Freedom of speech laureate
Liu Xiaobo. Although the 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the "
subversion of state power" and "protection of
state secrets" clauses in their law system to imprison those who criticize the government. Another crime used to jail critics such as
Sun Dawu is "
picking quarrels and provoking trouble". During the
2008 Summer Olympics, the government promised to issue permits authorizing people to protest in specifically designated "protest parks" in Beijing. However, a majority of the applications were withdrawn, suspended, or vetoed, and the police detained some of the people who applied. References to certain controversial events and political movements, as well as access to web pages considered by the PRC authorities to be "dangerous" or "threatening to state security", are
blocked on the internet in the PRC; and content disputed by or critical of PRC authorities is absent from many publications, and subject to the control of the CCP within mainland China. An unsanctioned protest during the Olympics by seven foreign activists at the
China Nationalities Museum, protesting for a free Tibet and blocking the entrance, was cleared and the protesters deported. Foreign Internet search engines including Microsoft
Bing,
Yahoo!, and
Google China have come under criticism for aiding these practices.
Yahoo!, in particular, stated that it will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its Chinese customers from the authorities. In 2005, after Yahoo! China provided its personal emails and
IP addresses to the Chinese government, reporter
Shi Tao was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years for releasing an internal Communist Party document to an overseas Chinese democracy site.
Skype president Josh Silverman said it was "common knowledge" that
TOM Online had "established procedures to...block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities". and human rights activist
Wu Gan was sentenced to 8 years in prison in December 2017 Reports indicate both prisoners have developed severe health problems, including organ damage, memory loss, and physical injuries, as a result of repeated beatings and torture, yet have been denied adequate medical care. Their cases have drawn attention from human rights groups as examples of China's systematic repression of Tibetan activists, including arbitrary detention, harsh treatment in prison, and punitive transfers when their situations are raised internationally. In July 2025, Chinese authorities arrested Zhang Yadi, a 22-year-old student and advocate for Tibetan rights, in Shangri-La, Yunnan province, while she was visiting from France. Zhang was detained under Article 103(2) of China's Criminal Law for allegedly "inciting separatism," a charge that carries a sentence of up to 15 years. She was involved with Chinese Youth Stand for Tibet, a group promoting Tibetan rights and interethnic dialogue.
Human Rights Watch and other organizations called for her immediate release, urging international governments to intervene as she was due to begin graduate studies in London. On April 27, 2026,
ARTICLE 19 reported that the
Victoria and Albert Museum removed content from catalogues under pressure from Chinese authorities, illustrating China's extraterritorial censorship of cultural institutions. The case reflects broader efforts to control narratives on Taiwan, Tibet, and ethnic minorities, raising concerns about cultural freedom and human rights.
Freedom of the press Critics argue that the CCP has failed to live up to its promises about the
freedom of the mainland Chinese media. The US-based NGO
Freedom House consistently ranks China as "Not Free" in its annual press freedom survey, including the 2014 report. PRC journalist
He Qinglian says that the PRC's media are controlled by directives from the Communist Party's Publicity Department, and are subjected to intense monitoring which threatens punishment for violators, rather than to pre-publication censorship. In 2008,
ITV News reporter John Ray was arrested while covering a "Free Tibet" protest. International media coverage of Tibetan protests only a few months before the Beijing Olympics in 2008 triggered a strong reaction inside China. Chinese media practitioners took the opportunity to argue with propaganda authorities for more media freedom: one journalist asked, 'If not even Chinese journalists are allowed to report about the problems in Tibet, how can foreign journalists know about the Chinese perspective about the events?' Foreign journalists also reported that their access to certain websites, including those of human rights organizations, was restricted.
