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(A response to the China's 'White Paper' on Human Rights)
Content
Foreword
1. Democracy or Pseudo Democracy in China?
2. Economic Boom or Doom?
3. Development or Destruction?
4. Unemployment, Poverty, and Social Unrest…
5. Death Penalty..
6. Health and Aids..
7. Human Rights- a farce
8. Freedom of information…
Conclusion
The release of the two successive 'White Papers' by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China (PRC) this April vindicates the truth of the maxim, " It entails a thousand lies to conceal a lie". Chinese Communist Party(CCP), in its 56 oppressive years of rule, has in a customary drive to delude the world, released over a forty three 'White Papers', a record by any regime in this modern times. The recent heightened spree to churn out series of 'white papers' is yet another desperate bid to enhance its global credibility. But the leaders of China had utterly failed to realize the wisdom that the very necessity to substantiate, and justify persistently, reveals a gross underlying faux pas.
The White Paper of the 13th April entitled, "China's Progress in Human Rights in 2004" begin with the wild and fictitious assertion of the year 2004 being "an important year for China in building a well-off society in an all-round way…that saw progress in human rights undertakings…. And...realize the goal of establishing a government under the rule of law after making sustained efforts."
Despite these proclamations, China remains indicted for a sheer lack of freedom, human rights and rule of law in every human rights reports the world over, primarily by UNCHR, US States Departments, Parliaments of European Union, Australia, Italy, Canada and Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Laogai Research Foundation, Tibet Information Network, Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, National Labour Committee, Independent Tibet Network, China Rights Forum, Uygyur Information Agency, Cardinal Kung Foundation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Falun Dafa Information Centre, Free Church for China, China Aid Association and innumerable media, scholars and NGOs. The reports unanimously criticized China as "a highly repressive state" where the government routinely violates basic freedoms. These reports and the testimonies of the people coming into exile etc speak in stark contrast to the China's White Paper sham; that of sad ground realities in practice conflicting those in paper.
The White Paper unequivocally claims that China is a modern State with democracy, freedom and rule of law in practice, guaranteeing prosperity and peace to the Chinese people. And to buttress this argument, the "White Paper", as always, rattles off an impressive list of statistics. But these are mostly fudged with sparse grounding. The authenticities of the Chinese official figures are, invariably, questionable, as they are routinely fudged to bolster China as an attractive proposition for investors. Even former Premier Zhu Rongji once admitted the unreliability of Chinese Government statistics. Zhu said, "The statistics are manipulated by the local authorities for their own self interest". The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), also, undertake similar statistical manipulation with greater aplomb.
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1. Democracy or Pseudo Democracy in China?
The White paper's effort to project a pseudo democracy in China with the statement of, "promoting democracy in political affairs and… exercising its democratic rights", is in contradiction with former President Jiang Zemin's speech in December 1998, where he made a categorical declaration to the entire nation that China would never tread the path of democracy. Likewise, President Hu Jintao, in a nationally televised address on 16th September 2004 also expressed his reluctance to embrace Western-style multiparty democracy by saying, "History indicates that indiscriminately copying Western political systems is a blind alley for China," He further pointed out the failure of "China's bourgeois republic system" under Sun Yat Sen's some 60 years ago as proof that China is not suited to democracy. Even the popular author, Steven W Mosher argued that the western beliefs that China is headed for Democratic change are based on wishful thinking. China is not only the world's most populous nation, but also one that is avowedly hostile to democracy in general.
On April 26, 2004, Beijing came out openly and declared the barring of the popular elections for Hong Kong's chief executive in 2007, and ruled out any expanded use of democratic voting for the legislature in 2008. Experts believe that one of the objectives of adoption of the anti-secession law early this year is a clear attempt to nib the bud of people's aspirations for more freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.
