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Preface
It has been a
long-cherished ideal of mankind to enjoy human rights in the
full sense of the term. Since this great term -- human
rights -- was coined centuries ago, people of all nations
have achieved great results in their unremitting struggle
for human rights. However, on a global scale, modern society
has fallen far short of the lofty goal of securing the full
range of human rights for people the world over. And this is
why numerous people with lofty ideals are still working
determinedly for this cause.
Under long years of oppression by the
"three big mountains" -- imperialism, feudalism and
bureaucrat-capitalism -- people in old China did not have
any human rights to speak of. Suffering bitterly from this,
the Chinese people fought for more than a century, defying
death and personal sacrifices and advancing wave upon wave,
in an arduous struggle to overthrow the "three big
mountains" and gain their human rights. The situation in
respect to human rights in China took a basic turn for the
better after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Greatly treasuring this hard-won achievement, the Chinese
government and people have spared no effort to safeguard
human rights and steadily improve their human rights
situation, and have achieved remarkable results. This has
won full confirmation and fair appraisal from all people who
have a real understanding of Chinese conditions and who are
not prejudiced.
The issue of human rights has become one
of great significance and common concern in the world
community. The series of declarations and conventions
adopted by the United Nations have won the support and
respect of many countries. The Chinese government has also
highly appraised the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
considering it the first international human rights document
that has laid the foundation for the practice of human
rights in the world arena. However, the evolution of the
situation in regard to human rights is circumscribed by the
historical, social, economic and cultural conditions of
various nations, and involves a process of historical
development. Owing to tremendous differences in historical
background, social system, cultural tradition and economic
development, countries differ in their understanding and
practice of human rights. From their different situations,
they have taken different attitudes towards the relevant UN
conventions. Despite its international aspect, the issue of
human rights falls by and large within the sovereignty of
each country. Therefore, a country's human rights situation
should not be judged in total disregard of its history and
national conditions, nor can it be evaluated according to a
preconceived model or the conditions of another country or
region. Such is the practical attitude, the attitude of
seeking truth from facts.
From their own historical conditions, the
realities of their own country and their long practical
experience, the Chinese people have derived their own
viewpoints on the human rights issue and formulated relevant
laws and policies. It is stipulated in the Constitution of
the People's Republic of China that all power in the
People's Republic of China belongs to the people. Chinese
human rights have three salient characteristics. First,
extensiveness. It is not a minority of the people or part of
a class or social stratum but the entire Chinese citizenry
who constitutes the subject enjoying human rights. The human
rights enjoyed by the Chinese citizenry encompass an
extensive scope, including not only survival, personal and
political rights, but also economic, cultural and social
rights. The state pays full attention to safeguarding both
individual and collectivrights. Second, equality. China has
adopted the socialist system after abolishing the system of
exploitation and eliminating the exploiting classes. The
Chinese citizenry enjoys all civic rights equally
irrespective of the money and property status as well as of
nationality, race, sex, occupation, family background,
religion, level of education and duration of residence.
Third, authenticity. The state provides guarantees in terms
of system, laws and material means for the realization of
human rights. The various civic rights prescribed in the
Constitution and other state laws are in accord with what
people enjoy in real life. China's human rights legislation
and policies are endorsed and supported by the people of all
nationalities and social strata and by all the political
parties, social organizations and all walks of life.
As a developing country, China has
suffered from setbacks while safeguarding and developing
human rights. Although much has been achieved in this
regard, there is still much room for improvement. It remains
a long-term historical task for the Chinese people and
government to continue to promote human rights and strive
for the noble goal of full implementation of human rights as
required by China's socialism.
In order to help the international
community understand the human rights situation as it is in
China, we present the following brief account of China's
basic position on and practice of human rights.
I. The
Right to Subsistence--The Foremost Human Right The Chinese
People Long Fight for
It is a simple truth that, for any country
or nation, the right to subsistence is the most important of
all human rights, without which the other rights are out of
the question. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
affirms that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the
security of person. In old China, aggression by imperialism
and oppression by feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism
deprived the people of all guarantee for their lives, and an
uncountable number of them perished in war and famine. To
solve their human rights problems, the first thing for the
Chinese people to do is, for historical reasons, to secure
the right to subsistence.
Without national independence, there would
be no guarantee for the people's lives. When imperialist
aggression became the major threat to their lives, the
Chinese people had to win national independence before they
could gain the right to subsistence. After the Opium War of
1840, China, hitherto a big feudal kingdom, was gradually
turned into a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country. During the
110 years from 1840 to 1949, the British, French, Japanese,
US and Russian imperialist powers waged hundreds of wars on
varying scales against China, causing immeasurable losses to
the lives and property of the Chinese people.
-- The imperialists massacred Chinese
people in untold numbers during their aggressive wars. In
1900, the troops of the Eight Allied Powers -- Germany,
Japan, Britain, Russia, France, the United States, Italy and
Austria -- killed, burned and looted, razing Tanggu, a town
of 50,000 residents, to utter ruins, reducing Tianjin's
population from one million to 100,000, killing countless
people when they entered Beijing, where more than 1,700 were
slaughtered at Zhuangwangfu alone. During Japan's full-scale
invasion of China which began in 1937, more than 21 million
people were killed or wounded and 10 million people
mutilated to death. In the six weeks beginning from December
13, 1937, the Japanese invaders killed 300,000 people in
Nanjing.
-- The imperialists sold, maltreated and
caused the death of numerous Chinese laborers, plunging
countless people in old China into an abyss of misery.
According to incomplete statistics, more than 12 million
indentured Chinese laborers were sold to various parts of
the world from the mid-19th century through the 1920s.
Coaxed and abducted, these laborers were thrown into
lockups, known as "pigsties," where they were branded with
the names of their would-be destinations. During the 1852-58
period, 40,000 people were put in such "pigsties" in Shantou
alone, and more than 8,000 of them were done to death there.
Equally horrifying was the death toll of ill-treated
laborers in factories and mines run by imperialists across
China. During the Japanese occupation, no less than 2
million laborers perished from maltreatment and exhaustion
in Northeast China. Once the laborers died, their remains
were thrown into mountain gullies or pits dug into bare
hillsides. So far more than 80 such massive pits have been
found, with over 700,000 skeletons of the victims in them.
-- Under the imperialists' colonial rule,
the Chinese people had their fill of humiliation and there
was no personal dignity to speak of. The foreign aggressors
enjoyed "extraterritoriality" in those days. On December 24,
1946 Peking University student Shen Chong was raped by
William Pierson, an American GI, but, to the great
indignation of the Chinese people, the criminal, handled
unilaterally by the American side, was acquitted and
released. Imperialist powers exercised administrative,
legislative, judicial, police and financial powers in the
"concessions" they had set up in China, turning them into
"states within a state" that were thoroughly independent of
the Chinese administrative and legal systems. In 1885,
foreign aggressors put up a signboard at the entrance of a
park in the French concession; in a blatant insult to the
Chinese people, it read, "Chinese and dogs not admitted."
-- Forcing more than 1,100 unequal
treaties on China, the imperialists plundered Chinese wealth
on a large scale. Statistics show that, by way of these
unequal treaties, the foreign aggressors made away with more
than 100 billion taels of silver as war indemnities and
other payments in the past century. Through the Sino-British
Treaty of Nanking, the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki,
the International Protocol of 1901 and five other such
treaties alone, 1,953 million taels of silver in indemnity
were extorted, 16 times the 1901 revenue of the Qing
government. The Treaty of Shimonoseki alone earned Japan 230
million taels of silver in extortion money, about four and a
half times its annual national revenue. The losses resulting
from the destruction and looting by the invaders in wars
against China were even more incalculable. During Japan's
full-scale war of aggression against China (1937-45), 930
Chinese cities were occupied, causing US$62 billion in
direct losses and US$500 billion in indirect losses. With
their state sovereignty impaired and their social wealth
plundered or destroyed, the Chinese people were deprived of
the basic conditions for survival.
In face of the crumbling state sovereignty
and the calamities wrought upon their lives, for over a
century the Chinese people fought the foreign aggressors in
an indomitable struggle for national salvation and
independence. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the
Boxers Movement and the Revolution of 1911 which overthrew
the Qing Dynasty broke out during this period. These
revolutionary movements dealt heavy blows to imperialist
influences in China, but they failed to deliver the nation
from semi-colonialism. A fundamental change took place only
after the Chinese people, under the leadership of the
Chinese Communist Party, overthrew the Kuomintang
reactionary rule and founded the People's Republic of China.
After its birth in 1921, the Communist Party of China set
the clear-cut goal in its political program to "overthrow
the oppression by international imperialism and achieve the
complete independence of the Chinese nation" and to
"overthrow the warlords and unite China into a real
democratic republic"; it led the people in an arduous
struggle culminating in victory in the national democratic
revolution.
The founding of the People's Republic of
China eradicated the forces of imperialism, feudalism and
bureaucrat-capitalism in the Chinese mainland, put an end to
the nation's history of dismemberment, oppression and
humiliation at the hands of alien powers for well over a
century and to long years of turbulence characterized by
incessant war and social disunity, and realized the people's
cherished dream of national independence and unification.
The Chinese nation, which makes up one-fourth of the world's
population, is no longer one that the aggressors could kill
and insult at will. The Chinese people have stood up as the
masters of their own country; for the first time they have
won real human dignity and the respect of the whole world.
The Chinese people have won the basic guarantee for their
life and security.
National independence has protected the
Chinese people from being trodden under the heels of foreign
invaders. However, the problem of the people's right to
subsistence can be truly solved only when their basic means
of livelihood are guaranteed.
To eat their fill and dress warmly were
the fundamental demand of the Chinese people who had long
suffered cold and hunger. Far from meeting this demand,
successive regimes in old China brought even more disasters
to the people. In those days, landlords and rich peasants
who accounted for 10 percent of the rural population held 70
percent of the land, while the poor peasants and farm
laborers who accounted for 70 percent of the rural
population owned only 10 percent of the land. The
bureaucrat-comprador bourgeoisie who accounted for only a
small fraction of the population monopolized 80 percent of
the industrial capital and controlled the economic lifelines
of the country. The Chinese people were repeatedly exploited
by land rent, taxes, usury and industrial and commercial
capital. The exploitation and poverty they suffered were of
a degree rarely seen in other parts of the world. According
to 1932 statistics, the Chinese peasants were subjected to
1,656 kinds of exorbitant taxes and levies, which took away
60-90 percent of their harvests. The people's miseries were
exacerbated and their lives made all the harsher by the
reactionary governments who, politically corrupt and
impotent, surrendered China's sovereign rights under
humiliating terms and served as tools of foreign imperialist
rule, and by the separatist regime of warlords who were
embroiled in endless wars. It was estimated that 80 percent
of the populace in old China suffered to varying degrees of
starvation and tens of thousands -- hundreds of thousands in
some cases -- died of it every year. A major natural
disaster invariably left the land strewn with corpses of
hunger victims. More than 3.7 million lives were lost when
floods hit east China in 1931. In 1943, a crop failure in
Henan Province took the lives of 3 million people and left
15 million subsisting on grass and bark and struggling on
the verge of death. After the victory of the War of
Resistance Against Japan, the reactionary Kuomintang
government launched a civil war, fed on the flesh and blood
of the people and caused total economic collapse. In 1946,
10 million people died of hunger countrywide. In 1947, 100
million, or 22 percent of the national population then, were
under the constant threat of hunger.
Ever since the founding of the People's
Republic of China in 1949, the Communist Party of China and
the Chinese government have always placed the task of
helping the people get enough to wear and eat on the top of
the agenda. For the first three years of the People's
Republic, the Chinese people, led by their government,
concentrated their efforts on healing the wounds of war and
quickly restored the national economy to the record level in
history. On this basis, China lost no time to complete the
socialist transformation of agriculture, handicraft industry
and capitalist industry and commerce, thus uprooting the
system of exploitation, instituting the system of socialism
and, for the first time in history, turning the people into
masters of the means of production and beneficiaries of
social wealth. This fired the people with soaring enthusiasm
for building a new China and a new life, emancipated the
social productive forces and set the economy on the track of
unprecedented growth. Since 1979, China has switched the
focus of its work to economic construction, begun reform and
opening to the outside world, and set the goal of building
socialism with Chinese characteristics. This has further
expanded the social productive forces and enabled the nation
to basically solve the problem of feeding and clothing its
1.1 billion people.
Tilling 7 percent of the world's total
cultivated land -- averaging only 1.3 mu (one mu equals
one-fifteenth of one hectare) per capita as against 12.16 mu
in the United States and the world's average of 4.52 mu --
China has nevertheless succeeded in feeding a population
that makes up 22 percent of the world's total. Contrary to
some Western politicians' prediction that no Chinese
government could solve the problem of feeding its people,
socialist China has done it by its own efforts. The past
40-odd years have witnessed a marked increase in the average
annual per-capita consumption of major consumer goods
despite a yearly average population increase of 14 million.
A survey shows that the daily caloric intake of food per
resident in China was 2,270 in 1952, 2,311 in 1978 and 2,630
in 1990, approaching the world's average.
The life-span of the Chinese people has
lengthened and their health improved considerably. According
to statistics, the population's average life expectancy
increased from 35 years before liberation to 70 years in
1988, higher than the average level in the world's
medium-income countries, while the death rate dropped from
33 per thousand before liberation to 6.67 per thousand in
1990, which was one of the lowest death rates in the world.
China's 1987 infant mortality of 31 per thousand approached
the level of high-income countries. The health of the
Chinese people, especially the physical development of
youngsters, has greatly improved as compared with the
situation in old China. An average 15-year-old boy in 1979
was 1.8 centimeters taller and 2.1 kilograms heavier than
his counterparts living during the 1937-41 period; and an
average girl of the same age in 1979 was 1.3 centimeters
taller and 1 kilogram heavier. Since 1979, the health of the
Chinese people has improved further. The label on old China,
"sick man of East Asia," has long been consigned to the
dustbin of history.