International Olympic Committee president
Jacques Rogge stated at the end of the 2008 Olympic Games that 'The regulations [governing foreign media freedom during the Olympics] might not be perfect but they are a sea-change compared to the situation before. We hope that they will continue.' The Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) issued a statement during the Olympics that "despite welcome progress in terms of accessibility and the number of press conferences within the Olympic facilities, the FCCC has been alarmed at the use of violence, intimidation, and harassment outside. The club has confirmed more than 30 cases of reporting interference since the formal opening of the Olympic media center on 25 July, and is checking at least 20 other reported incidents." Since the Chinese state continues to exert a considerable amount of control over media, public support for domestic reporting has come as a surprise to many observers. These contradictory results can be explained by realizing that ordinary citizens consider media sources to be credible to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the extent to which media outlets have undergone reform. The Chinese government did not change its position. In the first half of 2020, China expelled 17 employees of
The New York Times,
The Washington Post, and
The Wall Street Journal. The expulsions came after the U.S. declared that five state-owned Chinese media outlets were operating as foreign missions of the government with their staff being re-designated employees of the Chinese government, requiring approval similar to diplomatic employees. The U.S. also required that the employees at the media outlets be reduced from 160 to 100. However, those who have lived through the camps allege that the authorities torture, rape, and sexually abuse the prisoners as well as force them into unpaid labor and sterilize the women. Moreover, many experts and foreign policymakers consider the detentions arbitrary rather than linked to provable terrorist charges. As such, journalists such as Gauthier have been critical of China's actions. At the time of Gauthier's expulsion, she was the first journalist to be deported since China expelled
Melissa Chan from Al Jazeera in 2012. Chan had reported on China's
black jails and government land confiscation. Of her deportation, China Global Television Network's Yang Rui wrote, "We should shut up those who demonize China and send them packing", according to
The Wall Street Journal.
Information control The 2020 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), shows that mainland China is the world's biggest jailer of journalists. According to the report, China is trying to establish a "new world media order" and maintain a system of information hyper-control, the negative effects of which the entire world experienced during the coronavirus public health crisis. It states that the PRC never stops enhancing its system of information hyper-control and persecution of dissident journalists and bloggers, and that further evidence of this came in February 2020, when two citizens were arrested for their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. China currently detains around 100 journalists, of whom the vast majority are Uyghurs. On 29 May 2022, the U.S. expressed concern over China's "efforts to restrict and manipulate" the UN human rights chief's visit to the Xinjiang region. The conditions imposed by the Beijing authorities on
Michelle Bachelet's visit, did not enable a complete and independent assessment of the human rights environment in China.
Freedom of the Internet More than sixty Internet regulations exist in mainland China and serve to monitor and control internet publication. These policies are implemented by provincial branches of state-owned Internet service providers, companies, and organizations. The apparatus of the PRC's and/or CCP's Internet control is considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country in the world. The
Golden Shield includes the ability to monitor online chatting services and mail, identifying IPs and all of the person's previous communication, and then being able to lock in on the person's location—because a person will usually use the computer at home or at work – which enables the arrest to be carried out. Amnesty International notes that China "has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world" and Paris-based
Reporters Without Borders stated in 2010 and 2012 that "China is the world's biggest prison for
netizens." As an example of the censorship, in 2013, 24 years after the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, online searches for the term 'Tiananmen Square' were still censored by Chinese authorities. According to the Amnesty International report the controls on the
Internet, mass media, and
academia were significantly strengthened. For instance, Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia are banned in mainland China. Repression of
religious activities outside of direct state control increased. In this system, a worker who was seeking to move from the country to an urban area in order to take up non-agricultural work would have to apply for permission to do so through the relevant bureaucratic institutions. There is uncertainty, however, as to how strictly the system has been enforced. People who worked outside the region in which they were registered would not qualify for grain rations, employer-provided housing, or health care. There were controls over education, employment, marriage, and other areas of life. As a part of the
one country, two systems policy which was proposed by
Deng Xiaoping and accepted by the British and Portuguese governments, the
special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau retained separate border control and immigration policies with the rest of the PRC. Chinese nationals had to gain permission from the government before they were allowed to travel to
Hong Kong or
Macau, but this requirement was officially abolished for each SAR after its respective handover. Since then, restrictions which have been imposed by the SAR governments have been the main factors which limit travel. In 2000,
The Washington Times reported that although migrant labourers play a major role in spreading wealth in Chinese villages, they are treated "like second-class citizens by a system which is so discriminatory that it has been likened to
apartheid." Anita Chan also posits that the People's Republic of China's household registration and temporary residence permit system has created a situation which is analogous to the passbook system that was implemented in South Africa in order to control the supply and actions of cheap labourers from underprivileged ethnic groups, as well as to control the quality and quantity of such labourers. In 2000, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy alleged that people of
Han descent in Tibet have a far easier time acquiring the necessary permits to live in urban areas than ethnic Tibetans do. Abolition of this policy has been proposed in 11 provinces, mainly along the developed eastern coast. After a widely publicized incident in 2003, when a university-educated migrant died in Guangdong province, the law was changed in order to eliminate the possibility of summary arrest for migrant labourers. The Beijing law lecturer who exposed the incident said it spelt the end of the
hukou system: he believed that in most smaller cities, the system had been abandoned, and it had 'almost lost its function' in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Treatment of rural workers In November 2005,
Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the
University of Alberta, said that the
hukou system was one of the most strictly enforced apartheid structures in modern world history. He stated, "Urban dwellers enjoy a range of social, economic, and cultural benefits while peasants, the majority of the Chinese population, are treated like second-class citizens." Attempts to move to urban centers by workers who were classified as rural workers were tightly controlled by the Chinese bureaucracy, which enforced its control by denying them access to essential goods and services such as grain rations, housing, and health care, Rural workers who wanted to work in provinces other than their own were required to possess six passes, As in South Africa, the restrictions placed on the mobility of migrant workers were pervasive,
Freedom of association The People's Republic of China does not allow freedom of association in general; in particular, it does not allow a free choice of membership with trade unions and political parties. Under the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), articles 20 and 23, every worker has the right to join an association of their choosing, to have their interests represented against their employer, and to take
collective action including the
right to strike. In China, on a model similar to the
Deutsche Arbeitsfront from 1934 to 1945 in Germany, the
All-China Federation of Trade Unions has a monopoly on union activity: it is effectively a nationalized organization. This dynamic violates
International Labour Organization Conventions Number
87 and
98 on freedom of association and collective bargaining. The leadership of the ACFTU is not freely elected by its members, and it is not independent from the state or employers.