Nonetheless, to justify itself of a prevalent democratic practice in China, The 'White Paper' cited, "The National People's Congress (NPC) and the local people's congresses at various levels are the organs through which the people exercise state power." But in reality, the NPC enacts a drama of democracy, which doesn't enjoy any real authority over the policy directions, law etc. that it approves. The people's congresses are not subject to any liability to the people and are not answerable to the people for its decisions, which otherwise forms the true essence of democratic representations.
The much-vaunted People's Congress is clearly a constitutional farce and matters the least when it comes to the actual formulation of state policies and enactment of laws. Any degree of representation in such congresses along with holding of nominal posts in its standing committees is more of a necessity of constitutional fiction than true democratic representation.
China has not met even the minimum of requirements to qualify for acceptance as a democratic country. Jasper Becker points out, "China is now one of the last countries in the world without a functioning parliament. The National People's Congress does exist but it has no building of its own, no permanent staff or offices, and it assemble for just ten days a year. During the rest of the year only members of the Standing Committee; which is made up of senior Party officials, meet. Even the uncomplimentary label of debating society usually attached to toothless assemblies or powerless political organizations cannot be applied to China's Congress, as no debates of any kind are tolerated from the members of that body. A western correspondent at the party Congress reported that the discussions sounded like recitations and the main speech of the president was notable mostly for its vagueness".
At the National People's Congress, which meets annually, to review and approve major new policy directions, laws, the budget, and major personnel changes- the State Council presents the initiatives for consideration only after previous endorsement by the Communist Party's Central Committee.
According to a report Titled, "The Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Regime 2005, released during the 61st Session of UN Commission on Human Rights at Geneva, the US based NGO, Freedom House, severely criticized China stating, "China remains a highly authoritarian state under the complete control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese Government's pledge to uphold the rule of law has been regularly compromised by continuing widespread official corruption, Party interference in the justice system, and a culture of impunity for officials and their families. Authorities continue to censor news media. Civil society is also constrained and almost entire NGOs are government-controlled. China prohibits independent domestic human rights organizations and bars entry to international human rights organizations. Chinese citizens who contact international rights groups risk imprisonment. Chinese citizens cannot change their government democratically or express their opposition to its policies".
The CCP holds all political power, and party members hold almost all top national and local governmental, police, and military posts. Direct elections of officials above the village level is expressly forbidden. The parliament-the National People's Congress (NPC)-elects the top officials, but the NPC itself is controlled by the CCP. There is one opposition party, the China Democratic Party, but the government suppresses its activities and it exists, for all practical purposes, in theory only. The only competitive elections in China are for village committees, which are not in any case considered government bodies, and even these are tightly controlled by the CCP.
China's communist rulers in Beijing wield absolute power, and few people dare defy their edicts openly. But the edict from on high are as likely to be honored in breach as in compliance, with local governments reporting upwards that they have dutifully fulfilled the ambitious targets. To make these lies stick, they do everything in their power to prevent citizens from bypassing the bureaucratic ladder and asking Beijing for help.
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Today, China vigorously flaunts its international market avenues to assert its presence in the international arena. Experts say, "In the history of commerce, there has been no greater hype than that generated by the China trade". The white Paper thus categorically trumpets the success of the China's economy stating, "China's gross domestic product (GDP) reached 13,650 billion Yuan, an increase of 9.5 percent over the previous year. The people's overall living standard and quality of life were improved considerably, and the consumption pattern of the society continued its shift from one of basic living to one of modern living". Yet the studies conducted by numerous experts reveal a grim truth of a dooming China. Beneath the veil of the rapid growth of the Chinese economy lies the question of whether or not it entails underlying dooming factors. While high economic growth is an aspect that many countries seek, it cannot be the sole aim of a nation's economy.