The problem of food and clothing having
been basically solved, the people have been guaranteed with
the basic right to subsistence. This is a historical
achievement made by the Chinese people and government in
seeking and protecting human rights.
However, to protect the people's right to
subsistence and improve their living conditions remains an
issue of paramount importance in China today. China has
gained independence, but it is still a developing country
with limited national strength. The preservation of national
independence and state sovereignty and the freedom from
imperialist subjugation are, therefore, the very fundamental
conditions for the survival and development of the Chinese
people. Although China has basically solved the problem of
food and clothing, its economy is still at a fairly low
level, its standard of living falls considerably short of
that in developed countries, and the pressure of a huge
population and relative per-capita paucity of resources will
continue to restrict the socio-economic development and the
improvement of the people's lives. The people's right to
subsistence will still be threatened in the event of a
social turmoil or other disasters. Therefore it is the
fundamental wish and demand of the Chinese people and a
long-term, urgent task of the Chinese government to maintain
national stability, concentrate their effort on developing
the productive forces along the line which has proven to be
successful, persist in reform and opening to the outside
world, strive to rejuvenate the national economy and boost
the national strength, and, on the basis of having solved
the problem of food and clothing, secure a well-off
livelihood for the people throughout the country so that
their right to subsistence will no longer be threatened.
II. The
Chinese People Have Gained Extensive Political Rights
While struggling for the right to
subsistence, the Chinese people have waged a heroic struggle
for democratic rights.
The people did not have any democratic
rights to speak of in semi-feudal, semi-colonial China. The
Revolution of 1911 led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the great
forerunner of bourgeois-democratic revolution, overthrew the
feudal Qing Dynasty and gave rise to the Republic of China.
He hoped to establish a Western-style democratic system in
China, but the fruits of the revolution were snatched by
Yuan Shikai, a feudal warlord. Then parliament became a mere
instrument for warlords in power struggle, and there
occurred the scandal of the "parliament of pigs" and bribery
in electing a president. His dream unfulfilled, Dr. Sun died
in sorrow and indignation, which found expression in his
famous admonition: "The revolution has not yet succeeded."
Many Chinese had cherished illusions about the US-supported
Chiang Kai-shek government. However, Chiang turned out to be
just another warlord under whose fascist rule millions of
democracy-seeking people perished in bloody massacres. He
adopted a non-resistance policy towards the Japanese
invasion while stepping up the civil war, ignoring
opposition from the Chinese Communists, patriots and
democrats from all walks of life and the broad masses of the
people. He launched the all-out civil war after the victory
of the War of Resistance Against Japan, again violating the
ardent wish for peace, democracy and reconstruction of the
Communist Party, the democratic parties and the people
throughout China. Driven beyond the limits of forbearance,
the people rose up in arms and in the end toppled Chiang's
reactionary rule.
Since the very day of its founding, the
Communist Party of China has been holding high the banner of
democracy and human rights. It encouraged and assisted Dr.
Sun in reorganizing the Kuomintang, effected the cooperation
between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and launched
the Northern Expedition against the reactionary rule of the
warlords. After Chiang Kai-shek betrayed the democratic
revolution, the Party united all patriots and democrats and
led the people in a struggle against civil war, hunger,
autocracy and persecution. In the liberated areas it
established democratic governments, drew up laws which
guaranteed the people's democratic rights and resolutely
implemented its own democratic program. The democratic
system in the liberated areas attracted numerous patriotic
and democratic fighters and became the hope of the entire
people. Under the Party's leadership, the Chinese people
overthrew the Kuomintang reactionaries' dictatorial rule and
founded the democratic and free People's Republic of China.
The Chinese people gained real democratic
rights after the founding of New China. In explicit terms
the Constitution stipulates that all power in the People's
Republic of China belongs to the people. That the people are
masters of their own country is the essence of China's
democratic politics. By stating that the People's Republic
of China is a socialist state of the people's democratic
dictatorship led by the working class and based on the
alliance of workers and peasants, the Constitution has
established the status of the workers, peasants and other
working people as masters of the country and thus invested
the laboring people who were at the bottom rung of the
social ladder in old China with lawful democratic rights.
Equality of men and women, as provided by the Constitution,
has enabled women, who account for half of the Chinese
population, to gain the same rights as men in politics,
economy, culture, society and family life. The stipulation
that all nationalities in China are equal has ensured that
all the nation's minority nationalities enjoy equal
democratic rights with the Han people.
To guarantee that the people are the real
masters of the country with the right to run the country's
economic and social affairs, China has adopted, in light of
its actual conditions, the people's congresses as the
state's basic political system. Deputies to the people's
congresses at all levels are chosen through democratic
elections. The Constitution stipulates that all citizens of
the People's Republic of China who have reached the age of
18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless
of nationality, race, sex, occupation, family background,
religious belief, education, property status, or length of
residence, with the exception of persons deprived of their
political rights by law. Taking into consideration its vast
territory, large population, inconvenient transportation and
relatively low economic and cultural development, China has
adopted an election system appropriate to its actual
conditions. That is, deputies to people's congresses at the
county level or below are elected directly, while those to
people's congresses above the county level are elected
indirectly. This election system makes it possible for the
people to choose deputies whom they know and trust. The
election system has been improved in recent years on the
basis of past experience. For instance, more candidates are
posted than the number of deputies to be elected, instead of
an equal number as before. The right to vote has been widely
exercised by the Chinese people. According to statistics
from the 1990 county- and township-level direct elections,
99.97 percent of the citizens at 18 years of age or above
enjoyed the right to vote. Generally speaking, upwards of 90
percent of the voters participate in the elections held in
the various provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities. The most striking characteristic of China's
electoral system is that elections are not manipulated by
money and that deputies are not elected on the basis of
boasting and empty promises but according to their actual
contributions to the country and society, their attitude in
serving the people and their close relations with the
people. It is clear from the election results that the
elected are broadly representative, that is, representative
of people of all social strata and all trades and
professions. Of the 2,970 deputies to the Seventh National
People's Congress, 684, or 23 percent, are workers and
farmers; 697, or 23.4 percent, are intellectuals; 733, or
24.7 percent, are government functionaries; 540, or 18.2
percent, are democratic party members and patriots with no
party affiliations; 267, or 9 percent, are from the People's
Liberation Army; and 49, or 1.6 percent, are returned
overseas Chinese.
The National People's Congress is the
supreme organ of state power. It has legislative power. It
elects or removes president and vice-president of the
People's Republic of China, chairman of the Central Military
Commission, president of the Supreme People's Court and
procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate;
and appoints or removes premier, vice-premiers, state
councilors, ministers, ministers in charge of commissions,
auditor-general and secretary-general. All administrative,
judicial and procuratorial organs of the state are created
by the National People's Congress, responsible to it and
supervised by it. Following the principle of democratic
centralism, the National People's Congress adopts major
policy decisions after full airing of opinions; and once
adopted, these policies are carried out in a concerted
effort. In this way, the People's Congress can not only
represent the people's common will but also become
instrumental for the people in running state, economic and
social affairs. Coming from among the people, the people's
deputies are responsible to the people and supervised by the
people; their close contact with the masses and wide
knowledge of the actual situation enable them to fully
reflect the people's wishes, formulate laws suited to
reality and supervise the work of government organs.
The Chinese Communist Party is the ruling
party of socialist China and the representative of the
interests of the people throughout the country. Its
leadership position has been the result of the historical
choice made by the Chinese people during their protracted
and arduous struggle for independence and emancipation. The
leadership of the Party is mainly an ideological and
political leadership. The Party derives its ideas and
policies from the people's concentrated will and then turns
them into state laws and decisions which are passed by the
National People's Congress through the state's legal
procedures. The Party does not take the place of the
government in the state's leadership system. The Party
conducts its activities within the framework of the
Constitution and the law and has no right to transcend the
Constitution and the law. All Party members, like all
citizens in the country, are equal before the law.
The system of multi-party cooperation and
political consultation under the leadership of the Communist
Party is the basic political system that gives expression to
people's democracy. It guarantees that all social strata,
people's organizations and patriots from various quarters
can express their opinions and play a role in the country's
political and social life. There are in China eight
democratic parties apart from the Communist Party; they are
the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, the
China Democratic League, the China Democratic National
Construction Association, the China Association for
Promoting Democracy, the Chinese Peasants and Workers
Democratic Party, the China Zhi Gong Dang (Party for Public
Interest), the Jiu San Society (September 3rd Society) and
the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League. Cooperation
between the Communist Party and these democratic parties
took shape during the democratic revolution before 1949, the
year New China was founded. The leading role of the
Communist Party in the cooperation is recognized by the
democratic parties as it has been evolved in long years of
common struggle. These democratic parties shared with the
Communist Party the same basic political ideas whether in
the struggle for overthrowing the "three big mountains" or
during the period of building New China. Enjoying political
freedom and organizational independence, all these
democratic parties have developed greatly. They are neither
parties out of office nor opposition parties, but parties
participating in state affairs. As China's ruling party, the
Communist Party repeatedly asks these democratic parties for
their opinions on every major state affair and consult with
them for solutions. Relations between the Communist Party
and the democratic parties follow the guideline of
"long-term coexistence and mutual supervision, treating each
other with full sincerity and sharing weal or woe." Full
play has been given to the role of the democratic parties in
participating in and discussing state affairs, democratic
supervision and uniting all the people. Many members of the
democratic parties have assumed leading posts in organs of
state power, government departments and judicial organs. Of
the 19 vice-chairmen elected by the Seventh National
People's Congress at its First Session, seven are members of
democratic parties. Nearly 1,200 members of the democratic
parties and personages with no party affiliations are
holding leading posts in governments above the county level.
The Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference (CPPCC) consists of representatives
of all the political parties and people's organizations and
from among patriots and democrats who support socialism and
the reunification of the motherland. New China's first
Central People's Government was elected by the First Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference. After the
establishment of the National People's Congress as the
supreme organ of state power, the CPPCC became an
organization of the patriotic united front. It provides a
forum for discussions on major state policies and principles
and big issues in social life and plays a supervisory role
through suggestions and criticisms. The CPPCC usually
convenes simultaneously with the people's congress at the
corresponding level. The system of political consultation
has played an important role in promoting democracy.
China attaches great importance to the
promotion of democracy at the grass-roots level so as to
guarantee that citizens can directly exercise their
political rights. Neighborhood Committees are the
grass-roots democratic organizations in urban areas, and
their counterparts in rural areas are Village Committees. As
self-governing organizations established by the people,
these committees deal with matters concerning public welfare
and residents' well-being while assisting local governments
in mediating family and neighborhood disputes, conducting
ideological education and maintaining public order. Most
Chinese enterprises have adopted the system of workers'
congress, which is the basic form of democratic management
through which workers participate in the decision-making and
management of the enterprises and supervise the enterprise
leaders. Over the last few years, virtually all directors
and managers of large and medium-sized state enterprises
have been examined and their work appraised with the
participation and supervision of the workers' congresses.
The Constitution provides for a wide range
of political rights to citizens. In addition to the right to
vote and to be elected mentioned above, citizens also enjoy
freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, association,
procession and demonstration. There is no news censorship in
China. Statistics show that of all the newspapers and
magazines in China, only one-fifth are run by Party and
state organizations, and the others belong to various
democratic parties, social organizations, academic
associations and people's organizations. By law citizens
have the right to intellectual property, such as copy-right,
and the right to publication, patent, trademark, discovery,
invention and scientific and technological achievement. It
is a matter of personal freedom for a citizen to decide what
book he will write, what point of view he will use in
writing it and which publishing house he will choose to have
his book published. Statistics show that an overwhelming
majority of the 80,224 titles of books printed in 1990 with
a total impression of 5.64 billion copies were signed by
individual authors. As to the freedom of association, the
1990 statistics showed that there were 2,000 associations,
including societies, research institutes, foundations,
federations and clubs. All these associations operate freely
within the framework of the Constitution and the law.
The Constitution also rules that citizens
have the right to criticize and make suggestions regarding
any state organ or functionary and the right to make to
relevant state organs complaints or charges against, or
exposures of, any state organ or functionary for violation
of the law or dereliction of duty.
The Constitution provides that freedom of
the person of citizens of the People's Republic of China is
inviolable. Unlawful detention or deprivation of citizens'
freedom of the person by other means and unlawful search of
the person of citizens are prohibited; the personal dignity
of citizens is inviolable, and insult, libel, false
accusation or false incrimination directed against citizens
by any means is prohibited; the residences of citizens are
inviolable and unlawful search of, or intrusion into, a
citizen's residence is prohibited; freedom and privacy of
correspondence are protected by law, and those who hide,
discard, damage or illegally open other people's letters,
once discovered, shall be seriously dealt with, and grave
cases shall be prosecuted.
The Constitution provides that China
implements the system of people's democratic dictatorship,
which combines democracy among the people and dictatorship
against the people's enemies. To guarantee the people's
democratic rights and other lawful rights and interests,
China pays great attention to improving its legal system. It
has promulgated and put into effect a series of major laws,
including the Constitution, the Criminal Law, the Law of
Criminal Procedure, the General Provisions of the Civil Law,
the Law of Civil Procedure and the Law of Administrative
Procedure. During the 1979-1990 period, the National
People's Congress and its Standing Committees made 99 laws
and 21 decisions on legislative amendments and passed 52
resolutions and decisions on legal matters; the State
Council formulated more than 700 administrative laws and
regulations; and the people's congresses and their standing
committees of various provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities and provincial capital cities formulated
numerous local laws and administrative rules and
regulations, of which more than 1,000 were about human
rights.
The unity between rights and duties is a
basic principle of China's legal system. The Constitution
stipulates that every citizen is entitled to the rights
prescribed by the Constitution and the law and at the same
time must perform the duties prescribed by the Constitution
and the law, and that in exercising their freedoms and
rights, citizens may not infringe upon the interests of the
state, of society or of the collective, or upon the lawful
freedoms and rights of other citizens. Legally citizens are
the subjects of both rights and duties. Everyone is equal
before the rights and duties prescribed by the Constitution
and the law. No organization or individual may enjoy the
privilege of being above the Constitution and the law.