Religious freedom During the
Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), particularly during the
Destruction of the Four Olds campaign,
religious affairs of all types were persecuted, renounced, and strongly discouraged by
Chairman Mao Zedong's government and its ideological allies. Many religious buildings were looted or destroyed. Since then, there have been efforts to repair, reconstruct and protect historical and cultural religious sites. In its International Religious Freedom Report for 2013, the US Department of State criticized the PRC as follows: The 1982 Constitution provides its citizens the right to believe in any religion, as well as the right to refrain from doing so: Members of the CCP are officially required to be
atheists, but this rule is not regularly enforced and many party members privately engage in religious activities. Global studies from
Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country.
Christianity The Chinese government tries to maintain tight control over all
organized religions, including Christianity. The only legal Christian groups are the
Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the
Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the latter of which has been condemned by
Pope Benedict XVI. Both of these groups are under the control of the CCP. The members of the illegal, underground Catholic church and members of Protestant
house churches face prosecution from PRC authorities. In 2007, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association elected a Catholic bishop of Beijing to replace the deceased Fu Tieshan. The standard Catholic practice is for a bishop to be appointed by the Pope; the Catholic Church does not recognize the legitimacy of bishops elected by the Association, but not appointed by the Pope. In early January 2018, Chinese authorities in Shanxi province demolished a church, which created a wave of fear among the Christians. In reports of countries with the strongest
anti-Christian persecution, China was ranked by the
Open Doors organization in 2019 as the 27th most severe country On 12 October 2025, Chinese authorities carried out a nationwide crackdown on the Zion Church, an underground Protestant church, arresting clergy and members. The move followed the introduction of an Online Code of Conduct for Religious Professionals in September, which restricts unauthorized religious content online. The crackdown is part of a broader effort to Sinicize religion and enforce state control over religious groups, including Protestant churches, Tibetan Buddhism, and Islam. Human Rights Watch condemned the arrests, describing them as part of intensified restrictions on religious freedom in China.
Tibetan Buddhism The
Dalai Lama is a highly influential figure in
Tibetan Buddhism, who has traditionally lived in Tibet. Because of Chinese governmental control over the Tibetan area, the
current Dalai Lama resides in
Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, in the Republic of India. In
a regulation promulgated 3 August 2007, the Chinese government declared that after 1 September 2007, "[no] living Buddha [may be reincarnated] without government approval, since the Qing dynasty, when the live Buddha system was established." The PRC Government-appointed
Panchen Lama is labelled a fake by those who regard the PRC's effort to control organized religion as contradictory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other ethical principles. Examples of the political controls exercised over religion in 1998 include: • quotas on the number of monks to reduce the spiritual population; • forced denunciation of the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader; • the expulsion of unapproved monks from monasteries; • forced recitation of patriotic scripts supporting China; • restriction of religious study before age 18. Monks celebrating the reception of the US Congressional Gold Medal by the Dalai Lama have been detained by the PRC. In November 2012 the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner urged the PRC to address the allegations of rights violations in Tibet; the violations had led to an alarming escalation of 'desperate' forms of protest in the region, including self-immolations. Tibetans who opposed the diversion of irrigation water by Chinese authorities to the
China Gold International Resources mining operations were detained, tortured, and murdered. Allegations of what the
PRC officially labelled 'judicial mutilation' against Tibetans by the
Dalai Lama's government, and the
serfdom controversy, have been cited by the PRC as reasons to
interfere for what they claim was the welfare of Tibetans, although their claims of "judicial mutilation" are controversial and subject to scepticism and dispute by foreign countries and international organizations. Conflicting reports about Tibetan human rights have been produced since then. The PRC claims that Tibet has been enjoying a cultural revival since the 1950s, whereas the Dalai Lama says "whether intentionally or unintentionally, somewhere
cultural genocide is taking place". Following the
reform and opening up, businesspeople from other parts of China have made many business trips to Tibet, although most do not stay in the region. The
New York Times has cited this ethnic diversity in Tibet as a cause of "ethnic tensions". It has also disagreed significantly with the promotion by PRC authorities of home ownership in nomadic Tibetan societies.