Index estimated in June 2002 that China's non-performing loans exceed 50% of its total bank loans. It would take China 20 years before the non-performing loan rate would be brought down to a "manageable" 5%. And that alone would cast $ 518 billion. Moody's also released a credit rating report entitled, "China's Banking System: Tight Rope Walk", stating that China's banking system has become technically bankrupt. Some Western scholars (such Nicholas Lardy at Brookings Institution) say that China's financial crisis is only short by one "trigger" to be set off. Far East Economic Review published "On the Road to Ruin" (Lague 2002), which talks about China's banking problems. Not long ago, Ma Guonan, the economist from HK International Clearance Bank, said that if the Chinese government still does not solve the fundamental problems of the non-performing loans of its state banks, it is impossible for China's economy to continue with its current growth. Studwell (2002) and Gordon Chang (2001) have both sent this kind of warning message before. The only question remains: When the disaster occurs, how serious will it be, and who will pay what is due?
"India will pip China in economic marathon" by Saubhik Chakrabarti, in Hindustan Times, 8 April, this year, analysing Sino-Indo eco-structure finds, "despite China's great leap forward in economic development which is fuelled by unrealistic and uneconomical investment of over 40% of its GDP, India's efficient capital management, firm banking system and strong and thriving private sectors will in the long run pip China".
Mr Saubhik predicts,"China's invest around 40% of its GDP and it takes in more than $40 billion in foreign direct investment(FDI) every year. India invest around a quarter ofits GDP and its average annual FDI inflow is less than $4 billion. That means while China has grown much faster, it has, proportionately, used much more capital than India. If this trend continues, it advantage India in the long run. Golman Sachs says by 2020, India could outstrip China's rate of growth. China can't bank on its banks. The ratio of non-performing assets(NPAs) to total assets- a measure of bad loans- of India's was 4% in 2002-2003 and 3.3% in 2003-2004, whereas in China non-performing loans as a proportion of total loans was 28% in 2002 and 13.2% in 2004. Considering the deficit in its social insurance and pension fund, the internal and external debt of the Chinese government would exceed its GDP of about $1,100 billion. The problem in China's banking system is far more serious than that in Japan. The non-performing loans in Japan's banks only account for 10% of its GDP, while for China it is 43%.
"China's growth, while spectacular, is being fuelled by a loan binge that could well produce a Himalayan hangover. India's financial system, compared to China's, is ultra safe. Its recent data indicates that private-owned registered businesses in China may finally be outnumbering state-owned enterprises (SOE's). But most private businesses are small where the average employee strength is less than 15 and average capital less than $ 150,000. India, by comparison, has a thriving private sector with a large number of super-sized, internationally competitive firms" he added.
In the Far Eastern Economic Review survey of Asian entrepreneurship conducted two years back, India ranked first with Infosys ranked first as the best firm. Ten Indian companies made it to the top, compared to only two from Mainland China. So, internal resources account for almost 60 % of China's private firms' investment. The figure for Indian firms is less than 30%. A study in 2000 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences observed that in China "private and individual enterprises are discriminated against in numerous policies and regulations. The legal, policy, and market environment is unfair and inconsistent". Chinese government exercises tight control over media, foreign exchange and foreign banks. Since there is no freedom of the press, Chinese people blindly believe in the words of the government that their savings in the banks are safe. Due to the foreign exchange control, everyday people cannot exchange RMB easily. Now that China has joined the WTO, it still has not let go of its strict constraint of RMB operation by foreign banks. Consequently, Chinese people have no other choice but to deposit their money in state banks.
When calculating average income, the Statistic Bureau of China did not include reports from the local provinces. In 2001, with the exception of the Yunnan province, all the local provinces reported growth rates higher than that of the national average. Upon further investigation, the Bureau of Statistics found 62,000 false reports between the months of May and October (Rawski 2002).
