPC worked closely with the UNFPA to prepare informational materials and to provide training for officials and the general public in the project counties. However, these counties retained the birth limitation policy, including the requirement that couples employ effective birth control methods, and enforced it through other means, such as social compensation fees.
In order to delay childbearing, the Marriage Law sets the minimum age at marriage for women at 20 years, and for men at 22 years. Although it continued to be illegal in almost all provinces for a single woman to bear a child, during the year Jilin Province passed a law making it legal, within the limits of the birth limitation law, for an unmarried woman who "intends to remain single for life" to have a child.
Laws and regulations forbid the termination of pregnancies based on the sex of the fetus, but because of the intersection of birth limitations with the traditional preference for male children, particularly in rural areas, many families used ultrasound technology to identify female fetuses and terminate pregnancies (see Section 5). The use of ultrasound for this purpose is prohibited specifically by the Population Law and by the Maternal and Child Health Care Law, both of which mandate punishment of medical practitioners who violate the provision. According to the SFPC, a few doctors have been charged under these laws. However, enforcement of this provision has been rare. The most recent official figures, from November 2000, put the overall male to female birth ratio at 116.9 to 100 (as compared to the statistical norm of 106 to 100). For second births, the national ratio was 151.9 to 100. The skewed ratio was also thought in part to reflect underregistration of female children whose parents wished to avoid paying social compensation fees. Because the Maternal and Child Health Law mandates that medical facilities provide basic child health services, including immunization, to all children regardless of registration status, parents could delay registration of female children until it was necessary for enrollment in education programs. Such underregistration was common among rural parents, but parents often later were forced to pay the fee in order to give the children access to schooling and other social benefits.
The Maternal and Child Health Care Law requires premarital and prenatal examinations in part to determine whether couples have acute infectious diseases or certain mental illnesses (not including mental retardation) or are at risk for passing on debilitating genetic diseases. The law recommends abortion or sterilization in some cases. The law states that patients or their guardians must give written consent for such procedures, but lack of informed consent was a general problem in the practice of medicine in the country. There have been numerous cases in which informed consent cards have been forged or were not obtained in the administration of medical tests and medical trials. However, specific information was not available regarding the obtaining of informed consent for sterilization procedures. In practice, however, most regions of the country still did not have the medical capacity to determine accurately the likelihood of passing on debilitating genetic diseases.
As of 2001, the China Psychiatric Association no longer listed homosexuality as a mental illness. Many Chinese gays and lesbians saw the move as a sign of increased tolerance. Nonetheless, most gatherings of gays and lesbians still took place clandestinely.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The Constitution states that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental rights to be enjoyed by all citizens; however, the Government tightly restricted these rights in practice. The Government interpreted the Party's "leading role," as mandated in the preamble to the Constitution, as circumscribing these rights. The Government strictly regulated the establishment and management of publications. The Government did not permit citizens to publish or broadcast criticisms of senior leaders or opinions that directly challenge Communist Party rule. The Party and Government continued to control many and, on occasion, all print and broadcast media tightly and used them to propagate the current ideological line. All media employees were under explicit, public orders to follow CCP directives and "guide public opinion," as directed by political authorities. Both formal and informal guidelines continued to require journalists to avoid coverage of many politically sensitive topics. The State Security Law forbids journalists from divulging state secrets. These public orders, guidelines, and statutes greatly restricted the freedom of broadcast journalists and newspapers to report the news and led to a high degree of self-censorship. The Government continued an intense propaganda campaign against the Falun Gong.
Some dissidents remained active and continued to speak out, despite the Government's restrictions on freedom of speech. For instance, AIDS activist Wan Yanhai publicly continued to press the Government for more transparency in the fight against HIV/AIDS despite being detained by the authorities for 27 days in August and September. Labor lawyer Zhou Litai continued to draw attention to the plight of Chinese workers, despite harassment by local officials in Shenzhen. Members of the China Democracy Party continued to issue public statements calling for political reform and for President Jiang Zemin to step down. In March 114 relatives of victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, led by activist Ding Zilin, sent an open letter to the nearly 3,000 members of the NPC asking that the NPC's chairman, Li Peng, be put on trial for his role in the massacre.