Barry Sautman, an American political scientist and visiting professor at the
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, argues in a 2003 paper that for a vast majority of Tibetans, who live in rural areas, the Chinese language is only introduced as a second language in secondary school.
Free Tibet reported in 2008 that
Tibetan languages were at risk of extinction in Tibet. The
Tibet Action Institute, in their May 2025 report, "When They Came to Take Our Children", alleged that four-year-old children were being sent to
boarding schools run by the Chinese Government, where they were beaten for praying and wearing Buddhist religious symbols, and taught only in Mandarin.
Uyghurs Article 36 of the PRC Constitution provides constitutional protection for citizens' freedom of religion and the country's official ethnic policies also reiterate protection of the freedom of religion of ethnic minorities, but in practice the Uyghur population, predominantly living in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, are subject to strict controls on the practice of Islam. Examples of these restrictions now include: • Official religious practices must be held in government-approved mosques; • Uyghurs under 18 years old are not allowed to enter mosques or pray in school; • The study of religious texts is only permitted in designated state schools; • Government informers regularly attend religious gatherings in mosques; • Women are not allowed to wear headscarves and veils and men are not allowed to have beards; • The use of traditionally Islamic names (e.g., Abdul), is banned. Since the
September 11 attacks in 2001, Chinese counter-terror legislation has made explicit links between religion and extremism, and has led to regulations that explicitly ban religious expression among Uyghurs in particular. Since 2017, reports have surfaced that around a million Muslims (
Uyghur Chinese citizens and some Central Asian nationals) were detained in
internment camps throughout Xinjiang without trial or access to a lawyer. Chinese officials are quoted in state media as saying that these measures are to fight separatism and Islamic extremism. Critics of the policy have described it as the
sinicization of
Xinjiang and called it an
ethnocide or
cultural genocide, with many activists,
NGOs, human rights experts, government officials, and the
U.S. government calling it a
genocide. New bans and regulations were implemented on 1 April 2017. Abnormally long beards and wearing veils in public were both banned. Not watching state-run television or listening to radio broadcasts, refusing to abide by family planning policies, or refusing to allow one's children to attend state-run schools were all prohibited. Also in 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to assimilation, and to watch for frowned-upon religious or cultural practices. These government workers were trained to call themselves "relatives" and have been described in Chinese state media as being a key part of enhancing "ethnic unity". New evidence shows that over 9,500 children in Yarkand county had at least one parent detained, most of them are Uyghur children. According to the Business and Human Rights resource center, corporations such as
Abercrombie & Fitch,
Adidas,
Amazon,
Apple,
BMW,
Fila,
Gap,
H&M,
Inditex,
Marks & Spencer,
Nike,
North Face,
Puma,
PVH,
Samsung, and
UNIQLO have sourced from these factories prior to the publication of the ASPI report. On 10 October 2020, the UK shadow foreign secretary,
Lisa Nandy urged Britain to block China's seat on the
United Nations Human Rights Council over the country's treatment of Uyghur Muslims. On 19 January 2021, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally declared that China is committing a genocide against the Uyghurs and
crimes against humanity. In a written letter, Pompeo wrote, "I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state." Pompeo called for "all appropriate multilateral and relevant juridical bodies, to join the United States in our effort to promote accountability for those responsible for these atrocities." China strongly denies that human rights abuses are going on in Xinjiang. In 2021, independent sources reported that Uyghur women in China's internment camps have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured. China has undertaken a deliberate campaign to weaken and eradicate any vestiges of Uyghur culture, employing measures such as curtailing religious liberties and enforcing assimilation. Detainees have recounted experiences of being coerced to abandon their beliefs and swear allegiance to the CCP using methods reminiscent of psychological manipulation. On 16 August 2021, a young Chinese woman, named Wu Huan, told the