In addition, there are also others who question China's growth rate. These include: Lawrence Klein, winner of the Nobel economics prize, Lester Thurow of MIT, Lehman Brother of the Economists Magazine, the Moody credit agency, etc. (GaoShang 2002). Lester Thurow has pointed out that 80% of China consists of rural areas that have virtually no growth. Since cities only occupy 20% of the country, the urban areas must grow substantially in order to achieve national growth of 7%. Keep in mind, that in 2001 Hong Kong and the Chinese financial center experienced virtually no growth. How could other cities experience such a fast growth rate? Arthur Waldron reminds us that, Zhu Rongji once stated in public, "If the government had not initiated a large amount of capitol borrowing, the Chinese economy would have already collapsed in 1998." Therefore is it possible to reach a 10% growth rate based upon government borrowing? According to Rawski's estimate, during the years of 1998 and 1999, China's growth rate fell between 2% and -2%, 2-3% in the year 2000, and 3-4% in 2001. The estimates from other economic officials vary insignificantly. Governmental officials and scholars of China have tried to provide an explanation on this issue, but it is difficult to discern the validity of their responses.
Foreign experts are not the only presently who question the economic growth. China's own, native experts also are puzzled by this phenomenon. Punai Dong, Vice Director of the Economic Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference, has mentioned eight major conflicts of the Chinese economy: (1) the economy is growing at a fast speed, but the price of the commodities continues drop and the unemployment rate is constantly rising; (2) housing prices still hold an upward trend, causing the gap between the rich urban areas and poor rural areas to enlarge; (3) Bank deposits increases, but some corporations are short on capital; (4) governmental officials still receive a raise in their salaries, while the deficit is respectively on the rise especially in some local areas. (5) Since September of 2001, the overall deficit trend continues to be strong; (6) as the coastal cities boom, a severing gap in growth of many in-land cities is developing; (7) Natural resources are progressively becoming short in supply and waste disposal is becoming a heavily impending issue; and (8) environmental pollution continues to increase.
Expressways, skyscrapers, shopping malls and flashing lights and designer labels, new China's charms are endless. But these glitz and glamour cannot dazzle the world for long, when one finds the real China ridden with endless crisis and a gross discontentment of the people against the Government. China continues to be a nation ridden with numerous problems including human rights violation, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, high living cost, starvation, public dissent and social instability and many more. Other pressing problems include corruption, which affects every level of society, and the growing rate of HIV infection. A downside of the economic boom has been environmental degradation; China is home to many of the world's most-polluted cities.
The booming economy is not all that blooming. Over 70% of the foreign investments in China are by the nonresident Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong, United States and Europe. World Bank estimates over 150 million Chinese living in the abject poverty and recently it warned that the situation would soon become unmanageable with catastrophic consequences for future generations. World Bank further says three-fourth of China's rivers are polluted and more than 700 million people drink contaminated water. The Chinese government too stated that by 2030, the water supply is expected to fall below 1,700 cubic meters per person, which is dangerously low. The Government estimates that 400 of china's 668 cities are dealing with water shortages.
According to economic pundits, China's export success is not the result of indigenous creativity and manufacturing excellence, but essentially the result of the heartless exploitation of a desperate, disenfranchised and near-enslaved labor force by a cynical government and piratical international corporations. Even if China's blazing GDP growth of 9.4% this year moderates to 8% in 2005, as the Chinese Academy of Social Science predicts…. China is unable to meet its energy needs solely through domestic production. " China has been singularly unsuccessful in its oversee ventures. They are trying to learn in a decade what it has taken big foreign companies a century to master" says Jim Brock, a Beijing based Energy Consultant.
3. Development or Destruction?
The industrial developments haven't come with a small price. A senior Chinese official; a deputy head of the State Environmental Protection Administration, Mr Pan Yue, told the BBC on 23rd Sept, 2004, that China's environmental problems have reached crisis levels. He said "China's industrial development was unsustainable, because its resources could not cope. Environmental problems like pollution, acid rain and contaminated rivers have only now become a key policy issue. We've been talking about sustainable development for 12 years, but it's not been carried out properly. Now we've learnt the lesson. We need new laws and regulations; otherwise we're just talking slogans. He said previous attempts to create a cleaner environment had not been carried out properly and there would now be a raft of new laws and regulations aimed at promoting sustainable development."