Practice of the past 40-odd years since
liberation proves that the socialist democracy and legal
system adopted by China are suited to the country's actual
conditions and that the people is satisfied with it. It goes
without saying that the building of this democratic politics
and this legal system is no smooth sailing. There were times
when democracy and law were seriously violated, such as
happened during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).
Nevertheless, the Communist Party, backed by the people,
corrected these mistakes and set the nation's socialist
democracy and legal system back to the course of steady
development. Upholding the general policy of reform and
opening to the outside world and giving great attention to
building socialist democratic politics, China is striving to
improve and strictly enforce the socialist legal system and
continuing the work to reform and improve the political
system -- all for the purpose of ensuring that the people
can fully enjoy their civic rights and better exercise their
political right of running the country.
III.
Citizens Enjoy Economic, Cultural and Social Rights
The human rights advocated by China encompass not only the
right to subsistence and the civic and political rights, but
also economic, cultural and social rights. The Chinese
government pays due attention to the protection and
realization of the rights of the country, the various
nationalities and private citizens to economic, cultural,
social and political development.
Socialist China eliminated the system of
exploitation of man by man, thus making it possible for the
first time in history for all working people to secure the
right to equal economic development. China upholds the
socialist system of public ownership of the means of
production as the mainstay while at the same time permitting
and encouraging the appropriate development of other
economic sectors as supplements to the socialist economy. It
will neither adopt a unitary public ownership system, which
is divorced from the nation's current level of development
of productive forces, nor practice privatization, which
tends to shake the dominant position of public ownership in
the national economy. Public ownership of the means of
production constitutes the basis of China's socialist
economic system. It guarantees that the major means of
production in society are possessed by all the working
people through the ownership by the whole people and the
collective ownership by the laboring masses. The working
people enjoy the right to manage, control and use the means
of production. According to statistics, the total social
investment in fixed assets in China came to 444.9 billion
yuan in 1990, of which 291.9 billion yuan, or 65.6 percent,
was invested in units owned by the whole people, and 52.9
billion, or 11.9 percent, in collectively-owned units. That
is to say, the bigger share (77.5 percent) of the social
investment in fixed assets is owned by the state and the
collectives of the laboring masses.
The distribution system adopted in China
is mainly based on the principle of "from each according to
his ability, to each according to his work." At the same
time, the government allows and encourages some people to
become rich first by the sweat of their brow and though
legitimate business activities. Those who get rich first can
then help others, so that common prosperity can be achieved.
This brings into play the enthusiasm of the laboring masses
and at the same time prevents polarization. China is one of
the nations that register the lowest income gap in the
world. According to 1990 statistics, the 20 percent of urban
dwellers with the highest spendable incomes earn only 2.5
times as much as the 20 percent with the lowest incomes.
This very fact has made it possible for China, an
economically underdeveloped country, to guarantee the
livelihood of its 1.1 billion people and avoid social
confrontation resulting from polarization.
Economic equality has motivated the
laboring people to a great extent and brought about speedy
growth of the Chinese economy.
Over the past 40-odd post-liberation years
and particularly in the past decade and more since the
adoption of the policy of reform and opening to the outside
world, China has all along been in the front rank of the
world in terms of the rate of economic growth. The annual
increase of GNP was 6.9 percent during the 1953-90 period
and 8.8 percent during the 1979-90 period. China now leads
the world in the output of many important products,
including grain, cotton, pork, beef, mutton, cloth, coal,
cement and television sets; and it has also emerged as one
of the world's biggest producers of steel, crude oil,
electricity and synthetic fibers.
With the growth of the national economy,
the overall living standards of the Chinese people have
greatly improved. Statistics show that in 1990 China's
national income came to 1,442.9 billion yuan, or 11.9 times
the 1952 figure of 58.9 billion yuan calculated according to
constant prices. A good part of the national income was
spent on consumer goods. In 1990, consumer spending amounted
to 944.4 billion yuan, which was 8.4 times the 1952 figure
of 47.7 billion yuan according to constant prices. Of the
total volume of consumption, 810 billion yuan was spent by
individual consumers, which was 7.3 times the 43.4 billion
yuan in 1952 according to constant prices. The per-capita
volume of consumption for the Chinese residents averaged 714
yuan in 1990, 3.7 times more than in 1952 according to
constant prices, despite a 98.9 percent population increase
in the intervening years. Now that the Chinese people have
solved the basic problems of food and clothing, they are
working their way toward a well-to-do life. According to
statistics, in 1990 every hundred rural families owned 118.3
bicycles and 44.4 TV sets; and every hundred urban
house-holds owned 188.6 bicycles, 111.4 TV sets, 42.3
refrigerators and 78.4 washing machines. In addition, the
housing conditions of Chinese residents have improved, with
the 1990 average per-capita living space increased to 7.1
square meters from 3.6 square meters in 1978 for urban
dwellers and to 17.8 square meters from 8.1 square meters in
1978 for rural inhabitants. The speeds at which the economy
grows and the people's living standards improve in New China
are not only something inconceivable in old China, but also
among the highest in the world community.
The right to work is a basic right of the
citizens. In old China, people were deprived of the right to
work according to their own will. This right was controlled
by the landlords and capitalists, the owners of the means of
production. The working people were constantly threatened by
the prospect of unemployment. When China was liberated in
1949, a total of 4.742 million, or 60 percent of the total
labor force in the cities, were jobless. It is stipulated in
the Constitution that Chinese citizens have both the right
and the duty to work. The government took all sorts of
measures and solved the problem of unemployment, thereby
enabling the masses of the working people to take part in
socialist construction as masters of the society. In the 12
years between 1979 and 1990, a total of 94 million new jobs
were created in urban areas. With the expansion of the
productive forces, the problem of rural surplus labor
emerged as a major issue. The Chinese government has adopted
the policy for some of the farmers to "leave the field but
remain in the village," and, by vigorously developing rural
enterprises and encouraging individual households to run
industrial and sideline occupations along specialized lines,
found the fundamental way out for the surplus labor force in
rural areas. Since 1985, the unemployment rate in urban
areas has remained at around 2.5 percent, which is fairly
low as compared with other countries in the world.
The Constitution provides that public
property and the legitimate property of citizens are
protected. Public property owned by the state, collective
property owned by the working people, and the legitimate
property owned by individuals are all protected by law. Any
organization or individual is thus forbidden to occupy,
seize, share out or destroy such properties. It is also
forbidden to seal up, withhold, freeze or confiscate such
properties by illegal means. The state protects the
citizens' ownership and inheritance rights to their
legitimate income, savings, housing and other legitimate
properties. The rights of use and contract management of
state-owned land, forests, mountains, grassland,
uncultivated land, beaches and waters obtained by units
under public ownership and collective ownership and private
citizens through legal means are protected by law. Whoever
infringes upon such rights shall be dealt with by legal
means. At present, there are more than 90,000 private
enterprises in China. Like the properties of units under
public ownership or collectively owned by the laboring
people, the legitimate properties of private enterprises are
under the protection of law and shall not be illegally
seized, sealed up or confiscated. The Chinese government
also provides legal protection to foreign investment, joint
ventures with Chinese and foreign investment and solely
foreign-owned enterprises in China.
The right of education is an important
prerequisite for the overall, free development of human
beings. In old China, the majority of the working people did
not have such a right. With only less than 20 percent of
school-age children going to school, more than 80 percent of
the total population were illiterate. After the founding of
New China, the government took various measures to guarantee
the citizens' right of education by devoting great efforts
to the development of education. By 1989, China had set up
1.045 million schools at various levels in urban and rural
areas. Among them 1,075 were regular institutions of higher
learning. In 1990, about 99.77 percent of school-age
children in the cities and 97.29 percent of school-age
children in the countryside were attending school. The
numbers of college, middle school and primary school
students were respectively 17.6 times, 40.3 times, and 5
times the 1949 figures. During the 1949-90 period, a total
of 7.608 million graduate and undergraduate students
completed their college education, almost 40 times the total
between 1912 and 1948 in old China.
Since China adopted the policy of reform
and opening to the outside world, the number of students
studying abroad has been rapidly increasing. Since 1978,
China has sent 150,000 students in various disciplines of
learning to study in 86 countries and regions. So far almost
50,000 of them have returned after finishing their studies,
and over 100,000 of them are staying abroad. After the
political incident of 1989, the number of Chinese going
abroad to study has not decreased but has increased to some
extent. In 1990, China completed its plan of sending 3,000
government-sponsored students abroad for academic pursuits.
Meanwhile, about 6,000 students were sent to foreign
countries by various units, and 20,000 (not including those
enrolled in Australian and Japanese language schools) paid
their own way to study abroad.
According to statistics of departments
concerned in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, more than
3,000 students have returned from overseas and have started
work at their new posts during the past two years. In the
meantime, more than 5,700 students have returned to
countries where they study after coming home to visit
relatives, take vacation or do short-term jobs. According to
international norm, Chinese students who are sponsored by
the government to study abroad have the duty to return to
serve their home country. The Chinese government, always
valuing returned students and creating favorable working
conditions for them upon return to China, has set up special
organizations to take direct responsibility in receiving and
arranging suitable jobs for returned students. More than 70
post-doctoral mobile research centers and short-term working
stations have been set up by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
and various universities, offering fine research and living
conditions for those who have returned. Moreover, the
Chinese government and related departments have set up a
number of foundations to raise funds for scientific research
and to aid returned students in research and teaching
activities.
The Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of
scientific research and literary and artistic creation. In
order to promote the development of scientific research and
to bring about cultural and artistic prosperity, the Chinese
government upholds the guideline of "serving the people and
socialism" and the principle of "letting a hundred flowers
blossom and a hundred of schools of thought contend." Since
the founding of New China, the contingent of scientists and
technicians has steadily expanded. In 1990, state-run units
employed a total of 10.808 million natural scientists and
technical workers, 24.4 times more than the 1952 figure of
425,000. The State Commission of Natural Science Foundation
has since its establishment in February 1986 accepted 34,847
applications for scientific research projects which call for
a total allotment of 2.31 billion yuan. Large numbers of
outstanding achievements have been registered in the field
of science and technology. In biological science, Chinese
scientists succeeded in making synthetic bovine insulin and
in converting yeast alanine into synthetic ribonucleic acid
(RNA); in agricultural science, experiments in hybrid paddy
rice have been successful; in high-energy physics, an
electron-positron collider was constructed; other
achievements in high technology are represented by the
successful explosion of atomic and hydrogen bombs, the
making of super-computers capable of 100 million
calculations per second, the launching of the Long March III
carrier rocket and the research in satellite
telecommunications and superconductivity. In all these
fields, China has either reached or approached advanced
world levels.
China has formed a legal system to protect
intellectual property rights. A trademark law and a patent
law have been promulgated and put in force. On June 1, 1991,
a copyright law went into effect. According to 1990
statistics, more than 270,000 valid trademarks have been
registered; and 66 countries and regions have applied for
patent rights in China. By the end of 1990, American
enterprises alone have applied for registration of 12,528
patent rights in China.
Public health facilities are a necessary
guarantee for the human rights of life and health. In old
China, health organizations and technicians were in short
supply and at a low level and the majority of them were
concentrated in urban areas. After the founding of New
China, a public health network was gradually established.
Covering all the cities and countryside, this network
includes many kinds of health organizations at various
levels and employs different types of public health workers.
In 1990, there were 209,000 health institutions across the
land, 56.9 times that of 1949. The number of hospital beds
rose to 2.624 million, a 32.8-fold increase; and the number
of professional health workers reached 3.898 million, 7.7
times that of 1949. In the countryside where the majority of
Chinese people live, there are 47,749 hospitals at the
township level; health centers or clinics have been set up
in 86.2 percent of all villages; the number of hospital beds
has reached 1.502 million; and there are 1.232 million
medical personnel and professional health workers. In China,
every doctor serves an average of 649 people whereas in
medium-income countries the figure is 2,390. With the
development of medical and public health undertakings, the
incidence of infectious and endemic diseases has been
drastically reduced. Such highly infectious diseases as
leprosy, cholera, the plague, and smallpox have been
basically eradicated. Snail fever, Kaschin-Beck disease, the
Keshan disease and other endemic diseases have come under
control. The development of medical care and epidemic
prevention has greatly improved the health of the Chinese
people. Impressed by what he called China's "surprising"
achievements in medical care, Dr. Bernard P. Kean, the World
Health Organization's representative in China, said that he
could hardly believe it was a developing country by looking
only at such statistics as life expectancy, infant
mortality, and causes of death.
The Chinese nation has a fine tradition of
respecting elderly people. This tradition has been carried
forward in New China. Senior citizens have the right to
material assistance from the state and society. By the end
of 1990, there had been 23.01 million people in the whole
country living on retirement pensions. The proportion of the
number of retired workers to the number of workers still in
service is 1:6. In 1990, the pension for an average retired
worker was 60 percent of the average pay for a worker in
service, which ensured the livelihood of senior citizens in
retirement, who also had the help and care of people from
all walks of life. In urban areas, one of the major tasks of
Neighborhood Committees is to help widowed senior citizens
and safeguard their rights and interests. Welfare
institutions and senior citizen homes have been set up
respectively by the state and the collective enterprises to
provide board and lodging and other free services for senior
citizens without relatives to depend on. In rural areas,
childless and infirm old people are guaranteed food,
clothing, housing, medical care and burial expenses by
society and collectives. The legal rights of senior citizens
are protected by law; it is forbidden to abuse, insult,
slander, ill-treat or abandon them. Adult offspring have the
obligation to provide for their parents.
China attaches great importance to
guaranteeing the rights of women, children and teenagers.