Associated Press in her testimony that she was allegedly held for eight days at a Chinese-run secret detention facility in the
United Arab Emirates, along with two other Uyghurs. Wu Huan said she was abducted from a hotel in
Dubai and detained by Chinese officials at a villa converted into a jail. It was the first evidence that China was operating a "black site" beyond its borders. On 31 August 2022, the
UN Human Rights Office issued an assessment of human rights concerns in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The report published in the wake of the visit by UN High Commissioner of Human Rights,
Michelle Bachelet, stated that "allegations of patterns of torture, or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence." A leaked document known as "The China Cables" details the conditions in the aforementioned internment camps. These documents describe guidelines on a variety of things: preventing escapes, monitoring the Uyghurs, disciplining the Uyghurs, and much more. They are taught Mandarin and about Chinese culture. However, some claim this is renouncing their culture to conform to the communist party. Many Chinese officials have already dismissed the claims of breaching human rights and the contents of these documents. They refer to these camps as voluntary education centers where the Uyghurs are reeducated. The goal of these camps, according to former Chinese ambassador
Liu Xiaoming, is to prevent terrorism. A
United Nations assessment of
human rights regarding the
Xinjiang Uyghurs stated it is "reasonable to conclude that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred in [vocational education and training centre] facilities, at least during 2017 to 2019", negating previous
Chinese government claims that the facilities were schools or training centres where participants were free to join and leave. The
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) gave statement on China's human rights violations in Xinjiang, following a visit to the region by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. An FCDO spokesperson said, "It is clear that the Chinese authorities did not provide the full, unfettered access to Xinjiang for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that we and our international partners have long called for. China's failure to grant such access only serves to highlight their determination to hide the truth."
Falun Gong Following a period of meteoric growth of
Falun Gong in the 1990s, the Communist Party, which was then led by General Secretary
Jiang Zemin, banned Falun Gong on 20 July 1999. An extra-constitutional body called the
6-10 Office was created to lead the suppression of Falun Gong. The authorities mobilized the state media apparatus, judiciary, police, army, the education system, families, and workplaces against the group. The campaign is driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio, and internet. There are reports of systematic torture, illegal imprisonment,
forced labour,
organ harvesting, Foreign observers estimate that hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in "
re-education through labor" camps, prisons, and other detention facilities for refusing to renounce the spiritual practice. Former prisoners have reported that Falun Gong practitioners consistently received "the longest sentences and worst treatment" in labour camps, and in some facilities Falun Gong practitioners formed the substantial majority of detainees. As of 2009 at least 2,000 Falun Gong adherents had been tortured to death in the persecution campaign, with some observers putting the number much higher. In 2009, courts in Spain and Argentina indicted senior Chinese officials for genocide and crimes against humanity for their role in orchestrating the suppression of Falun Gong.
Organ harvesting According to allegations which were made in 2006, the vital organs of non-consenting Falun Gong practitioners had been used to supply China's organ tourism industry. In 2008, two United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their requests for "the Chinese government to fully explain the allegation of taking vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants that has been going on in China since the year 2000". Matas, Kilgour, and Gutmann have published three books in which they have alleged that organ harvesting is occurring in China. The
Kilgour-Matas report stated, "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six-year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and "we believe that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners".
Ethan Gutmann, who interviewed over 100 individuals as witnesses, estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong prisoners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008.