On 7th March this year, In sheer contradiction to the White Paper's claim, Mr Pan Yue of the Ministry of Environment, speaking to a German Magazine, Der Spiegel, again acknowledged that "The Chinese Miracle will End Soon".
Mr Pan said, " the economic strides made by China comes at a huge cost to the country's environment which will soon overwhelm the country creating millions of "environmental refugees." He further said, "We are using too many raw materials to sustain this growth. To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps most embarrassing, nearly three times more than India. Our raw materials are scarce, we don't have enough land, and our population is constantly growing. Cities are growing but desert areas are expanding at the same time; habitable and usable land has been halved over the past 50 years. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory; half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens do not have access to clean drinking water."
Speaking of the severe deteriorating China's environment, Mr Pan further added, "One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner. Finally, five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China. In Bejing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment. Lung cancer has emerged as the No. 1 cause of death. Even now, the western regions of China and the country's ecologically stressed regions can no longer support the people already living there. In the future, we will need to resettle 186 million residents from 22 provinces and cities. However, the other provinces and cities can only absorb some 33 million people. That means China will have more than 150 million ecological migrants, or, if you like, environmental refugees."
The desert area of the Tibetan Plateau had increased by 8.3% over the past three decades, said a Xinhuanet report of Feb 16, citing a remote sensing survey launched jointly by the China Aero Geophysical Survey and Remote Sensing Center for Land and Resources (AGRS), Jilin University, Chinese Academy of Geological Survey Academy from 2003. The desert expansion is believed to have also led to the shrinking of grassland on Tibetan Plateau from 57,814sq km in the 1970s to 43,742sq km in 2002. The Tibetan Plateau has also been receiving less rainfall due to global warming and environmental degeneration. Experts also blame increased human activities for the environmental changes. Perhaps it's a wake up call for the Chinese government to do something about the unchecked influx of Chinese immigrants in Tibet.
Rural China's woes have contributed to a "floating population," officially tallied at 80 to 130 million people, who have left their rural homes in search of work in cities. The tipping point came in 1998 when Yangtse watershed reforestation project and others, affected over 350 million peasants. All this made us wonder whether the Chinese have not so much been creating an economic superpower as committing ecological suicide.
While on the subject of economic bubbles and collapsing systems, it might be noted that on June 4, 2004, the BBC reported on the growing scale of protests and demonstrations in China, "The Ministry of Public Security says last year there were more than 58,000 "mass incidents"- the term they use to describe public protests- involving three million people: that is an increase of almost 15 percent over the year before". The report also mentions that the protesters were largely peasants and workers. Over 200 million peasants left villages for cities in the last 20 years, 25 million Chinese workers are in regular contact with life-threatening toxic dust, the progress has come with a risks. World Bank report spells out China has some of the worst soil erosion in the world.
China continues to rely on coal for 75% of its energy, spewing out some 19 million tons of sulfur dioxide a year contributing to acid rain, Barely 340 monitored Chinese cities breathe air that meets national air quality. Indoor air pollution from coal burning takes more than 700,000 lives a year; respiratory diseases cause nearly a quarter of all deaths in the countryside. A Beijinger said, " What good is the money if you can't breathe the air?", Two-third of the major cities are now seriously short of pure drinking water and as many as 700 million people drink water contaminated with human and animal waste at levels that don't come close to the government's minimum standard. Most of the 20 billion tons of raw sewage produced in the cities each year-only 10% of which is treated is dumped straight into rivers and lakes. According to the World Bank, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. They also said that more than 70% of China's rivers and lakes were polluted. If things continue the same way, within three decades, China could overtake US as the world's largest source of Greenhouse gases associated with global warming.