Immediately before and after the 16th Party Congress in November, authorities rounded up a number of activists who had signed an open letter calling for political reform and a reappraisal of the official verdict on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. At year's end, a number of these persons remained in detention (see Section 1.d.).
However, the Government continued to threaten, arrest and imprison persons exercising free speech. In March Li Yanling, wife of imprisoned journalist Jiang Weiping, was detained by Dalian officials for having written a letter to President Jiang Zemin calling for her husband's release from prison. In August the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU) formally filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO) criticizing the detention of labor activist Di Tiangui. Di has been detained by Taiyuan police since June 1 for trying to set up an organization for retired workers.
Although there were a few privately owned print publications, all articles had to be vetted by the authorities before publication. There were no privately owned television or radio stations, and all programming had to be approved by the Government. Commercial program producers sought to expand the limits of broadcast content.
With the Government's consent and sometimes open support, the press published some stories related to citizens' rights, legal reform, official corruption, and official misconduct and gross abuses, particularly by law enforcement officials. For example, a number of newspapers, including the English-language China Daily, were very critical of an official letter issued in August by public security officials in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, claiming that anticorruption stories written by local newspaper reporters damaged the image of the police.
However, newspapers could not report on corruption without government and party approval, and publishers published such material at their own risk. In recent years, journalists and sometimes editors were harassed, detained, threatened, and even imprisoned for reporting on subjects that met with the Government's or local authorities' disapproval, including corruption. During the year, journalists and editors who exposed corruption scandals frequently faced problems with the authorities, and the Government continued to close down publications and punish journalists for printing material deemed too sensitive. On January 25, Jiang Weiping, formerly a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Bao newspaper and the official Xinhua news agency, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for "subverting state power." Jiang had written a series of articles exposing official corruption in Dalian, Shenyang, and Daqing. On March 24, Beijing photographer Yang Wei was assaulted by employees of a local company after they discovered he was working on a corruption story about the company. Local police released all suspects in the case. Also in March, the Guangzhou-based newspaper Southern Weekend was forced to stop its print run and remove a story critical of financial mismanagement at one of the country's top charities, Project Hope. In June Canadian journalist Jiang Xueqin was deported after covering labor unrest in Daqing. In December 2001, Wang Jinbo was sentenced to 4 years in prison for having e-mailed articles to overseas publications advocating a review of verdicts issued regarding the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre. In March the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) declared China "the world's leading jailer of journalists for the third year in a row," with 35 journalists imprisoned. As of year's end, CPJ reported that the total had risen to 36, including 14 Internet journalists.
Government restrictions on the press and the free flow of information continued to prevent accurate reporting on the spread of HIV/AIDS and the role of blood collection procedures in the spread of the disease in rural areas.
For several years, journalists openly have called for legislation granting press freedom protection. In May 2000, the legal affairs bureau of Anhui Province issued a regulation banning government departments from refusing press interviews.
The Government kept tight control over the foreign press during the year and continued efforts to prevent foreign media "interference" in internal affairs. The June 15 edition of the Economist was banned due to an editorial it ran entitled "Set China's Politics Free." Time Magazine was temporarily banned after an article appeared on the Falun Gong. In July BBC World Television was blocked for several weeks after it ran a report about the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
The publishing industry consists of three kinds of book businesses: Approximately 500 government-sanctioned publishing houses, smaller independent publishers that cooperate with official publishing houses to put out more daring publications, and an underground press. The government-approved publishing houses were the only organizations legally permitted to print books. The Government exerted control by issuing a limited number of publishing licenses, which were required for each edition of any book. A party member at each publishing house monitored the content of the house's publications and used the allocation of promotions, cars, travel, and other perks to encourage editors to exercise "proper" judgment about publications. Overt intervention by the State Publications Administration and Party Propaganda Bureau occurred strictly post-publication. Some independent publishers took advantage of a loophole in the law to sign contracts with government publishing houses to publish politically sensitive works. These works generally were not subjected to the same multilayered review process as official publications of the publishing houses.
Underground printing houses, which grew in number, have been targets of periodic campaigns to stop all illegal publications (including pornography and pirated computer software and audiovisual products). These campaigns had the effect of restricting the availability of politically sensitive books.
Formal censorship of written material came at the time of publication. Many intellectuals and scholars, anticipating that books or papers on political topics would be deemed too sensitive to be published, exercised self-censorship. In areas such as economic policy or legal reform, there was far greater official tolerance for comment and debate.