According to the Constitution, women share
equal rights with men in political, economic, cultural,
social and family life. Like men, they have the right to
elect and to be elected. A considerable percentage of
people's deputies and officials at various levels are women.
Of the people's deputies elected in 1988 to the Seventh
National People's Congress, 634, or 21.3 percent, were
women. At present, 5,600 women serve as judges in the
people's courts. The state lays special stress on training
and promoting women cadres. The number of women serving in
government offices has increased from 366,000 in 1951 to 8.7
million; this accounts for 28.8 percent of the total number
of civil servants. In China, men and women get equal pay for
equal work. Working women enjoy the right of special labor
protection and labor insurance. The total number of women
workers in China has increased from 600,000 in 1949 to 53
million. Women's right to education is also duly respected.
In 1990, the total number of female students at school
reached 78.81 million. These included 700,000 college
students, 21.56 million middle-school students and 56.56
million primary school students, accounting for 33.7
percent, 42.2 percent and 46.2 percent respectively of the
total number of students at school and college.
The state also pays special attention to
protecting women's right to freedom of choice in marriage
and forbids mercenary and arranged marriages and other acts
of interference in other people's freedom of marriage. The
judicial departments have taken stern measures according to
law against criminals engaged in the sale of women.
The state has formulated laws and
regulations to protect children. It is strictly forbidden to
ill-treat and sell children and to use child labor. In order
to safeguard the life and health of children, the state has
issued a decision on strengthening and improving the health
care in nurseries and kindergartens, and formulated special
regulations to prevent and treat diseases such as infantile
paralysis, smallpox, diphtheria and tuberculosis. China
enjoys a relatively high rate of health care for children
and of schooling for school-age children compared with other
developing countries. The rate of inoculated children in
China has almost reached the average level of developed
countries.
However, China is still a developing
country which is marked for its backward economic and
cultural development, and much remains to be done to further
expand the people's economic, cultural and social rights. In
the Ten-Year Program for the National Economy and Social
Development (1991-2000), concrete targets and measures are
set forth for the further improvement of the people's
economic, cultural and social rights.
IV.
Guarantee of Human Rights In China's Judicial Work
The aim and task of China's judicial work
is to protect the basic rights, freedoms, and other legal
rights and interests of the whole people in accordance with
law, protect public property and citizens' lawfully-owned
private property, maintain social order, guarantee the
smooth progress of the modernization drive, and punish the
small number of criminals according to law. All this shows
that China attaches great importance to human rights
protection in the administration of justice.
China's public security and judicial
organs follow the following principles in carrying out their
duties: (1) All citizens are equal in regard to the
applicability of law. In accordance with the law, each
citizen's legal rights and interests shall be protected, and
any citizen's offenses against the law and his criminal
activities shall be looked into; (2) China's public security
and judicial organs shall base themselves on facts and
regard the law as the criterion in the conduct of all cases;
(3) The procuratorate and the court shall independently
exercise their respective procuratorial and judicial
authority. They shall only obey the law and not be
interfered with by any administrative organ, social
organization or person. While dealing with criminal cases,
the people's court, the people's procuratorate and the
public security organ shall divide their work according to
law, cooperate with and moderate one another. They should
exercise their authority only within the scope of their own
responsibilities and are not allowed to supersede one
another. Procuratorial organs shall oversee whether the
activities in public security organs, courts, prisons and
reform-through-labor institutions are legal. These
principles of justice are clearly stipulated in China's law,
and they provide the legal guarantee for safeguarding human
rights in the state's judicial activities.
In every link of the work of public
security and judicial organs and in the judicial procedure,
China's law provides definite and strict stipulations to
protect and guarantee human rights in an effective way.
1. Detention and Arrest
China's Constitution provides that it is prohibited to take
people into custody illegally or to deprive or limit
citizens' personal freedom in other illegal ways. Without
the permission or decision of the people's procuratorate or
the decision of the people's court, and the dispensation of
public security organs, no citizen can be arrested. In order
to guarantee the proper use of the compulsory measure of
arrest and to prevent infringement of the right of innocent
people, the Constitution and the law vest procuratorial
organs with the authority of investigation and approval
before any arrest is made. According to law, public security
organs have the authority to detain. If the internee is not
convinced by the detention, he may appeal to the public
security or procuratorial organs. If suspects detained by
public security organs need to be arrested, this should be
approved by the people's procuratorate; if the people's
procuratorate does not approve the arrests, the public
security organs should release them upon receiving notice
from people's procuratorates. China's procuratorial organs
and people's courts should promptly investigate and deal
with cases involving staff members in governmental
departments and other citizens depriving or limiting
citizens' personal freedom.
China's Law of Criminal Procedure provides
specific regulations on the deadline for handling criminal
cases. At the same time, special regulations have been
formulated on the deadline for major and complicated cases
according to actual conditions. The Supplementary
Regulations on Deadline in Handling Criminal Cases, issued
by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
in July 1984, provides extension and calculation of the
deadline for investigation and detaining, the deadline for
the first trial and second trial, and the deadline for
supplementary investigation of major and complicated cases.
2. Search and the Obtaining of
Evidence
China's Constitution provides that it is prohibited to
illegally search a citizen's body, and to illegally search
or intrude into citizens' houses. The Law of Criminal
Procedure provides that in order to search for criminal
evidence and seize criminals, public security organs can
search the body, articles, residence and other places
concerned of the accused as well as those who may hide
criminals or criminal evidence, but should do it strictly
according to legal procedure. Procuratorial organs should
strictly supervise law enforcement in the investigating
activities of public security organs.
As a matter of principle and discipline
for China's public security and judicial organs in handling
cases, it is strictly prohibited to extort confessions by
torture. Whenever a case of violating this principle and
discipline occurs, it should be dealt with according to law.
In 1990, China's procuratorial organs filed for
investigation 472 cases which involved extorting confessions
by torture. This has not only protected citizens' personal
rights effectively, but also taught law enforcement
officials a lesson.
3. Prosecution and Trial
Whether a case should be prosecuted after investigation or
exempt from prosecution should be decided by procuratorial
organs after overall and careful examination according to
legal procedure; this is to ensure the timeliness, accuracy,
and legality of a punishment, and at the same time, to
prevent innocent citizens from unjust prosecution and
prevent citizens' rights from infringement. In 1990, after
examining cases to be prosecuted or exempt from prosecution,
which were referred to them by investigating organs, the
procuratorial organs at various levels in the country
decided to exempt 3,507 people from prosecution.
The people's courts carry out a public
trial system. Cases should be tried publicly, except those
involving state secrets or individual privacy and involving
minors, which according to law shall not be heard publicly.
The main points of a case, the name of the accused, the time
and place of the trial should be announced before the
hearing, and visitors should be allowed into the court.
During the hearing, all the facts and evidence on which the
case on file is based should be investigated and checked in
court. All activities in court should be carried out
publicly except when the case is being reviewed during court
recession. These include issuing the indictment by the
public prosecutor, court investigation, questioning
witnesses, debate and the final statement by the accused.
The verdicts in all cases, including cases of non-public
trial in accordance with law, should be pronounced publicly.
During the judicial process the people's
court makes it a point to collect the evidence as
comprehensively as possible according to legal procedure.
With no other evidence except the confession of the accused
as a basis, the accused cannot be pronounced guilty or
sentenced; without the confession of the accused but with
ample and reliable evidence, the accused can be pronounced
guilty and sentenced.
The accused has the right to defense.
According to the Law of Criminal Procedure, the accused,
besides exercising his right to defend himself, can also
entrust a lawyer, or close relatives, or other citizens to
take up the defense on his behalf. When the public
prosecutor institutes a case before the court, if the
accused does not entrust his defense to a lawyer, the
people's court can appoint one for him. During the trial,
the accused has the right to terminate a lawyer's action in
his defense and entrust another to take it up. After the
people's court decides to hear a case, a duplicate copy of
the indictment should be made available to the accused at
least seven days before the opening session of the court in
order that he may learn what crime or crimes he is being
prosecuted for and the reasons why he is being prosecuted,
and that he has enough time to prepare his defense and get
in touch with his lawyer. During the prosecution, the
people's court should strictly comply with the regulations
of the Constitution and the Law of Criminal Procedure, and
earnestly guarantee the right of the accused to defense.
The accused has the right to appeal to a
higher court and the right of petition. In deciding cases
the Chinese courts follow the system whereby the court of
second instance is the court of last instance. According to
law, if a party refuses to accept the judgement and ruling
of the first trial, he may appeal to a higher people's
court; if he remains unconvinced by the judgement and ruling
which are legal in effect, he may petition to people's
courts or procuratorial organs. Appealing to a higher court
will not increase the punishment.
China's Criminal Law has special
regulations on juvenile crime and criminal responsibility.
Those who have reached the age of 14 but not of 16 should be
responsible for crimes of murder, serious injury, robbery,
arson, hardened thievery and other felonies against public
order; those who have reached the age of 14 but not of 18
should receive lenient punishment or mitigated punishment if
they commit crimes; as for those who are exempt from
punishment because they have not reached the age of 16,
their parents or guardians should be ordered to subject them
to discipline, and if necessary the government can take them
away for custody and education.
Lawsuit procedures and judicial activities
are strictly supervised as to their legality. In 1990,
China's procuratorial organs put forward suggestions for the
correction of illegal practice in 3,200 instances, thereby
effectively guaranteeing citizens' legal rights and
interests in lawsuits and judicial activities.
China, like most countries in the world,
maintains capital punishment, but imposes very stringent
restrictive regulations on the use of this extreme measure.
China's Criminal Law states, "Capital punishment is applied
only to criminals who are guilty of the most heinous
crimes." It also provides that capital punishment is not
applied to criminals who have not reached the age of 18 when
they commit crimes or to women who are pregnant when they
are on trial. China's Law of Criminal Procedure provides for
a special review procedure in cases of capital punishment.
That is, the judgement in cases of capital punishment,
except for those made by the Supreme People's Court
according to law, should be reported to the Supreme People's
Court or to a high people's court authorized by it after the
second, or final, instance; only after all the facts,
evidence, convictions, sentences and trial procedures are
comprehensively investigated and checked and approved can
the judgement take legal effect. After the examination and
approval, if a lower people's court finds that there may be
mistakes in a judgement, it should stop enforcement of the
punishment and immediately report to a higher people's court
with the authority of examination and approval, or to the
Supreme People's Court, in order that a ruling may be made
by it.
China's law also provides a system
allowing a two-year reprieve in carrying out a death
sentence. That is, in cases where criminals should receive
the death penalty but the sentence need not be carried out
at once, capital punishment can be announced with a two-year
reprieve and reform through forced labor, in order to
observe the offender's behavior. If the offender sincerely
repents and mends his ways, after the twoyear reprieve
expires, the punishment can be reduced to life imprisonment;
if a criminal really repents, mends his ways and performs
meritorious services after the two-year suspension expires,
his punishment can be reduced to a set term of imprisonment
from 15 years to 20 years. Practice has shown that most of
the criminals who are given the death penalty with reprieve
have had their punishment reduced to life imprisonment or a
set term of imprisonment, after expiration of the two-year
reprieve. The system of announcing the death sentence with a
two-year reprieve and forced labor, as provided in China's
Criminal Law, is an original creation in the application of
capital punishment. It is an effective system by which
strict control is exercised over the use of capital
punishment in China.
4. No "Political Prisoners" in
China
In China, ideas alone, in the absence of action which
violates the criminal law, do not constitute a crime; nobody
will be sentenced to punishment merely because he holds
dissenting political views. So-called political prisoners do
not exist in China. In Chinese Criminal Law
"counterrevolutionary crime" refers to crime which endangers
state security, i.e., criminal acts which are not only
committed with the purpose of overthrowing state power and
the socialist system, but which are also listed in Articles
91-102 of the Criminal Law as criminal acts, such as those
carried out in conspiring to overthrow the government or
splitting the country, those carried out in gathering a
crowd in armed rebellion, and espionage activities. These
kinds of criminal acts that endanger state security are
punishable in any country. In 1980, in handling the case of
the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counterrevolutionary cliques,
the special court of the Supreme People's Court strictly
implemented this principle by prosecuting members of the
cliques according to law for their criminal acts while
leaving alone matters concerning the political line.
5. Prison Work and Criminals'
Rights
At present there are in all 680 prisons and
reform-through-labor institutions in China, holding 1.1
million criminals in detention. The rate of imprisonment is
0.99 per thousand of the total population. Compared with the
rate of imprisonment of 4.13 per thousand in one of the
Western developed countries according to 1990 statistics of
its ministry of justice, China's rate is quite low.
China's prisons and reform-through-labor
institutions receive, strictly according to law, criminals
sent to them to enforce sentences passed by the courts. If
they find the relevant legal documents not complete or the
judgement not yet in effect legally, they have the legal
right to refuse to take the persons in custody. Prisons and
reform-through-labor institutions should notify a prisoner's
family members of his whereabouts within three days after
taking him into custody. According to China's law, most
prisoners are allowed to serve their sentences in the area
where they reside to make it convenient for their family
members to visit them and for the units where they used to
work to help educate them. The allegation that in China some
citizens are sent to labor camps without trial or sent away
in some form of exile within the country is a distortion of
the system whereby prisons and reform-through-labor
institutions in China take criminals into custody; it is a
groundless fabrication.
In China, the rights of prisoners while
serving their sentences are protected by law.
According to China's law, all prisoners,
with exception of those who have been legally deprived of
their political rights, have the right to vote. Prisoners
also have the right to appeal, the right of defense, the
right of immunity from insult to their dignity and from
infringement of personal security and of legal property, the
right of complaint, the right of accusation, and other civic
rights which have not been curtailed by the law.
Convicted criminals, while serving their
sentences, have the right to contact family members and
other relatives regularly by correspondence or visits. If an
important event happens in a criminal's family such as
critical illness or the death of a directly-related family
member, and if it is really necessary for the criminal
himself to go back home to handle matters, he can be
permitted to go home for a short period of time.