The Vice Minister for Water Resources, Zhai Haohui, told a symposium on water management that the provision of clean drinking water should be a priority. This is yet another sign that China is struggling to deal with the impact of its breakneck economic development. China's waterways are dying, and its rivers are running black from industrial effluent and untreated sewage. The China Daily newspaper said that about two million people had suffered diseases caused by drinking water with high arsenic content, including cancer. Yet in one recent survey, 95% of the samples tested were polluted, some with sewage. An official from the environmental watchdog openly blamed the crisis on improper policies and poor government administration. The current leadership has stressed the need to conserve the environment, but these latest figures show just how much damage has already been done.
The World Bank estimates that air and water pollution cost China US$ 54 billion per year, or about eight percent of GDP. The World Bank further estimates that, every year, just the air pollution in excess of China's own air quality standards results in 6.8 million emergency room visits, 346,000 hospital admissions, and 178,000 premature deaths. In addition, air pollution causes some 7.4 million work-years to be lost annually. The numbers here are so uniformly large that they become a bit numbing.
Mark Hertsgaard, in his book, "Blue Planet, Red Sky," predicts that the world's most populous country could single-handedly wreck the global environment. "China can single-handedly guarantee that climate change, ozone depletion and other deadly hazards become a reality for people the world over", Mr Hartsgaard said.
4. Unemployment, Poverty, and Social Unrest…
The White paper outrageously asserts, "government considers the safety of the people above everything else and has taken a series of measures to enhance production safety and check the occurrence of all sorts of accidents…accidents in coal mines dropped by 15.6%, and that of death by 7.8%. to tackle the problem of industrial hazards".
But the cost in Human lives is anything but low. Thousands of miners die in China's coalmines every year. The Government put the number at 6434 but labor and human rights groups say the true count could be as high as 20,000. Over 80% of coal-mining deaths in the entire world happen in China. The high rate of coal mining accidents highlighted serious enforcement problems in that sector. An October gas explosion in a Henan mine reportedly killed 147 miners. In November, 166 miners were killed in a single accident at a state-owned mine in Shaanxi Province, sparking reportedly violent protests by relatives of miners. In April, following the blowout of a natural gas well, over 243 people were killed and 4,000 injured. Yet today, China is the world's largest coal producer, increasing output each year to feed its rapidly growing economy.
The problem is that faithfully implementing China's environmental laws would mean closing thousands of factories and throwing tens of millions of people out of work. But the Party's tattered legitimacy might not survive that. The transition to a private market free-for-all has caused much more social unrest than most outsiders realize, including numerous riots in recent months. A government scientist in Chongqing rightly said, "It is never too late to learn, but it is very late."
The unemployment in China has continuously worsened, making the gap between the rich and the poor even greater. The Asian Developing Bank estimated that the surplus labor forces are about 200 million in the countryside of mainland. Based on this, the overall jobless rate should be 34.3% in China. The consequent social problem is severe and potentially a ticking bomb. Even the Development Research Center at the State Council for the Communist China has issued a warning that the unemployment rate in the urban areas has been climbing, from the current 10% towards probably 15% in the near future.
The White Paper quoted, "The Chinese government continues to take effective measures to help the rural poor shake off poverty…a basic task to realize, safeguard and develop farmers' material interests and protect their rights and interests".
Nevertheless, Farmers remain the poorest and marginalized. Peasants are ill treated in many ways. They are discriminated against in education, political representation, social security and welfare, etc. For example, in 1998, in the Ninth National People's, peasants represented only 8% of its delegates from an agrarian population of 70% of the total. Peasants do not have social security, and even they pay higher prices for electricity and phone services.
Moreover, the number of people living in poverty in the urban areas has reached 37 million, about 12% of all the urban population. With its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), China will be facing still more pressure. China's Minister of Labor and Social Security, Zhang Zuoyi, admits that the unemployment peak may come at any time before 2005. According to the research by the World Bank, the Chinese government needs to create more than 100 million job positions in ten years to solve the demand from suspended workers, immigrants, and the new labor-seeking population.