In March the Department of Cultural Affairs in Urumqi, Xinjiang, ordered the destruction of thousands of books on Uighur history and culture. Among the 330 titles were "A Brief History of the Huns and Ancient Uighur Literature," "Ancient Uighur Craftsmanship," and other books deemed "problematic." The books detailing and documenting Uighur history originally had been published with the approval of the authorities.
In September the Government launched a 2-month campaign to ban books that threatened the Party. Among the banned books was the best-selling "Villains Holding Sway," an indictment of corrupt officials; "I Have a Mother Like This," a sarcastic look at a matriarch so committed to the Party that she abandons her family; and "The Unequal Treatment of Nationals," focused on the widening wage gap between the country's urban and rural citizens. "A Tale of Migrants of the Big River" was banned because of its open discussion of social unrest among persons relocated by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.
Customs officials seized shipments of Bibles that were not authorized by the Government (see Section 2.c.).
The authorities continued to jam, with varying degrees of success, Chinese- and Tibetan-language broadcasts of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). English-language broadcasts on VOA generally were not jammed, unless they immediately followed Chinese-language broadcasts, in which case portions of the English-language broadcasts were sometimes jammed. Government jamming of RFA and BBC appeared to be more frequent and effective. In the absence of an independent press, overseas broadcasts such as VOA, BBC, RFA, and Radio France International had a large audience, including activists, ordinary citizens, and even government officials.
On January 1, a policy requiring foreign television outlets to use a government "rebroadcast platform" to distribute their channels reportedly went into effect. Some observers, including Human Rights Watch, expressed concern that this requirement heightened official censorship capabilities. In addition, universities, hotels, residences, and government institutions were reportedly required to reapply for access to foreign cable and satellite broadcasts.
In 2001 some government-owned local cable television networks began providing uncensored foreign news programming, including programs from CNN and European news services, to cable television customers for a fee. Prior to 2001, only major hotels and residence compounds for foreigners could legally show uncensored television news from outside of the country.
During the year, Falun Gong followers overrode television broadcasts several times to broadcast pro-FLG statements during regular programming. In September 15 persons were given sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years in prison for interfering with a cable television system in the northeastern city of Changchun in March. On December 30, the Intermediate People's Court in Xining sentenced four FLG adherents to up to 20 years in prison for tapping into cable television signals. The Government also reported several instances of individuals interfering with domestic broadcasts transmitted via satellite, replacing regular programming with pro-FLG material.
In January Zhang Yongning, producer of "Lan Yu," a motion picture filmed clandestinely in Beijing and centered on a homosexual love story set during the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, applied for approval from the Bureau of Film to show the film in the country. Although permission was denied, illegal DVD copies of "Lan Yu," like most other banned films, were readily available in major cities.
The Government continued to encourage expanded use of the Internet; however, it also took steps to increase monitoring of the Internet and continued to place restrictions on the information available. While only a very small percentage of the population accessed the Internet, use among intellectuals and opinion leaders was widespread and growing rapidly. According to a report released by the China Internet Network Information Center, the number of Internet users in the country grew by 75 percent during the year to 59.1 million.
During the year, a Harvard Law School report concluded that China had the most extensive Internet censorship in the world. According to the report, the Government blocked at least 19,000 sites during the 6-month study, and may have blocked as many as 50,000. Blocked sites included those of major foreign news organizations, health organizations, educational institutions, Taiwanese and Tibetan businesses and organizations, democracy activists, and religious and spiritual organizations. In September the Government blocked Google, a foreign-based search engine. After 2 weeks, during which the Government allegedly enhanced blocks on sensitive sites, access was restored. Altavista, another foreign-based search engine, was also blocked. The Government denied that it ever blocked the search engines. The authorities reportedly began to employ more sophisticated technology, such as "packet sniffers," enabling the selective blocking of specific content rather than entire Web sites in some cases. Such technology was also used to block e-mails containing sensitive content. The Government generally did not prosecute citizens who received dissident e-mail publications, but forwarding such messages to others sometimes did result in detention.