While serving their sentences, prisoners
can read newspapers, magazines and books, watch television,
listen to the radio, and take part in recreational and
sports activities that are beneficial to the body and mind.
In prisons and reform-through-labor institutions there are
libraries where criminals can go to read. Like ordinary
citizens, prisoners who are serving their sentences have the
freedom of religious belief. Prisoners with religious
beliefs can maintain their beliefs, and allowances are made
for the customs and habits of prisoners of minority
nationalities.
Prisoners are accorded the material
treatment necessary in their daily lives. The state covers
their living and medical expenses, and their grain, edible
oil and non-staple food rations are set according to the
same standards for local residents. All prisons and
reform-through-labor institutions are staffed with an
appropriate number of doctors; in professional medical
institutions, medical facilities and hospital beds are set
aside in prisoners' exclusive service; on an average, there
are 14.8 hospital beds for every thousand prisoners, and
those critically ill are sent to hospitals outside the
prison for treatment or, on approval, may seek medical
treatment on bail according to law. Prisoners' needs for
medical care are guaranteed.
The people's procuratorates provide legal
supervision of the protection of criminals' legitimate
rights and interests. They send full-time prosecuting
attorneys to jails and other places of surveillance to check
whether the working and living facilities and conditions and
the surveillance work are legitimate, to hear the opinions
of those under surveillance, accept and look into their
complaints and appeals, and deal with violations of law
promptly when discovered.
The prisons and reform-through-labor
institutions in China are not designed merely to punish the
criminals but to educate them and turn them into law-abiding
citizens by organizing them to take part in physical labor,
learn legal and ordinary knowledge and master productive
skills. Prisoners who have taken educational or technical
training courses and passed examinations given by local
education or labor departments are given certificates
corresponding to their levels of education or technical
grades. The validity of such certificates is recognized in
society. By the end of 1990, about 720,000 certificates for
literacy or diplomas for completing courses up to the
college level had been issued to those serving terms in
prisons and reform-through-labor institutions; over 510,000
had attended various technical training courses, and 398,000
received certificates of technical qualification. Prisoners
thus find it easier to find jobs on release after serving
their sentence.
China's law stipulates that prisoners who
really show repentance and have rendered meritorious service
can, upon rulings of the people's courts, have their
sentences commuted or be put on parole. In 1990, 18 percent
of the criminals in custody were accorded such treatments.
Thanks to the humanitarian, scientific and
civilized management of the prisons and reform-through-labor
institutions, the recidivism rate has for many years stood
at 6-8 percent. Many prisoners have returned to society and
become key members or engineers in their enterprises, and
some of them have become model workers or labor heroes.
Compared with the situation in one developed country in the
West, where, according to 1989 judicial statistics, 41.4
percent of exprisoners returned to jail, China has come a
long way in reforming and educating criminals. China's
prisons and reform-through-labor institutions have won
global acclaim for their achievements in turning the
overwhelming majority of criminals, including the last
emperor of the feudal Qing Dynasty and war criminals, into
law-abiding citizens and qualified personnel helpful to the
country's development.
6. Prison Labor
China's law stipulates that all prisoners able to work
should take part in physical labor. This is also the
practice adopted in many countries worldwide. China's policy
of reforming criminals through labor is designed to help
those serving prison terms mend their old ways by acquiring
the labor habit and fostering a sense of social
responsibility, discipline and obedience to the law. This
policy enables criminals in custody to stay healthy through
a regular working life and avoid feelings of depression and
apathy resulting from a prolonged monotonous and idle prison
life. It also helps them learn productive skills and
knowledge of one kind or another so that they can find a job
after being released from prison and avoid committing new
crimes because of difficulties in making a living. China's
policy of reforming criminals through labor is not simply
for the purpose of punishment; it is a humanitarian policy
conducive to the reform, and the physical and mental health,
of the criminals.
By the Chinese law, criminals work for no
more than eight hours a day and take time off during
holidays and festivals; they are entitled to the same grain,
edible oil, and non-staple food rations and the same labor
and health protection as accorded to workers of state-run
enterprises engaged in the same type of work; those who
overfulfill their production quotas are given bonuses and
those holding technical titles at and above the middle grade
are entitled to monthly technical allowances and
opportunities of on-the-job vocational and technical
training.
Prison labor products are mostly used to
meet the needs within the prison system, and only a small
quantity enters the domestic market through normal channels.
The export of prison products is prohibited. China's foreign
trade departments, which handle the export of Chinese
commodities in a unified way, have never granted foreign
trade rights to reform-through-labor institutions.
7. Education through Labor and the
Rights of Those Being Educated through Labor
The work of education through
labor in China is based on the 1957 Decision on Education
through Labor and other regulations adopted by the Standing
Committee of the National People's Congress. Education
through labor is not a criminal but an administrative
punishment. Education-through-labor administrative
committees have been set up by the people's governments of
various provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities as
well as large and medium-sized cities, and the work is under
the supervision of the people's procuratorates. It is
stipulated that those eligible for education through labor
should meet the requirements of relevant laws and
regulations. For example, they should be at or above the age
of 16 and have upset the public order in a large or
medium-sized city but refused to mend their ways despite
repeated admonition, or they have committed an offense not
serious enough for criminal punishment. The decision to put
a person under education-through-labor is made through a
strict legal procedure and under a system of legal
supervision in order to avoid subjecting the wrong person to
the program.
After the education-through-labor
administrative committee has according to related
regulations made the decision to put a person an
education-through-labor program ranging from one to three
years, the person and his family members are entitled to be
informed about the reasons for the decision and the duration
of the program. If the person takes exception to the
decision, he may appeal to the administrative committee or
lodge a complaint with the people's court according to the
Law of Administrative Procedure. If the
education-through-labor institution finds that the person
does not conform to the qualifications for the
education-through-labor program or that he should have been
sentenced to criminal punishment, it may report the case to
the reeducation-through-labor administrative committee for
review.
Those undergoing education through labor
are entitled to civic rights prescribed by the Constitution
and the law, except that they must comply with the measures
taken according to the regulations on education through
labor to restrict some of their rights. For instance, they
are not deprived of their political rights and have the
right to vote according to law; they have the freedom of
correspondence and the right to take time off during
festivals and holidays; during the period of education
through labor they are allowed to meet with their family
members, those who are married can live together with their
spouses during visits, and they can be granted leave of
absence or go home to visit family members during holidays.
Those who have acquitted themselves well while being
educated may have their term reduced or be released ahead of
time. Every year about 50 percent of the people undergoing
the education-through-labor program have their term reduced
or are released ahead of time.
The education-through-labor institutions
follow the policy of educating, persuading and redeeming the
offenders, with the emphasis on redeeming. Classes are
opened, and instructors assigned, in these institutions to
conduct systematic ideological, cultural and technical
education. Offenders under the education-through-labor
program work no more than six hours every day.
An average of 50,000 people have been
brought under the education-through-labor program annually
since it was instituted. The overwhelming majority of those
who have been reeducated have turned over a new leaf, and
many have become valuable participants in building the
country. According to surveys conducted over the last few
years, only 7 percent of those released from the
education-through-labor program have lapsed into offense or
crime. The program has done what families, workplaces and
schools cannot do: to prevent those who have dabbled in
crime from committing further anti-social actions and
breaking the law and to turn them into constructive members
of society. Both the public and family members of the
offenders speak highly of the program for its role in
forestalling and reducing crime and maintaining public
order.
China's public security and judicial
organs have carried out their responsibilities strictly
according to law and played an important role in protecting
and guaranteeing the citizens' rights and freedoms. That
explains why China has long been one of the countries with
the lowest incidence of criminal cases and crime rate in the
world. In 1990, the incidence of criminal cases and crime
rate in China were 2 per thousand and 0.6 per thousand
respectively, considerably lower than the figures in some
developed Western countries, which ran as high as 60 per
thousand and 20 per thousand respectively.
V.
Guarantee of the Right to Work
A citizen's right to work is the essential
condition for his right to subsistence. Without the right to
work, there will be no guarantee for the right to
subsistence. The Constitution and the law provide that
citizens have the right to work, rest, receive vocational
training and be paid for their labor and that they have the
right to labor protection and social security.
Having a job is the direct embodiment of
the right to work. In China, with its large population and
weak economy, employment is an outstanding social issue. In
old China, corruption on the part of the Kuomintang
government and the civil war it unleashed led the national
economy to overall collapse and the bankruptcy of large
numbers of industrial and commercial enterprises. By the
beginning of 1948, 70-80 percent of the factories in Tianjin
had shut down; in Guangdong, the number of factories shrank
from more than 400 to less than 100; and in Shanghai,
numerous factories were closed down and the 3,000-odd
factories that survived had to run at 20 percent of their
normal capacity. Numerous workers lost their jobs as a
result of the massive number of industrial and commercial
closedowns. By 1949, the year the nation was liberated,
4,742,000 workers, or 60 percent of the nation's total, were
jobless. Such was the heavy social burden New China
inherited from the old society.
After the founding of New China, the
people's government attached great importance to this
problem and took various practical measures to ensure
employment. In less than four years, virtually all the
unemployed left over from old China started work again.
Since then, with the annual population growth of 14 million,
employment has always been a cardinal issue in China's
economic life. For a considerably long period of time,
job-waiting people in urban areas basically counted on the
government for job placements and most of them were employed
in public works. Since the policy of reform and opening to
the outside world was adopted in 1979, China has instituted
a multi-ownership economic system with public ownership of
the means of production taking the dominant position. The
employment system whereby the state assigns virtually all
the jobs has been revamped and the principle has been
carried out to open up all avenues for job opportunities by
combining the efforts in three fields--job placements by
labor departments, employment in enterprises organized by
those who need jobs, and self-employment. Labor companies
have been established in the service of job-seekers, and
vocational training has been expanded to improve the
laborer's qualities and provide them with as many job
opportunities as possible. To solve the problem of
employment of the rural surplus labor force resulting from
the development of production and the improvement of
productivity, the government has devoted major efforts to
setting up rural enterprises and encouraged farmers to
develop industrial and sideline occupations along
specialized lines and on a household basis. Thus those
farmers who have quit farming can have work to do without
leaving their villages. Meanwhile, plans have been made for
some of the surplus laborers to work in cities. In the
economic rectification designed to raise the economic
efficiency of enterprises and deepen their reform, a number
of enterprises have been closed down, suspended, merged or
switched to other lines of production in the last couple of
years. The government, attaching great importance to the
resettlement of the workers in these enterprises, has
provided short- or medium-term training so that they can
adapt to their new jobs quickly. In 1990, the number of
workers in urban and rural areas reached 567 million, about
3.1 times what it was in 1949; the number of employees in
cities and towns topped 147.3 million, 9.6 times that in
1949; and the urban and rural unemployment rate stood at
only 2.5 percent.
In old China, women, who accounted for
half of the nation's total population, not only suffered
class oppression, but also had no right in the family,
because of failure to gain economic independence. Those who
were able to find jobs in society were subjected to every
kind of discrimination. In New China, women enjoy the same
right to work as men. The government devotes major efforts
to developing social welfare, including nurseries and
kindergartens, and encourages women to take up jobs,
enabling them to acquire economic as well as political
independence. The state law and policies provide special
protection for women's employment. The Constitution provides
the principle of equal pay for equal work to men and women
alike. The government labor department intervenes and
ensures that the mistake is corrected promptly whenever
women are found to be discriminated against in their work
units, and it stipulates that women get their normal pay
during maternity leave. As a result, the number of employed
women has been increased steadily, and their field of
employment constantly expanding. Nowadays, women's
employment rate has exceeded 96 percent in town and the
countryside, trailing behind that of men's by less than two
percentage points.
College graduates' employment is fully
guaranteed in China. The situation is a far cry from old
China, when graduation was synonymous to unemployment for
college students. Since the founding of New China, the
government has followed the policy of unified job assignment
for all college graduates and thus ensured that every one of
them has the opportunity to work. In the past 10 years, the
government has reformed the job assignment system by
combining the students' own choices with the state's
guarantee of jobs. The state sees to it that, in light of
the needs of various areas in economic development, every
college graduate is provided with a suitable job on a
voluntary basis. This is why unemployment is out of the
question for college graduates in China.
In socialist China, the government
guarantees the basic necessities of every worker and his
family and sees to it that their life gradually improves
with economic growth. Although Chinese workers have
relatively low monetary wages, they enjoy a large amount of
subsidies, including financial subsidies for housing,
children's attendance at nursery and school and staple and
non-staple foods, as well as social insurance such as
medical treatment, industrial injury and retirement pension
and many other welfare items, which are not counted in the
wages. Statistics indicate that urban residents in China pay
only 3-5 percent of their living expenses for housing,
communication and medical treatment. Since China carried out
reforms in 1979, past payment measures have been modified.
On the basis of economic growth and labor-productivity
increase, workers' wage levels have been raised
proportionally. Therefore, the wage levels of workers have
increased rapidly, and there has been an obvious improvement
in the consumption level of all Chinese residents.
Statistics in 1990 showed that the average consumption level
per capita of urban residents had increased from 149 yuan in
1952 to 1,442 yuan, an inflation-adjusted increase of 3.8
times.
China pays close attention to labor
protection and has issued 1,682 laws, rules and regulations
in 29 categories in this regard, while 28 provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the
central government have their own local laws and regulations
for labor protection. In addition, 452 articles of state
technical standards regarding occupational safety and
hygiene have been enacted throughout the country. China has
established a state supervision system insuring labor
safety, hygiene, protection for female workers and a
work-hour and vacation schedule. So far more than 2,700
labor supervision institutions have been set up throughout
China with some 30,000 supervisory personnel. The duty of
the supervision institutions is to monitor the work of
enterprises and their management with regard to labor safety
and hygiene so as to stimulate the enterprises to improve
working conditions constantly.