Political freedom The People's Republic of China is a signatory to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but has not ratified it. Legally, 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 ethnicity, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status, or length of residence, except for persons deprived of political rights according to laws imposed by the
CCPs Constitution. In Mao's China, the CCP openly
repressed all opposing political groups. This behaviour is now reflected in the judicial system, and has evolved into the selective repression of small groups of people who overtly challenge the
CCP's power or its
people's democratic dictatorship. The most recent major movement advocating for political freedom was obliterated through the
Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the estimated death toll of which ranges from about 200 to 10,000 depending on sources. In November 1992, 192 Chinese political activists and democracy advocates submitted a petition to the
16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party to introduce political reforms. One of the six demands was the ratification of the Covenant. As a reaction to the petition, the Chinese authorities arrested
Zhao Changqing, proponent of the petition, and are still holding a number of activists for attempted subversion. One of the most famous dissidents is
Zhang Zhixin, who is known for standing up against the
ultra-left. In October 2008, the government denounced the European Parliament's decision to award the
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to
political prisoner Hu Jia, maintaining that it was "gross interference in China's domestic affairs' to give such an award to a "jailed criminal... in disregard of [the Chinese government's] repeated representations." Although the Chinese government does not violate its people's privacy as much or as overtly as it used to, it still deems it necessary to keep track of what people say in public. Internet forums are strictly monitored, as are international postal mail (which sometimes is inexplicably delayed, or simply disappears) and e-mail. Freedom House rates China as a 6 (the second lowest possible rank) in political freedoms. In 2011, the organization said of the Chinese political leadership: According to the Amnesty International report from 2016/2017, the government continued to draft and enact a series of new
national security laws that presented serious threats to the protection of human rights. The nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists continued throughout the year. Activists and human rights defenders continued to be systematically subjected to monitoring,
harassment, intimidation, arrest, and
detention. As of July 2025, a decade after the 709 crackdown, legal professionals and activists report that the CCP's control over the legal profession has further tightened, making human rights advocacy nearly impossible.
Independence movements The
independence movements in China are mainly contained within the Inner Mongolian Regions, the Tibetan region, and the Xinjiang region. These regions contain people from ethnic and religious minority groups such as the Mongols, the Tibetans, and the Uyghurs. Furthermore, because of the advantages which the Chinese government grants to the people of Xinjiang, many Han Chinese are prejudiced against them, and their prejudice against the Uyghurs is bolstered by the widespread belief that the government unfairly grants preferential treatment to ethnic minorities in general. and it has also sought to control offshore reporting and intimidate foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members.
Political abuse of psychiatry Political abuse of psychiatry began to be practised in mainland China during the 1950s, shortly after Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China, and continues to be practised in different forms up to present day. Initially, under Mao Zedong, the practice of psychiatry in China saw legitimate improvements in the breadth and quality of treatments. However, as time passed under the direction of Mao Zedong and the campaign of
ideological reform was implemented, psychiatric diagnoses became used as a way to control and incarcerate Chinese citizens who didn't subscribe to
Maoist ideologies such as Marxism–Leninism. The main demographic of Chinese citizens being targeted and placed in mental asylums were academics, intellectuals, students, and religious groups for their capitalist tendencies and bourgeois worldview. The justification for placing those who didn't comply with Maoist principles in mental institutions was the belief that non-Maoist political ideologies such as
capitalism caused extreme
individualism and
selfishness, which contributed to mental disabilities such as
schizophrenia and
paranoid psychosis. These hospitals, built to hold the criminally insane, are managed by Bureau No. 13 of
China's Ministry of Public Security. The
People's Republic of China is the only country which currently abuses psychiatry for political purposes in a systematic way, and despite international criticism, this abuse seems to be continuing as of 2010. Political abuse of psychiatry in the People's Republic of China is high on the agenda in the international psychiatric community, and has produced recurring disputes. The issue of Chinese political abuse of psychiatry was placed on the agenda of the General Assembly, and a decision was made to send an investigative mission to China. The number of
political prisoners peaked during the Mao era and it has been decreasing ever since. From 1953 to 1975, around 26 to 39 per cent of prisoners were incarcerated for political reasons. During the Mao era, one notorious labour camp called Xingkaihu which was located in the northeastern
Heilongjiang Province was operated from 1955 to 1969. During this time, over 20,000 inmates were forced to work on irrigation, infrastructure construction, and agricultural projects for the government while being subjected to ideological reform; a significant percentage of these inmates were incarcerated for being counterrevolutionaries and political dissidents. In 2009 Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned for advocating democratic reforms and increased freedom of speech in
Charter 08. In 2017 he died in prison from late stage
liver cancer at the age of 61. Tan Zuoren was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to 5 years in prison after publicly speaking about government corruption as well as the poorly constructed school buildings that collapsed and led to the deaths of thousands of children during the 2008 earthquake in
Sichuan. Human rights activists such as
Xie Xang fight for the rights of Chinese people by protesting, slandering the governments' names on social media, and by filing lawsuits. Xang has commented on the punishment he received for protesting, claiming that he was interrogated while shackled onto a metal chair, forced to sit in stressful positions for a set amount of time, and tortured physically and mentally. He also quoted his interrogators stating that he was told that "I could torture you to death and no one could help you."
Freedom of movement and privacy In 2010, in response to
Chunyun (increase in traffic movements due to
Chinese New Year), which has caused various problems with tickets prices (due to resale by speculative traders), ==One-child policy (1979-2015)==