The Ministry of Information Industry regulated access to the Internet while the Ministries of Public and State Security monitored its use. Regulations prohibit a broad range of activities that authorities have interpreted as subversive or as slanderous to the state, including the dissemination of any information that might harm unification of the country or endanger national security. Promoting "evil cults" was banned, as was providing information that "disturbs social order or undermines social stability." Internet service providers were instructed to use only domestic media news postings, record information useful for tracking users and their viewing habits, install software capable of copying e-mails, and immediately end transmission of so-called subversive material. Many Internet service providers practiced extensive self-censorship to avoid transgressing the very broadly worded regulations. Another regulation requires Internet cafe patrons to register with "software managers" and produce a valid identification card to log on. The State Council also has promulgated a comprehensive list of prohibited Internet activities, including using the Internet to "incite the overthrow of the Government or the Socialist system" and "incite division of the country, harming national unification." In April the Ministry of Public Security announced a campaign to "clean up the Internet environment" before the 16th Party Congress.
During the year, authorities arrested dissidents for disseminating information through the Internet. In the most serious punishment yet for an Internet-related crime, Li Dawei, a former police officer from Gansu, was sentenced in July to 11 years in prison for downloading "reactionary" articles and maintaining contacts with foreigners. On September 14, Chen Shaowen was detained for subversion by local officials in Lianyuan, Hunan, for having posted almost 40 articles deemed "reactionary." On November 7, 22-year-old Beijing Normal University Student Liu Di was arrested after expressing views critical of the Government in an online essay. At year's end, according to the international NGOs Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, 14 persons were being held for publishing or distributing information online.
In March the Government began a "Public Pledge on Self Discipline for China's Internet Industry" drive. More than 300 companies signed up, including the popular Sina.com and Sohu.com, as well as foreign-based Yahoo!'s China division. Those who signed the pledge agreed not to spread information that "breaks laws or spreads superstition or obscenity." They also promised to refrain from "producing, posting, or disseminating pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability." In protest against the self-censorship pledge, a group of 18 dissidents published a "declaration of Internet users' rights" in July. The declaration called for complete freedom to surf the Internet, with restrictions placed only on sites with pornographic, slanderous, or violent content.
Provisional figures issued in March showed that the country had more than 200,000 Internet cafes. On June 16, a fire at an unlicensed Internet cafe in Beijing's university district killed 25 persons and injured 12. In response, authorities closed down more than 14,000 Internet cafes nationwide, 3,100 of them permanently, and in October issued more restrictive regulations governing the operation of such businesses. The new regulations limit hours of operation, allow authorities to view records of Internet use, and require identification card registration.
The Government did not fully respect academic freedom and continued to impose ideological controls on political discourse at colleges, universities, and research institutes. Scholars and researchers reported varying degrees of control regarding the issues that they could examine and the conclusions that they could draw. On January 29, Xu Zerong, a scholar who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Korean War, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for "illegally providing state secrets" by sending confidential reference materials on the Korean War to a contact in Hong Kong.
The Government continued to use political attitudes as criteria for selecting persons for government-sponsored study abroad but did not impose such restrictions on privately sponsored students, who constituted the majority of students studying abroad.
Researchers residing abroad also have been subject to sanctions from the authorities when their work did not meet with official approval. Other foreign-resident Chinese scholars were detained in previous years.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
The Constitution provides for freedom of peaceful assembly; however, the Government severely restricted this right in practice. The Constitution stipulates that such activities may not challenge "Party leadership" or infringe upon the "interests of the State." Protests against the political system or national leaders were prohibited. Authorities denied permits and quickly moved to suppress demonstrations involving expression of dissenting political views.
At times police used excessive force against demonstrators. Demonstrations with political or social themes were often broken up quickly and violently. The most widely publicized demonstrations in recent years were those of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The Government continued to wage a severe political, propaganda, and police campaign against the FLG movement during the year. Since the Government banned the FLG in 1999, mere belief in the discipline, without any outward manifestation of its tenets, has been sufficient grounds for practitioners to receive punishments ranging from loss of employment to imprisonment, and in many cases, to suffer torture and death. Several hundred practitioners have been tried and convicted of crimes, including that of "using a heretical cult to disturb social order," which was established in the 1999 anticult legislation. However, the great majority of practitioners were punished without a trial, primarily in the reeducation-through-labor system. Many thousands of persons have been detained in reeducation-through-labor and custody and repatriation camps; others have been confined to psychiatric hospitals. In 2001 facilities were established specifically to "rehabilitate" practitioners who refused to recant their belief voluntarily (see Section 2.c.).