China adopts the policy of "safety first
and prevention first" in labor protection, and combines
state inspection with enterprise management and worker
supervision. The government requires that 10 to 20 percent
of the enterprise's annual renovation fund be used for labor
safety and hygiene. Labor protection is regarded by the
state as an important factor in appraising the management
skill of an enterprise. In cases of casualties, an
investigation will be conducted to look into the
responsibility of the leaders and personnel concerned.
China provides free medical service in the
urban state institutions and undertakings and co-operative
medical service in most rural areas. Thus both urban and
rural workers are assured of medical care. Those wounded or
disabled on the job are provided living expenses from the
state or the collective. In order to raise the level of
labor protection, China has set up many testing centers for
occupational safety and hygiene and labor-safety education
offices. Dozens of universities have established
safety-engineering departments. Labor and industry
departments have set up scores of scientific research
institutes which attempt to strengthen labor safety and
improve working conditions for workers through scientific
research, designing, production, usage and management.
Compared with the Sixth Five-Year Plan period (1981-85),
these efforts resulted in a 9.53 percent decrease in on-duty
deaths and a 37.95 percent decrease in serious injury in
state-owned and large collective enterprises during the
Seventh Five-Year Plan period (1986-90).
The Chinese government pays special
attention to the protection of female workers. In July 1988,
the State Council promulgated Regulations on Labor
Protection of Female Workers, laying down specific
guidelines. For example, it is forbidden to make female
workers engage in particularly strenuous work or work
harmful to their physiological well-being. Also stipulated
are concrete protections for female workers during the
menstrual period, and also during pregnancy, maternity leave
and breast-feeding, at which periods, their basic wages must
remain the same and their work-contracts cannot be
terminated. In recent years, a special fund has been
established in many places to offer living subsidies to
women during breast-feeding and leave.
Chinese workers are the masters of their
enterprises. Workers' interests are closely connected with
the enterprises' prosperity, and there is no conflict of
fundamental interests between the managers and the workers.
This reality determines that China's system of protecting
workers' rights is different from that under the wage-labor
system. According to China's Law Concerning the Industrial
Enterprises Owned by the Whole People, workers can directly
participate in the formulation and supervision of
regulations concerning the enterprise's operation,
management, labor, personnel, wage, welfare, social
security, collective welfare, etc. through the workers
congress. China's trade unions play a particularly important
role in the protection of workers' right to work. Since
China adopted the policy of reform and opening to the
outside world in 1979, trade unions have accomplished the
following five tasks: They have, first, actively practiced
and improved the system of workers' congresses; second, set
up various workers' schools to perfect the education system;
third, organized labor emulation drives and mobilized
workers and staff to overfulfill state plans; fourth,
protected workers' material and spiritual interests and
guaranteed their welfare; and fifth, set up committees to
deal with labor disputes.
In July 1987, the State Council issued the
Interim Rules on Labor Disputes in State-Owned Enterprises.
Aimed at readjusting labor relations in state-owned
enterprises, this administrative law deals with disputes
arising from the implementation of labor contracts and the
dismissal of workers who violate discipline. Institutions
specialized in handling these disputes include the
enterprise labor dispute mediation committee, local labor
dispute arbitration committee and the people's court. Most
disputes are resolved through mediation by the committees.
Only a minority of cases are settled through arbitration or
by the people's court. Incomplete statistics show that in
1990 enterprise labor dispute mediation committees and local
labor dispute arbitration committees throughout China
handled 18,573 labor dispute cases and settled 16,813, of
which 15,881 were settled through mediation with a success
rate as high as 94 percent. Only 932 cases were settled
through arbitration, about 6 percent of the total decided
cases. There were only 218 cases settled through court suit
after arbitration failed, accounting for about 1.2 percent
of the total number of completed cases.
The Chinese government attaches great
importance to labor legislation. In accordance with the
Constitution, the State Council and state labor
administration departments have promulgated laws and
regulations regarding wages, welfare, worker safety and
health, as well as vocational training and grading, working
and resting hours, trade unions and democratic management of
enterprises. At present, the drafting of a labor law is
under way.
VI.
Citizens Enjoy Freedom Of Religious Belief
here are many religions in China, such as
Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism.
Among them Buddhism, Daoism and Islam are more widely
accepted. It is difficult to count the number of Buddhist
and Daoist believers, since there are no strict admittance
rites. Minority nationalities such as the Hui, Uygur, Kazak,
Tatar, Tajik, Uzbek, Kirgiz, Dongxiang, Salar and Bonan
believe in Islam, a total of 17 million people. There are
3.5 million and 4.5 million people in China following
Catholicism and Protestantism respectively.
China's Constitution stipulates that
citizens enjoy freedom of religious belief. The state
protects normal religious activities and the lawful rights
and interests of the religious circles. The Criminal Law,
Civil Law, Electoral Law, Military Service Law and
Compulsory Education Law and some other laws make clear and
specific provisions protecting religious freedom and equal
rights of religious citizens. No state organ, social
organization or individual may compel citizens to believe
in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they
discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not
believe in, any religion. State functionaries who illegally
deprive a citizen of the freedom of religious belief shall
be investigated, and legal responsibility affixed where due
according to Article 147 of the Criminal Law.
The government has established departments
of religious affairs responsible for the implementation of
the policy of religious freedom. During the "cultural
revolution," the government's religious policy was violated.
After the "cultural revolution," especially since China
initiated the reform and opening to the outside world, the
Chinese government has done a great deal of work and made
notable achievements in restoring, amplifying and
implementing the policy of religious freedom and
guaranteeing citizens' rights in this regard.
With the support and help of the Chinese
government, religious facilities destroyed during the
"cultural revolution" have gradually been restored and
repaired. By the end of 1989, more than 40,000 monasteries,
temples and churches had been restored and opened to the
public upon approval of the governments at various levels.
Houses and land used for religious purposes are exempted
from taxes. Temples, monasteries and churches which need
repair but lack money get assistance from the government.
Since 1980, financial allocations from the central
government for the maintenance of temples, monasteries and
churches have reached over 140 million yuan. The maintenance
of the Potala Palace in Tibet received 35 million yuan from
the government. Local governments also allocated funds for
the maintenance of temples, monasteries and churches.
There are now eight national religious
organizations in China. They are: the China Buddhist
Association, the China Daoist Association, the China Islamic
Association, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the
National Administration Commission of the Chinese Catholic
Church, the Chinese Catholic Bishops College, the Three-Self
Patriotic Movement Committee of the Protestant Churches of
China and the China Christian Council. There are also 164
provincial-level and more than 2,000 county-level religious
organizations. All religious organizations and all religious
citizens can independently organize religious activities and
perform their religious duties under the protection of the
Constitution and the law. There are 47 religious colleges in
China, such as the Chinese Institute of Buddhist Studies,
the Institute of Islamic Theology, the Jinling Union
Theological Seminary of the Chinese Protestant Churches in
Nanjing, the Chinese Catholic Seminary and the Chinese
Institute of Daoist Studies. Since 1980, more than 2,000
young professional religious personnel have been graduated
from religious colleges and more than 100 religious students
have been sent to 12 countries and regions of the world for
further studies. China has more than ten religious
publications and about 200,000 professional religious
personnel -- nearly 9,000 of them are deputies to the
people's congresses and members of the Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference at various levels. Along
with deputies and members from other circles, they
participate in discussions of state affairs and enjoy equal
democratic rights politically.
In China, because of these policies,
different religions and religious organizations as well as
religious people and nonreligious people respect each other
and live in harmony.
The religious freedom that Chinese
citizens enjoy under the Constitution and the law entails
certain obligations stipulated by the same. The Constitution
makes it clear that no one may make use of religion to
engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the
health of other citizens or interfere with the state's
educational system. Those who engage in criminal activities
under the subterfuge of religion shall be dealt with
according to law, whether they are religious people or not.
Law-breaking believers, like other law-breaking citizens,
are dealt with according to law. Among the religious people
who were dealt with according to law, some were engaged in
subversion against the state regime or activities
endangering national security, some instigated the masses to
defy state laws and regulations, others incited the masses
to infighting that seriously disturbed public order, and
still others swindled money, molested other people
physically and mentally and seduced women in the name of
religion. In short, none of them were arrested only because
of their religious beliefs.
Guided by the principles of independence,
self-rule and self-management, Chinese religions oppose any
outside control or interference in their internal affairs so
as to safeguard Chinese citizens' real enjoyment of freedom
of religious belief. Before the founding of the People's
Republic of China, China's Catholic and Protestant churches
were all under the control of foreign religious forces.
Dozens of "foreign missions" and "religious orders and
congregations" carved out spheres of influence on the
Chinese land, forming many "states within a state." At that
time there were 143 Catholic dioceses in China, but only
about 20 bishops were Chinese nationals -- and they were
powerless -- a good indication of the semi-feudal and
semi-colonial nature of the old Chinese society. Chinese
Catholic and Protestant circles resented this state of
affairs and, as early as in the 1920s, some insightful
people proposed that the Chinese church do its own
missionary work, support itself and manage its own affairs.
But these proposals were not realized in old China. After
the founding of New China, Chinese religious circles rid
themselves of foreign control and realized self-management,
self-support and self-propagation. The Chinese people
finally control their own religious organizations.
The Chinese government actively supports
Chinese religious organizations and religious personnel in
their friendly exchanges with foreign religious
organizations and personnel on the basis of independence,
equality and mutual respect. International relationships
between religious circles are regarded as part of the
non-governmental exchange of the Chinese people with other
peoples of the world. In recent years, Chinese religious
organizations have established and developed friendly
relations with more than 70 countries and regions and sent
delegations to many international religious conferences and
symposiums. Chinese religious groups have joined world
religious groups such as the World Fellowship of Buddhists,
the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, the World
Conference on Religion and Peace, the Asian Conference on
Religion and Peace and the World Council of Churches. Since
1955, excluding the "cultural revolution" period, the
Chinese Muslims have never stopped their pilgrimages to
Mecca. The Chinese government has offered all kinds of
facility and assistance for these trips. Between 1955 and
1990 more than 11,000 Chinese Muslims participated in the
Mecca pilgrimages, several dozen times the total before the
founding of New China. In recent years the annual number of
pilgrims has surpassed 1,000 -- 1,500 in 1987, 1,100 in
1988, 2,400 in 1989, 1,480 in 1990, and 1,517 in 1991.
VII. Guarantee of the Rights of The Minority Nationality
China is a unified, multi-national
country, with 56 nationalities in all. The Han people take
up 92 percent of the total population of the country,
leaving 8 percent for the other 55 nationalities. To realize
equality, unity and common prosperity among the
nationalities is China's basic principle guiding
relationships between nationalities. The Constitution
provides that all nationalities in the People's Republic of
China are equal. The state protects the lawful rights and
interests of the minority nationalities and upholds and
develops the relationship of equality, unity and mutual
assistance among all of China's nationalities.
Discrimination against and oppression of any nationality are
prohibited, and any acts that undermine the unity and create
splits among the nationalities are also prohibited. The
Constitution clearly stipulates that in striving for unity
among all its nationalities, China opposes great-nation
chauvinism, especially great-Han chauvinism, as well as
local nationalism.
In old China, severe national
discrimination and oppression existed over a long period of
time. Many of the minority nationalities, who were in
straitened circumstances and not countenanced, had to hide
in the mountains and live a life of seclusion from the
outside world.
After the People's Republic of China was
founded in 1949, discrimination against and oppression of
minority nationalities were abolished and their condition
underwent a thorough change. In the 1950s, the Chinese
government organized a large-scale investigation for
identification of the nationalities. After scientific
differentiation, 55 minority nationalities were acknowledged
and this fact was announced publicly. Most of the minority
nationalities, for the first time in China's history, became
equal members of the great family of Chinese nationalities.
New China brought about the system of
regional autonomy for minority nationalities. Organs of
self-government were set up in regions where people of
minority nationalities live in compact communities, and the
internal affairs of the minority nationalities were handled
by themselves. At present, there are throughout the country
159 national autonomous areas, including five autonomous
regions, 30 autonomous prefectures and 124 autonomous
counties (or banners). National autonomous areas exercise
all rights of self-government in accordance with the Law of
the People's Republic of China on Regional National Autonomy
and may work out autonomous rules and specific regulations
according to local political, economic and cultural
characteristics. Without violating the Constitution and the
law, autonomous regions have the right to adopt special
policies and flexible measures; autonomous organs can apply
for permission to make alterations or desist from
implementing resolutions, decisions, orders and instructions
made by higher-level state organs if they are not in
accordance with the situation in autonomous regions. Organs
of self-government have the right to handle local financial,
economic, cultural and educational affairs. In regions where
people of a number of nationalities live together or in
scattered communities, more than 1,500 national townships
were established so as to enable minority nationalities to
enjoy equal rights to the fullest.
In New China the political rights of
minority nationalities are ensured.
Before liberation, the minority
nationalities, like the majority of the Han people, suffered
under severe oppression by the reactionary ruling class. The
oppression in some areas took more savage and cruel forms
than in others. For instance, in old Tibet, over 95 percent
of Tibetans, from generation to generation, were serfs
attached to officials, nobles and lamaseries. According to
the 13-Article Code and the 16-Article Code which had been
enforced for several hundred years in old Tibet, Tibetans
were divided into three classes and nine grades. The lives
of ironsmiths, butchers and women, who were declared an
inferior grade of inferior class in explicit terms, were as
cheap and worthless as a straw rope. This feudal serf system
with its hierarchy of three classes and nine grades was
boltered by cruel punishments such as gouging out eyes,
cutting off feet, removing the tongue, chopping off hands
and arms, pushing an offender off a cliff or drowning. Under
such circumstances, the human rights of the majority of
laboring people were out of the question.
After New China was founded, the old
system was abolished and democratic reforms were carried out
in one minority area after another. In Tibet, the serfs
shook off their chains, and are no longer serf-owners'
private property that can be bought, sold, transferred,
bartered or used to clear a debt, no longer to suffer the
above-mentioned savage punishments, and no longer divided
into the three classes and nine grades. Thanks to the
democratic reform, the minority nationalities, oppressed for
generations, obtained the freedom of person and human
dignity, won basic human rights and for the first time
became masters of their own destiny.