The rich-poor gap in China is very apparent to any observer. The disparities between the urban and the rural, the coast and the inland, farming and non-farming constitute two distinct, but hard to bridge, identities in the Chinese economy. Due to exceedingly high Geni Index, the famous economist, Professor Li Yining from the Beijing University, has even proposed separating the urban and the rural components for the index calculation. This is really unthinkable, because the Geni index is intended to measure such unevenness or disparity. If one has to propose to separate the high-income and the low-income for computation, this means closing the gap between the rich and the poor is just too formidable.
Despite the fact that workers lack the legal right to strike, there has been a growing wave of strikes over layoffs, dangerous working conditions, or unpaid wages, benefits, or unemployment stipends. The reaction of local officials has been mixed, with strike leaders often arrested, while other strikers are given partial concessions. Over the past few years, even the numbers of urban protests in China have risen dramatically, and according to police reports, they are ever larger and better organized.
The White Paper states, "Employees' right to participate in and organize trade unions has been further exercised and developed. The Chinese government attaches great importance to the protection of laborers' rights. The state has adopted many measures to promote employment and reemployment, including reemployment aid, strengthened control of unemployment and regulation over staff cuts by enterprises."
"China's poisoned workers fight back" an article by Tony in BBC News, 10th march 2005 stated, "for the first time in a decade, factory owners in the southern province of Guangdong are finding themselves with a labour shortage of up to two million workers. But their lawyer Zhou Litai, a celebrated champion of Chinese workers' rights, says it is a problem that is all too common. "The rights of workers are often violated like this," he said, speaking on the phone from his office in Chongqing. "That includes work-related health problems, and a failure of workplace safety. They don't buy health insurance for the workers and there are lots of industrial accidents. All these problems happen very frequently," he said. The courts do not show much sympathy either. Although China has very strict laws about the obligations of employers to protect their workers in dangerous environments, more than 100,000 people a year are estimated to die in work related accidents. Very few cases are brought against employers successfully.
Chinese workers have yet to reap the benefits of the country's economic development. Employers routinely ignore minimum wage requirements and fail to implement required health and safety measures. Many former employees of state-owned enterprises lost their pensions when their companies were privatized or went bankrupt. Workers are limited in their capacity to seek redress by the government's ban on independent trade unions. The only union permitted is the government-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions.
In late October and early November 2004, major riots by tens of thousands of people roiled Henan and Sichuan provinces. The riots were widely separated geographically and the issues precipitating them were different, but the riots, and the state response to them, highlighted growing rural unrest and Chinese leaders' preoccupation with social stability. Leaders continue to isolate areas of discontent, and aim to prevent information about social problems from spreading.
The last annualized figure for labor protests that the Chinese State was willing to announce publicly was 100,000 for the year 1999. But a 2001 Internet report from the Ministry of Public Security disclosed that the numbers "began a rise like a violent wind" from 1997, the year of the Communist Party's 15th Congress, which pressed for factory firings in the name of efficiency. The causes are unpaid wages and pensions; sudden and massive job terminations corrupt officials held responsible for the bankruptcy. Some 60 million state-owned enterprises (SOE) employees have been summarily sacked since the early 1990's as their factories failed-from the lack of the state of the art technology and equipment, poor management or embezzlement, hefty social welfare bills, or costly non-state plants in China.
So far, the regime has succeeded in maintaining overall stability through control of media, by buying off angry unemployed workers with temporary stipends and by suppressing and imprisoning those it cannot dissuade. But these temporary measures and when considered in tendem with the waves of peasant protest caused by arbitrary taxation, official corruption and wanton land confiscation, party leaders find themselves confronted with a deeply worrisome situation. For what the party now confronts is a political threat no longer made up of students and intellectuals, as in 1989, but of workers and peasants, paradoxically the very disenfranchised classes on which Mao Tsetung built his revolution and in whose name the CCP has ruled unilaterally for so long.