The tactic used most frequently by the central Government against the FLG, however, has been to make local officials, family members, and employers of known practitioners responsible for preventing FLG activities by their family members or associates. In many cases, practitioners were subject to close scrutiny by local security personnel and their personal mobility was tightly restricted, particularly at times when the Government believed public protests were likely.
The number of protests by individuals or small groups of FLG practitioners at Tiananmen Square remained very low during the year. Some observers attributed this to the effectiveness of the sustained government crackdown, which by the end of 2001 had essentially eliminated public manifestations of the movement. Authorities also briefly detained foreign practitioners who attempted to unfurl banners on Tiananmen Square or pass out leaflets, in most cases deporting them after a few hours.
In many cases, the authorities dealt with demonstrations about economic issues more leniently than with those that addressed political issues, but some economic demonstrations were dispersed by force. During the year, Ministry of Public Security publications indicated that the number of demonstrations was growing and that protesters were becoming more organized. According to the most recently available MPS report, in 1999 more than 100,000 demonstrations took place, up from 60,000 in 1998. Some of these demonstrations included thousands of participants.
On February 21, during President Bush's visit to Beijing, MPS officials detained 47 Christians, who managed an elder care facility in a Beijing suburb, for holding an illegal gathering. The leader of the group, Chen Zhongxin, and his followers were released after the President left the country.
In March, over several weeks, tens of thousands of workers in Liaoyang and Fushun, Liaoning Province, and Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, protested against nonpayment of back wages, loss of benefits, and inadequate severance pay. Many alleged that managers and local government officials had stolen funds earmarked for plant modernization and pension plans. Police detained four leaders of the protests--Yao Fuxin, Pang Qingxiang, Xiao Yunliang, and Wang Zhaoming--without charge. Their families had serious difficulties finding defense attorneys. After 9 months, Pang Qingxiang and Wang Zhaoming were released on probation but barred from meeting with other laid-off workers. On December 31, Wang Zhaoming was detained again after he hired a lawyer to sue the police over his 9 months of detention. Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang were charged with subversion for political activities they allegedly had engaged in several years before the labor protests occurred.
The Constitution provides for freedom of association; however, the Government restricted this right in practice. Communist Party policy and government regulations require that all professional, social, and economic organizations officially register with, and be approved by, the Government. Ostensibly aimed at restricting secret societies and criminal gangs, these regulations also prevent the formation of truly autonomous political, human rights, religious, environmental, labor, and youth organizations that might directly challenge government authority. Since 1999, all concerts, sports events, exercise classes, or other meetings of more than 200 persons required approval from Public Security authorities.
There were no laws or regulations that specifically governed the formation of political parties. The Government moved decisively, using detentions and prison terms, to suppress the China Democracy Party, which activists around the country have tried since 1998 to organize into the country's first opposition political party.
According to government statistics, at the end of 2001, there were 129,000 social organizations, including 1,687 national- level and cross-provincial organizations, 19,540 provincial organizations, and 50,633 local and county-level organizations registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. There were 82,000 private, nonprofit corporations registered. Experts estimated that there were at least 1 million, and perhaps as many as 2 million, unregistered NGOs. Although these organizations all came under some degree of government control, they were able to develop their own agendas. Some had support from foreign secular and religious NGOs. Some were able to undertake limited advocacy roles in such public interest areas as women's issues, the environment, health, and consumer rights. To register, NGOs were required to obtain an organizational sponsor, typically a government agency carrying out work in a similar subject area. In addition, local-level NGOs must have an official office and at least $3,600 (RMB 30,000) in funds, and national-level groups must have at least $12,000 (RMB 100,000). Applications must be vetted by the Government, which has 2 months in which to grant approval. Once established, groups were required to submit to regular oversight by both the organizational sponsor and the Ministry of Civil Affairs. NGOs must not violate the "four cardinal principles" by advocating nonparty rule, "damage national unity," or "upset ethnic harmony." Groups that disobeyed guidelines and unregistered groups that continued to operate could face administrative punishment or criminal charges. It was difficult to estimate how many groups may have been discouraged from organizing NGOs because of these regulations. However, preexisting groups reported little or no additional interference by the Government since the regulations came into effect in 1998.