Today, the minority nationalities, as
equals of the Han nationality, enjoy all the civil rights
which are set down in the Constitution and the law. In
addition, the minority nationalities enjoy some special
rights accorded to them by law.
The right of the minority nationalities to
participate in the exercise of the supreme power of the
state is specially protected. The Constitution stipulates
that "all the minority nationalities are entitled to
appropriate representation" in the National People's
Congress (NPC), the highest organ of state power. The
proportion of deputies elected by the minority nationalities
to the NPC in the total number of NPC deputies is always
about twice as large as the proportion of members of the
minority nationalities in the country's total population. Of
the deputies to the Seventh National People's Congress, 455
or 15 percent come from minority nationalities. And even the
Loba, Hezhe and Monba nationalities, with only several
thousand people, are represented in the NPC.
The local people's congress is the local
organ of state power. As prescribed in China's Electoral
Law, in areas where the people of minority nationalities
live in compact communities, each minority nationality of a
compact community should have its own deputies to the local
people's congress. The law also has stipulations for special
consideration to be given to the deputies from each minority
nationality in the election. According to these
stipulations, if the total population of a minority
nationality in a region where people of minority
nationalities live in compact communities is less than 15
percent of the total population of the region, the
population that each deputy of the minority nationality
represents can be less than the population that each deputy
to the local people's congress represents.
The Chinese people of all nationalities
are eligible to hold any posts in the state organ and
government departments. In this respect, there is also no
discrimination against the minority nationalities. For
instance, not a few members of minority nationalities are
holding or once held such high-ranking state posts as
vice-president of the state, vice-chairman of the Standing
Committee of the NPC, vice-premier of the State Council,
president of the Supreme People's Court, and vice-chairman
of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The Law on Regional
National Autonomy prescribes that citizens of the minority
nationality that exercises regional national autonomy should
serve as director or deputy-director of the standing
committee of the people's congress of the autonomous region;
and the chairman of the regional autonomous government and
head of the administration of the autonomous prefecture and
the autonomous county should be citizens of the nationality
that exercises self-government. The staff and officials of
the people's governments of the autonomous regions, and of
the departments affiliated to them, should include members
of the nationality that exercises regional national autonomy
and members of other minority nationalities. Statistics show
that in 1989 the number of minority officials made up 17.27
percent of the total number of directors and
deputy-directors of the standing committees of the people's
congresses of various provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities directly under the central government. The
number of minority officials made up 12.66 percent of the
governors or vice-governors of provinces, mayors or
deputy-mayors of municipalities, and chairmen or
vicechairmen of autonomous regions. Of the directors or
deputy-directors of the standing committees of the people's
congresses at levels of city, prefecture and autonomous
prefecture, minority officials reached 14.20 percent. The
number of minority officials among mayors or deputy-mayors,
commissioners and directors of prefectures took up 11.90
percent. Of the directors or deputy-directors of the
standing committees of the people's congresses at the county
level, minority officials totalled 17.30 percent. Minority
officials made up 15.16 percent of county magistrates. All
these proportions surpass 8 percent which is the proportion
covered by the population of the minority nationalities in
the total population of the country.
The state always pays close attention to
training cadres from among people of minority nationalities.
In recent years, the number of minority nationality cadres
has gone up at a rate of more than 10,000 people annually.
Now there are 37,000 Tibetan cadres throughout Tibet, making
up 66.6 percent of the total number of cadres; this breaks
down to about 72 percent at autonomous-region level and 61.2
percent at county level. The number of Mongolian cadres
accounted for 50 percent of the total number of cadres in
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The rights of the national autonomous
regions to economic, cultural and social development are
given special consideration. Before the founding of the
People's Republic of China, the economic, cultural and
social development in minority areas was extremely backward.
At that time, some areas were still at the stage of
primitive clan communes, with people practicing
slash-and-burn cultivation. The minority nationalities lived
in dire poverty. The average life expectancy was only 30
years, and epidemic diseases were rampant, with the result
that the population decreased year after year. After the
founding of New China, the people's government actively
helped the minority nationalities develop their economies
and culture in an effort to change their outdated mode of
production. This enabled them to leap over several
historical stages of social development. Now most of the
minority nationalities have solved the problem of food and
clothing, and the total population of the minority
nationalities increased from 35 million in 1953 to 91.20
million in 1990. The growth rate of the population of
minority nationalities is faster than that of the Hans. The
average life expectancy of the minority nationalities is
over 60, an increase of more than 30 years over the past.
In order to help minority nationalities
develop their economies, the state has carried out economic
construction on a large scale in minority areas. In some of
these areas where there was no industry at all in the past,
many large modern industrial enterprises have been set up.
These include the Karamay Oilfield in Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region, the Baotou Iron and Steel Co. in the
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Longyang Xia
Hydroelectric Power Station in Qinghai, the Daba Power Plant
in Guizhou, the Yangbajin Thermal and Power Station in
Tibet, the Guizhou Aluminium Works in Guizhou, the Holingol
River Coalfield in Inner Mongolia, the North Xinjiang
Railway in Xinjiang, the Sichuan-Tibet Highway and the
Qinghai-Tibet Highway. Before liberation, there were no
highways worthy of the name in Tibet. When the British
wanted to send a car to the Dalai Lama as a gift, it had to
be dismantled and carried to Lhasa by yak-back. At present,
a highway network centered on Lhasa has been built, its
mileage reaching 21,800 kilometers, and many domestic and
international airlines have already opened. The state always
gives aid in the form of labor, material and financial
resources to national autonomous regions. Today the central
government provides subsidies totalling nearly 8 billion
yuan a year to minority areas in eight provinces and
autonomous regions. Of them, Tibet receives more than 1.2
billion yuan. Besides, the state also allocates special
funds totalling 600 million yuan a year to aid minority
areas, such as development funds to support underdeveloped
areas, subsidies for areas inhabited by minority
nationalities, special investments in capital construction
in frontier areas, as well as operating expenses to
subsidize border construction. The government pursues a
tax-reduction and tax-exemption policy towards
poverty-stricken minority areas in addition to many special
measures adopted to lighten their financial burdens, provide
preferential investment for them and send them help in the
form of brain power and wholesale contract to enable them to
get rid of poverty. Special funds have been set up to supply
food and clothing to minority areas. The government has also
arranged for the economically developed areas to provide
assistance to the economic construction in minority areas.
The economic construction in minority areas has made great
progress thanks to help from the state and efforts by the
local people. The total output value of industry and
agriculture of minority regions in 1949 was 3.66 billion
yuan; of this, 3.12 billion yuan came from agricultural
production and 540 million yuan from industrial production.
In the same areas the total industrial and agricultural
output value in 1990 came to 227.28 billion yuan, an
increase of 23.6 times by calculating at 1980 constant
price. Of this, the value of agricultural output was 97.776
billion yuan, up 8.1 times; and 129.506 billion yuan for
industry, a hike of 135.5 times.
As for employment policy, the Chinese
government has formulated a special policy for the minority
nationalities. The government requires that state-owned
enterprises in minority areas give precedence to local
citizens of the minority nationalities over all others when
recruiting workers, and that various local governments, when
recruiting workers for state-owned enterprises, should
employ minority farmers and herdsmen from rural and pastoral
areas in a planned way.
The Chinese government has greatly
developed medical and health undertakings in the minority
regions, tackling the problem of shortage of doctors and
medicine that has existed for a long time there. In 1990,
health organizations in those regions increased to 31,973,
providing 359,830 hospital beds, and the ranks of doctors
and nurses have grown to 488,600. While furthering the
practice of modern medicine, the government encourages the
development of traditional minority medical practice
including the Tibetan, Uygur, Mongolian and Dai medicines.
The central government has sent a large number of medical
teams to minority regions. During the period from 1973 to
mid-1987, the state organized medical teams totalling 2,600
persons from some dozen provinces and cities and sent them
into Tibet.
The Chinese government has paid a great
deal of attention to maintaining and developing the
excellent traditional cultures of various nationalities, and
made tremendous efforts to promote the culture and education
of the minority nationalities. By 1990, there had been 75
institutions of higher learning established in minority
areas where in previous years there were none. A total of 12
nationality colleges run specially for minority nationality
students have been set up in different parts of the country.
In addition, some well-known universities including Beijing
University and Qinghua University run classes specially for
minority nationality students. When enrolling new students,
colleges and vocational secondary schools appropriately
relax admission standards for minority examinees. The
government has actively created conditions for teenagers
living in pastoral and remote areas to receive education by
establishing boarding schools in minority areas, where
students coming from pastoral, mountainous and
poverty-stricken areas usually enjoy grants-in-aid. The
state has transferred many teachers from inland and coastal
areas to remote minority regions to help expand educational
undertakings there. Between 1974 and 1988, the number of
teachers helping in Tibet alone numbered 2,969. The
enrollment of minority students in colleges and universities
throughout the country in 1989 was 102.4 times that of 1950;
in ordinary middle schools, they totalled 70.3 times that of
1951; and in primary schools, 11.2 times that of 1951.
China's law stipulates that all minority
peoples have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken
and written languages. In the performance of their
functions, the selfgovernment organs in autonomous regions
should use one or several locally used languages according
to the regulations of autonomy set by the autonomous
regions. Those organs which simultaneously use several
commonly used languages in their work can give priority to
the language of the nationality which exercises regional
autonomy. The spoken and written languages of minority
nationalities are equal to the Han language (Chinese) in
judicial activities. Citizens of all nationalities have the
right to use the language of their own nationality in legal
proceedings. Trials in regions where minority nationalities
live in compact communities. or which are inhabited by many
nationalities should be conducted in the commonly used
language of the locality. Indictments, court verdicts,
notices and other documents, if necessary, should be written
in one or several local languages.
The central government supports minority
nationalities in the development of culture and education
through the use of their own languages and has helped ten
minority nationalities create their own script. Both central
and regional specialized publishing houses and news agencies
were established to publish minority-language newspapers,
magazines and books, which in 1989, according to statistics,
were respectively 3.1, 7.6 and 5.8 times the number
published throughout the country in 1952. People in minority
regions can tune in to the Central People's Broadcasting
Station every day to listen to programs in Mongolian,
Tibetan, Uygur, Kazak and Korean languages. Each minority
region runs radio and TV programs in one or several minority
languages appropriate to the nationality population living
there.
The Chinese government fully respects the
traditional culture and customs of minority nationalities,
supports various minority arts, and encourages minority
people to go in for all forms of artistic and sports
activities. People from minority areas can take holidays on
their own traditional festivals. Gold, silver and other raw
materials are allotted in certain amounts by the government
to the minority peoples for the production of the daily
necessities or luxury articles including silks, satins,
shoes, hats, jewelry, jade artifacts and gold or silver
ornaments.
The disparity between the minority regions
and the inland and coastal areas arose and developed over a
long historical period. For more than 40 years since the
People's Republic was founded, the Chinese government has
made positive achievements in its effort to narrow the gap,
promote social development and bring about a change for the
better in the backward minority areas.
VIII.
Family Planning and Protection Of Human Rights
The Chinese government implements a family
planning policy in the light of the Constitution, with the
aim of promoting economic and social development, raising
people's living standards, enhancing the quality of its
population and safeguarding the people's rights to enjoy a
better life.
China is a developing country with the
biggest population in the world. Many people, little arable
land, comparatively inadequate per-capita share of natural
resources plus a relatively backward economy and culture --
these features spell out China's basic national conditions.
The population which is expanding too
quickly poses a sharp contradiction to economic and social
development, the utilization of resources and environmental
protection, places a serious constraint on China's economic
and social development, and drags improvement of livelihood
and the quality of the people. By the end of 1990, the
mainland population had reached 1.14 billion. With such an
immense population base, China, despite the implementation
of birth control, still sees a yearly net increase of 17
million people, a number equal to the population of a
medium-sized country. As for the per-capita area of
cultivated land, it had dropped to 1.3 mu, representing only
25 percent of the world average. Similarly, the per-capita
share of freshwater resources is just one quarter of the
world average. China's grain production ranks first in the
world, but divided among the population, the amount of grain
per person accounts for just 22 percent of that in the
United States. More than a quarter of the annual addition to
the national income is consumed by the new population born
during the same year. As a result, funds for accumulation
have to be cut, and the speed of economic growth slowed
down. The rapid swelling of the population has brought about
many pressures on the country's employment, education,
housing, medical care, and communications and
transportation. Faced with the gravity of this situation,
the government, in order to guarantee people's minimum
living conditions and to enable citizens not only to have
enough to eat and wear but also to grow better off, cannot
do as some people imagine -- wait for a high level of
economic development to initiate a natural decline in
birthrate. If we did so, the population would grow without
restriction, and the economy would deteriorate steadily.
Hence, China has to strive for economic growth by trying in
every possible way to increase the productive forces, while
at the same time practice the policy of family planning to
strictly control population growth so that it may suit
economic and social development. This is the only correct
choice that any government responsible to the people and
their descendants can make under China's given set of
special circumstances.
It is universally acknowledged that China
has achieved tremendous successes in family planning. The
birthrate dropped by a big margin from 33.43 per thousand in
1970 to 21.06 per thousand in 1990, and the natural
population growth dropped from 25.83 per thousand to 14.39
per thousand. In 1970, the child-bearing rate of Chinese
women was 5.81, and the figure decreased to 2.31 in 1990. At
present, the above three indicators are lower than the
average level of other developing countries. To a certain
extent, this success has mitigated the contradiction between
China's ballooning population and its economic and social
development. It has played an important role in advancing
socialist modernization and raising the living standard and
the quality of the population. Also it has been an important
contribution to the stability of the world's population.