In April the Central Government allowed an international NGO to establish branches and recruit members in the country. Lions Clubs International was allowed to officially establish two chapters, one in Shenzhen city and a second in Guangdong Province.
c. Freedom of Religion
The Constitution provides for freedom of religious belief and the freedom not to believe; however, the Government sought to restrict religious practice to government-sanctioned organizations and registered places of worship and to control the growth and scope of the activity of religious groups. There are five officially recognized religions--Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism. A government-affiliated association monitored and supervised the activities of each of the five faiths. Membership in religions was growing rapidly; however, while the Government generally did not seek to suppress this growth outright, it tried to control and regulate religious groups to prevent the rise of groups or sources of authority outside the control of the Government and the Communist Party.
Overall, government respect for religious freedom remained poor, and crackdowns against unregistered groups, including underground Protestant and Catholic groups, Muslim Uighurs, and Tibetan Buddhists continued. The Government continued its repression of groups that it determined to be "cults" and of the Falun Gong in particular. Various sources reported that thousands of FLG adherents have been arrested, detained, and imprisoned, and that several hundred or more FLG adherents have died in detention since 1999; many of their bodies reportedly bore signs of severe beatings or torture or were cremated before relatives could examine them. The atmosphere created by the nationwide campaign against the FLG reportedly had a spillover effect on unregistered churches, temples, and mosques in many parts of the country.
All religious groups and spiritual movements were required to register with the State Council's Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB), which was responsible for monitoring and judging the legitimacy of religious activity. The RAB and the CCP's United Front Work Department (UFWD) provided policy "guidance and supervision" over implementation of government regulations on religious activity. The Government continued and in some areas intensified a national campaign to enforce the State Council and provincial regulations that require all places of religious activity to register with the RAB or to come under the supervision of official "patriotic" religious organizations. Some groups registered voluntarily, some registered under pressure, some avoided officials in an attempt to avoid registration, and authorities refused to register others. Some unofficial groups reported that authorities refused them registration without explanation. The Government contended that these refusals were mainly the result of failure to meet requirements concerning facilities and meeting spaces. Many religious groups were reluctant to comply with the regulations out of principled opposition to state control of religion or due to fear of adverse consequences if they revealed, as required, the names and addresses of church leaders and members. In some areas, efforts to register unauthorized groups were carried out by religious leaders and civil affairs officials. In other regions, police and RAB officials performed registration procedures concurrently with other law enforcement actions. Police closed scores of "underground" mosques, temples, seminaries, Catholic churches, and Protestant "house churches," including many with significant memberships, properties, financial resources, and networks.
Leaders of unauthorized groups were sometimes the targets of harassment, interrogations, detention, and physical abuse. Authorities particularly targeted unofficial religious groups in Beijing and the provinces of Henan, Shandong, and Guangxi, where there were rapidly growing numbers of unregistered Protestants, and in Hebei, a center of unregistered Catholics. For example, police arrested more than 20 Christians gathered in the Shanghai home of house church leader Xu Guoxing for a worship service on December 8. All were eventually released except Xu, who was sentenced, without trial, to 18 months of reeducation-through-labor.
However, many small "family churches," generally made up of family members and friends, that conducted activities similar to those of home Bible study groups, usually were tolerated by the authorities as long as they remained small and unobtrusive. Family churches reportedly encountered difficulties when their memberships became too large, when they arranged for the use of facilities for the specific purpose of conducting religious activities, or when they forged links with other unregistered groups.
In some areas, harassment of churches by local RAB officials was attributed, at least in part, to financial issues. For example, although regulations require local authorities to provide land to church groups, some local officials tried to avoid doing so by denying registration. Official churches also sometimes faced harassment when local authorities wished to acquire the land on which a church was located. In addition to refusing to register churches, there also were reports that RAB officials have pressed for "donations" from churches in their jurisdictions as a means of raising extra revenue.
In certain areas in the southeast, government supervision of religious activity was minimal, and registered and unregistered churches were treated similarly by authorities, existing openly side by side. Coexistence and cooperation between official and unofficial churches in such areas, both Catholic and Protestant, was close enough to blur the line between the two. In those areas, many congregants worshiped in both types of churches.