The Chinese government, proceeding from
national conditions, has fixed the target of population
growth and formulated the following family planning policy:
delayed marriage and postponement of having children, giving
birth to fewer but healthier children, and one family, one
child. Rural families facing genuine difficulties (including
households with a single daughter) can have a second child
after an interval of several years. Family planning is also
being encouraged among minority nationalities to further
their well-being and prosperity, and is based on the
minority people's own free will. The specific requirements
for minorities are different from those for Han families and
are determined by the governments of autonomous regions and
provinces according to the population, economy, resources,
culture and customs of each nationality. Such a population
policy, taking into account both the state's necessity to
control population growth and the masses' real problems and
degree of acceptance, tallies with China's actual economic
and social situation and conforms to the people's
fundamental interests. As experience proves, the policy has
been understood and supported by the masses after
thoroughgoing publicity and education. The fourth census
showed that among the children born in 1989 throughout the
country, the more-than-three-children birthrate dropped to
19.32 percent from 62.21 percent in 1970.
China adheres to the principle of
combining government guidance with the wishes of the masses
when carrying out its family planning policy. Since it
involves all families, it would be impossible to put the
policy into effect in a country with a population of more
than 1.1 billion without the masses' understanding, support
and conscientious participation. Family planning is also a
reform of social custom and cannot possibly be carried out
just by administrative orders. In the countryside, which is
inhabited by 80 percent of the population, millennia-old
traditional ideas remain influential, the economy is
backward in some areas, and the social welfare and guarantee
systems are still inadequate. People have real difficulties
in their production and livelihood. Given these factors, the
government has always given priority to tireless publicity
and educational work among the masses to enhance public
awareness that birth control, as a fundamental policy, has a
direct bearing on the nation's prosperity and people's happy
family life.
Government officials are required to take
the lead in carrying out the policy and set a good example.
In recent years, the Chinese Family Planning Association has
set up more than 600,000 grass-roots branches with 32
million members to aid the masses in self-education,
self-management and self-service, combining ideological
education with helping the masses solve practical problems.
At the same time, the government has
adopted some necessary economic and administrative measures
as supplementary means. These measures are all adopted in
keeping with the law, and with the ultimate aim of
persuasion.
The family planning program puts
contraception first, to protect the health of women and
children. The government has made great efforts to spread
scientific knowledge of contraceptive practices, and to
provide couples of child-bearing age who do not want child
with safe, efficacious, simple and inexpensive
contraceptives and the choice of a birth-control operation.
At present, about 75 percent of the couples of child-bearing
age throughout the country are resorting to various kinds of
contraceptive practices. All forms of forced abortion are
resolutely opposed. Artificial abortion, only as a remedy
for contraception failure, is performed on a voluntary basis
and with guarantee of safety. In a situation of a notably
lower birthrate, the ratio of annual births to artificial
abortions is about the medium level in the current world.
This has resulted from effective practices of contraception.
Now China is adopting practical and effective measures to
further lower the ratio.
China's population policy has two
objectives: control of population growth and improvement in
quality of the population. Work in this field not only
encourages couples of child-bearing age to have fewer
children but also provides them with mother care, baby care
and advice on optimum methods of child-bearing and
child-rearing. These services include premarriage check-ups,
heredity consultation, pre-natal diagnosis and care during
pregnancy to help couples have sound, healthy babies.
Drowning or abandoning female infants, a
pernicious practice left over from feudal society, occurs
much less often now, but has not been stamped out entirely
in some remote areas. China's law clearly forbids the
drowning of infants and other acts of killing them. The
government has adopted practical measures for handling these
kinds of criminal offenses according to law.
China's family planning policy fully
conforms to Item 9 of the United Nations' Declaration of
Mexico City on Population and Growth in 1984, which demands
that "countries which consider that their population growth
rate hinders their national development plans should adopt
appropriate population plans and programs." It also accords
with the UN World Population Plan of Action which stresses
that every country has the sovereign right to formulate and
implement its own population policy. Some people who censure
China's family planning policy as "violating human rights"
and being "inhuman" do not understand or consider China's
real situation. But some others have deliberately distorted
the facts in an attempt to put pressure on China and
interfere in China's internal affairs. China has only two
alternatives in handling its population problem: to
implement the family planning policy or to allow blind
growth in births. The former choice enables children to be
born and grow up healthily and live a better life, while the
latter one leads to unrestrained expansion of population so
that the majority of the people will be short of food and
clothing, while some will even tend to die young. Which of
the two pays more attention to human rights and is more
humane? The answer is obvious.
X.
Active Participation in International Human Rights
Activities
China recognizes and respects the purposes
and principles of the Charter of the United Nations related
to the protection and promotion of human rights. It
appreciates and supports the efforts of the UN in promoting
universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,
and takes an active part in UN activities in the human
rights field. China advocates mutual respect for state
sovereignty and maintains that priority should be given to
the safeguarding of the right of the people of the
developing countries to subsistence and development, thus
creating the necessary conditions for people all over the
world to enjoy various human rights. China is opposed to
interfering in other countries' internal affairs on the
pretext of human rights and has made unremitting efforts to
eliminate various abnormal phenomena and strengthen
international cooperation in the field of human rights.
In April 1955, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai
signed the "Draft Final Communique of the Asian-African
Conference" (also known as the "Bandung Declaration") at the
Asian and African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia. The
communique declared that the conference fully supports the
fundamental principles concerning human rights laid down in
the UN Charter, and made the "respect for fundamental human
rights and for the purposes and principles of the Charter of
the United Nations" the first of the ten principles of
peaceful coexistence. In May of the same year, Zhou Enlai,
speaking at an enlarged session of the Standing Committee of
the National People's Congress, said that "the ten
principles contained in the Bandung Declaration also include
respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes
and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.... All
these are the principles that have been consistently
advocated by the Chinese people and adhered to by China."
In his speech during the general debate at
the 41st session of the United Nations General Assembly held
in 1986, the Chinese foreign minister, when mentioning the
20th anniversary of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, pointed out that "the two
covenants have played a positive role in realizing the
purposes and principles of the UN Charter concerning respect
for human rights. The Chinese government has consistently
supported these purposes and principles." In September 1988,
the Chinese foreign minister pointed out in his speech at
the 43rd session of the United Nations General Assembly that
the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" is "the first
international instrument which systematically sets forth the
specific contents regarding respect for and protection of
fundamental human rights. Despite its historical
limitations, the Declaration has exerted a farreaching
influence on the development of the post-war international
human rights activities and played a positive role in this
regard."
China has taken an active part in the UN
activities in the sphere of human rights. Since resuming its
lawful seat in the United Nations in 1971, China has sent
its delegation to attend every session of the UN Economic
and Social Council and of the UN General Assembly, and has
taken an active part in deliberation of human rights issues
and stated its views on the issue of human rights, making
its contributions to enriching the connotation of the
concept of human rights. Chinese delegations attended as
observers the UN Human Rights Commission's sessions in 1979,
1980 and 1981. China was elected a member of the Human
Rights Commission at the first regular session of the UN
Economic and Social Council and has been a member ever
since. Since 1984 the human rights affairs experts
recommended by China to the Human Rights Commission have
been continually elected members and alternate members of
the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities. The Chinese members have played an
important role in the sub-commission. They have become
members of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations and
the Working Group on Communications affiliated to the
sub-commission.
China has taken an active part in drafting
and formulating international legal instruments on human
rights within the UN, and has sent delegates to participate
in working groups charged with drafting these instruments,
including the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, the
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of
All Migrant Workers and Their Families, the Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, the Declaration on the Right and
Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society
to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights
and Fundamental Freedoms, and the Declaration on the
Protection of Rights of Persons Belonging to National,
Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. The meetings of
these working groups paid much attention to the suggestions
and amendments put forward by China. Since 1981 China has
participated in every session of the governmental experts
group organized by the UN Commission on Human Rights to
draft the Declaration on the Right to Development and made
positive suggestions until the Declaration on the Right to
Development was passed by the 41st session of the UN General
Assembly in 1986. China energetically supported the
Commission on Human Rights in conducting worldwide
consultation on the implementation of the right to
development and supported the proposal that the right to
development be discussed as an independent agenda item in
the Human Rights Commission. China has always been a
cosponsor country of the Human Rights Commission's
resolution on the right to development.
Since 1980 the Chinese government has
successively signed, ratified and acceded to seven UN human
rights conventions, namely the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crimes
of Apartheid, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women, the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination, the Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees, the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees,
and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Chinese government
has always submitted reports on the implementation of the
related conventions, and seriously and earnestly performed
the obligations it has undertaken.
China has always upheld justice and made
unremitting efforts to safeguard the right of third world
countries to national self-determination and to stop massive
infringements on human rights. As is well known, China has
for many years made unremitting efforts to seek a just and
reasonable resolution of a series of major human rights
issues, including the questions of Cambodia, Afghanistan,
the occupied Palestinian and Arab territories, South Africa
and Namibia, and Panama.
China pays close attention to the issue of
the right to development. China believes that as history
develops, the concept and connotation of human rights also
develop constantly. The Declaration on the Right to
Development provides that human rights refer to both
individual rights and collective rights. This means a
breakthrough in the traditional concept of human rights and
represents a result won through many years of struggle by
the newly-emerging independent countries and the
international community, a result of great significance. In
the world today the gap between the rich and the poor
becomes wider and wider. Social and economic growth in many
developing countries is slow, and one-third of the
population in developing countries still live below the
poverty line. To the people in the developing countries, the
most urgent human rights are still the right to subsistence
and the right to economic, social and cultural development.
Therefore, attention should first be given to the right to
development. China appeals to the international community to
attach importance and give attention to the developing
countries' right to development and adopt positive and
effective measures to eliminate injustice and unreasonable
practice in the world economic order. An earnest effort must
be made to improve the international economic environment,
alleviate and gradually eliminate factors disadvantageous to
developing countries and establish a new international
economic order. Factors which have a negative influence on
the right to development, such as racism, colonialism,
hegemonism and foreign aggression, occupation and
interference must be eliminated. A favorable international
environment must be created for the realization of the right
to development.
Over a long period in the UN activities in
the human rights field, China has firmly opposed to any
country making use of the issue of human rights to sell its
own values, ideology, political standards and mode of
development, and to any country interfering in the internal
affairs of other countries on the pretext of human rights,
the internal affairs of developing countries in particular,
and so hurting the sovereignty and dignity of many
developing countries. Together with other developing
countries, China has waged a resolute struggle against all
such acts of interference, and upheld justice by speaking
out from a sense of fairness. China has always maintained
that human rights are essentially matters within the
domestic jurisdiction of a country. Respect for each
country's sovereignty and non-interference in internal
affairs are universally recognized principles of
international law, which are applicable to all fields of
international relations, and of course applicable to the
field of human rights as well. Section 7 of Article 2 of the
Charter of the United Nations stipulates that "Nothing
contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United
Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within
the domestic jurisdiction of any state...." The Declaration
on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic
Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence
and Sovereignty, the Declaration on Principles of
International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and
Cooperation Among States in Accordance With the Charter of
the United Nations, and the Declaration on the
Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the
Internal Affairs of States, which were all adopted by the
United Nations, contain the following explicit provisions:
"No State or group of States has the right to intervene,
directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the
internal or external affairs of any other State," and every
state has the duty "to refrain from the exploitation and the
distortion of human rights issues as a means of interference
in the internal affairs of States, of exerting pressure on
other States or creating distrust and disorder within and
among States or groups of States." These provisions of
international instruments reflect the will of the
overwhelming majority of countries to safeguard the
fundamental principles of international law and maintain a
normal relationship between states. They are basic
principles that must be followed in international human
rights activities. The argument that the principle of
non-interference in internal affairs does not apply to the
issue of human rights is, in essence, a demand that
sovereign states give up their state sovereignty in the
field of human rights, a demand that is contrary to
international law. Using the human rights issue for the
political purpose of imposing the ideology of one country on
another is no longer a question of human rights, but a
manifestation of power politics in the form of interference
in the internal affairs of other countries. Such abnormal
practice in international human rights activities must be
eliminated.
China is in favor of strengthening
international cooperation in the realm of human rights on
the basis of mutual understanding and seeking a common
ground while reserving differences. However, no country in
its effort to realize and protect human rights can take a
route that is divorced from its history and its economic,
political and cultural realities. A human rights system must
be ratified and protected by each sovereign state through
its domestic legislation. As pointed out in a resolution of
the UN General Assembly at its 45th session: "Each State has
the right freely to choose and develop its political,
social, economic and cultural systems." It is also noted in
the resolution of the 46th conference on human rights that
no single mode of development is applicable to all cultures
and peoples. It is neither proper nor feasible for any
country to judge other countries by the yardstick of its own
mode or to impose its own mode on others. Therefore, the
purpose of international protection of human rights and
related activities should be to promote normal cooperation
in the international field of human rights and international
harmony, mutual understanding and mutual respect.
Consideration should be given to the differing views on
human rights held by countries with different political,
economic and social systems, as well as different
historical, religious and cultural backgrounds.
International human rights activities should be carried on
in the spirit of seeking common ground while reserving
differences, mutual respect, and the promotion of
understanding and cooperation.
China has always held that to effect
international protection of human rights, the international
community should interfere with and stop acts that endanger
world peace and security, such as gross human rights
violations caused by colonialism, racism, foreign aggression
and occupation, as well as apartheid, racial discrimination,
genocide, slave trade and serious violation of human rights
by international terrorist organizations. These are
important aspects of international cooperation in the realm
of human rights and an arduous task facing current
international human rights protection activities.
There is now a change over the world
pattern from the old to the new, and the world is more
turbulent than before. Hegemonism and power politics
continue to exist and endanger world peace and development.
Interference in other countries' internal affairs and the
pushing of power politics on the pretext of human rights are
obstructing the realization of human rights and fundamental
freedoms. In face of such a world situation, China is ready
to work with the international community in a continued and
unremitting effort to build a just and reasonable new order
of international relations and to realize the purpose of the
United Nations to uphold and promote human rights and
fundamental freedoms.
information Office of the State Council
of the People's Republic of China
November 1991, Beijing
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