Authorities also have destroyed or seized unregistered places of worship. Early in the year, according to the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, a small Taoist temple in a central residential area of that city was demolished by a squad of 90 policemen. The temple, which had escaped official notice for 20 years, was branded a "center of superstitious activity." In April police demolished a partially constructed Catholic Church in Xiao Zhao village, Hebei Province, for not having a proper building permit.
However, the Government continued to restore or rebuild some churches, temples, mosques, and monasteries damaged or destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and allowed the reopening of some seminaries during the year, although implementation of restoration activity varied from locality to locality. Nonetheless, there were far fewer temples, churches, and mosques than existed 50 years ago, despite the recent increase in number of religious believers. Christian leaders in several parts of the country reported that local officials have been reluctant to return Church property that was confiscated before the 1949 Communist revolution. The difficulty in registering new places of worship led to serious overcrowding in existing places of worship in some areas. Some observers cited the lack of adequate meeting space in registered churches to explain the rapid rise in attendance at house churches and "underground" churches.
In December 2001, all seven members of the Politburo attended a Party Work Conference on religion. President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji gave speeches praising the social work being done by numerous religious institutions and urged "mainstream" religious groups that were underground to register with the RAB. At the same time, the leaders called for stepped-up measures to eliminate "nonmainstream" religious groups.
Some Protestant house church groups reported that after the December 2001 State Council Work Conference on Religion, police raids on worship services increased, resulting in greater numbers of detentions. On February 5, Huang Aiping, Li Wulong, and Ji Qingjun were sentenced to 7 years in prison for "using a cult organization to violate the law" in Xiamen, Fujian Province. The three were members of the Blood and Water Holy Spirit Full Gospel Preaching Team, which was founded in Taiwan and was banned on the mainland in 1996 as an "illegal infiltration organization." In December 2001, Gong Shengliang, founder of the South China Church, was sentenced to death on a wide range of criminal charges, including rape, arson and assault. His niece, Li Ying, was sentenced to death with a 2-year reprieve. In September an appeals court overturned the death sentences, and in October Gong was sentenced to life in prison and Li to 15 years. In the retrial, the court dropped all "evil cult" charges against the members of the South China Church. Other church members, Xu Fuming and Hu Yong, received life sentences. Four members of the congregation, Li Yingping, Meng Xicun, Xiang Fengping, and Liu Xianzhi, claimed that they were tortured by police until they agreed to sign accusations claiming they had been raped by Gong. The four women, found not guilty in the retrial, were immediately detained after the trial and sent to reeducation-through-labor camps.
The law does not prohibit religious believers from holding public office; however, most influential positions in government were reserved for party members, and party officials stated that party membership and religious belief are incompatible. This had a disproportionate effect in such areas as Xinjiang and Tibet, where the minority populations are adherents of Islam or Buddhism. Party membership also was required for almost all high-level positions in government and in state-owned businesses and organizations. The Party reportedly issued circulars ordering party members not to adhere to religious beliefs, and reminding cadres that religion is incompatible with party membership, a theme reflected in authoritative media. The Routine Service Regulations of the People's Liberation Army state explicitly that servicemen "may not take part in religious or superstitious activities." Party and PLA personnel have been expelled for adhering to Falun Gong beliefs.
Despite official regulations encouraging officials to be atheists, in some localities as many as 20 to 25 percent of party officials engaged in some kind of religious activity. Most of these officials practiced Buddhism or a folk religion. Religious figures, who were not members of the CCP, were included in national and local government organizations, usually to represent their constituency on cultural and educational matters. The NPC included several religious leaders, including Pagbalha Geleg Namgyai, a Tibetan reincarnated lama who was a vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC. Religious groups also were represented in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a forum for "multiparty" cooperation and consultation led by the CCP, which advises the Government on policy.
The authorities permitted officially sanctioned religious organizations to maintain international contacts that did not involve "foreign control." What constitutes "control" was not defined. Regulations enacted in 1994, and expanded in September 2000, codified many existing rules involving foreigners, including a ban on proselytizing by foreigners. For the most part, authorities allowed foreign nationals to preach to foreigners in approved, registered places of worship, bring in religious materials for personal use, and preach to citizens at churches, mosques, and temples at the invitation of registered religious organizations. Collective religious activities of foreigners also were required to take place at officially registered places of worship or approved temporary locations. Foreigners legally were barred from conducting missionary activities, but foreign Christians teaching English and other subjects on college campuses openly professed their faith with minimum interference from authorities as long as their proselytizing was low key. Many Christian groups throughout the country have developed close ties with local officials, in some cases running schools to help educate children who otherwise would receive a substandard education and operating homes for the care of the aged. Likewise, Buddhist-run private schools and orphanages in the central part of the country not only educated children but also offered vocational training courses to teenagers and young adults.
Official religious organizations administered local religious schools, seminaries, and institutes to train priests, ministers, imams, Islamic scholars, and Buddhist monks. Students who attended these institutes had to demonstrate "political reliability," and all graduates must pass an examination on their theological and political knowledge to qualify for the clergy. The Government permitted limited numbers of Catholic and Protestant seminarians, Muslim clerics, and Buddhist clergy to go abroad for additional religious studies. In most cases, funding for these training programs was provided by foreign organizations. Both official and unofficial Christian churches had problems training adequate numbers of clergy to meet the needs of their growing congregations. Since no priests or other clergy in the official churches were ordained between 1955 and 1985, the shortfall was most severe for persons between the ages of 40 and 70. Due to government prohibitions, unofficial churches had particularly significant problems training clergy or sending students to study overseas, and many clergy received only limited and inadequate preparation. Members of the underground Catholic Church, especially clergy wishing to further their studies abroad, found it difficult to obtain passports and other necessary travel documents (see Section 2.d.). In 2001 RAB officials started to interview candidates for ordination to the Catholic priesthood in Shenyang. Some Catholic clerics also complained that they were forced to bribe local RAB officials before being allowed to enter seminaries.
Traditional folk religions have been revived in recent years and were widespread. They were tolerated to varying degrees, often seen as loose affiliates of Taoism or as ethnic minority cultural practices. However, at the same time, folk religions have been labeled as "feudal superstition" and sometimes were repressed because their resurgence was seen as a threat to party control. Local authorities have destroyed thousands of shrines.
Buddhists made up the largest body of organized religious believers. Tibetan Buddhists in some areas outside of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) had growing freedom to practice their faith. Diplomats have seen pictures of a number of Tibetan religious figures, including the Dalai Lama, openly displayed in parts of Sichuan, Qinghai, and Gansu Provinces. Likewise, abbots and monks in those predominantly Tibetan areas outside the TAR reported they had greater freedom to worship and conduct religious training than their coreligionists within the TAR. However, restrictions remained, especially at monasteries with close ties to foreign organizations. Some monks who studied abroad were prevented from returning to their home monasteries. (A discussion of government restrictions on Tibetan Buddhism in the TAR can be found in the Tibet Addendum.)
During Tibetan New Year in February, a monk in Aba City in Sichuan Province was arrested for passing out pictures of the Dalai Lama, posting pro-democracy leaflets, and distributing information on China's human rights violations. The materials notably did not advocate Tibetan independence. Following the arrest, authorities tightened security and further restricted travel to the area. In October in Ganzi city, also in Sichuan Province, more than 10 persons were arrested in connection with foreign-sponsored long-life ceremonies for the Dalai Lama that had been held earlier in the year, and hundreds of PLA troops were stationed in the area. At least five of those arrested were sentenced to 2 to 3 years of reeducation-through-labor.
In 2001 the Government expelled thousands of Tibetan nuns, monks, and students from the Serthar Tibetan Buddhist Institute (also known as the Larung Gar Monastic encampment) located in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province. The Government maintained that the facility, which housed the largest concentration of monks and nuns in the country, was reduced in size for sanitation and hygiene reasons. Authorities demolished hundreds of residential structures. Foreign observers believed that the authorities moved against the Institute because of its size and the influence of its charismatic founder, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok. After a year's absence, during which time he underwent medical treatment, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok was allowed to return to Serthar in July. Thousands of monks and nuns also returned.
In the past, official tolerance for religions considered traditionally Chinese, such as Buddhism and Taoism, was greater than that for Christianity. However, as these non-Western faiths have grown rapidly in recent years, there were signs of greater government concern and new restrictions, especially on syncretic sects.
Regulations restricti |