Corruption within the CCP is rampant; embezzlement and bribery are particularly serious problems. China was ranked 71 out of 146 countries surveyed in the 2004 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Corruption remained an endemic problem. According to the Auditor General, embezzlement and misuse of public funds affected 75 percent of commissions and ministries under the State Council and accounted for approximately $170 million (RMB 1.4 billion) missing from the Central Government's 2003 budget. Transparency International continued to rank China among the worst countries in the world for bribery. Economists estimated that the cost of corruption might exceed 14 percent of gross domestic product.
Today we see that the government's attempts to solve the ever ballooning problems of corruption, local administrative highhandedness bordering on feudalism, unemployment, environmental devastation, economic disparities of all kinds and plethora of other serious problems go very little beyond announcements of policies and only symbolic redressals. They are only propaganda ploys devoid of substantive content of real implementation.
The white paper deals in length with the amount of monetary investments and subsidies that the central government has pumped into the much-heralded Western Development Scheme. "Increased financial input from the state has brought about rapid economic and social development in ethnic-minority areas and continuously improved the living standard of ethnic minority peoples. To accelerate the development of China's western regions and ethnic autonomous areas, the Chinese government launched a grand strategy for the development of western China in 2000".
But China's highly touted "Great Western Development Program" is seen as a "Great Western rip-off" by the uighur and Tibetans in the Western China. Five years after it was launched in late 1999 with great fanfare, two-thirds of the nation's population living in absolute poverty are in the west, while per capita gross domestic product in the region is only 40 percent of what it is along the eastern sea-board. Wide scale extraction of oil, gas and mineral resources in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia is fueling the eastern seaboard's economic boom. "The plan sounds nice, but they (government officials) are always saying nice things and things aren't getting that much better for us," said the Uighur handicraft maker Amin.
The White Paper also boast of tax exemptions to the peasants by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council promulgated, in the form of document No. 1, stating, " intensify efforts in implementing the policies of cancellation of special agricultural product tax, reduction of agricultural tax, providing direct subsidies…"people's right to subsistence and development were improved considerably …sparing no pains to increase farmers' incomes and improve their lives…relieving of tax burdens, which totaled 30.1 billion yuan."
According to a study by Social Anthropologist and Tibetologist Dr Melyvn Goldstein in Asia Survey(sep/oct 2003), noted that taxes and fees had increased for rural Tibetans, and that the prices of manufactured foods and other essential products such as fertilizers, sugar, tea, cooking oil and rice had seen inflationary rises ranging from 107 % to 400% over periods of 1984-2000. The study was also said to show that the price of barley (the major produce of Tibetan farmers) had risen only 56% around the same period. The study also shows that " all individuals 18 to 60 years of age are required to provide 20 days of free labor annually. It said that currently Tibetan farmers and livestock producers face buyer cartels, heavy taxation and extra budgetary charges, and lack access to micro-finance enabling them to buy trucks. It said they also do not have an effective agricultural education extension service to bring scientific advances to the farmers.
The White Paper, while avoiding the controversial subject of death penalty, skillfully delve on Government's effort to build "model units for strengthening the enforcement of surveillance and legal supervision, and for guaranteeing smooth criminal proceedings and the legal rights and interests of detainees".
The official Xinhua newsagency reported China's Premier Wen Jiabao pledging earlier this year that Beijing would improve its justice system so the death penalty would be given "carefully and fairly",. Sarah Green, a spokeswoman for Amnesty in London, welcomed the announcement, but said the group wanted action, not words.
In a report, "The death penalty worldwide: developments in 2004" by Amnesty international, "China Extensively and indiscriminately used death penalty as a result of political interference. The authorities continue to keep national statistics on death sentences and executions secret. By the end of the year, with the limited records available it was estimated that nearly 4,000 people were executed worldwide in 2004 - the most in nearly a decade. Of this China carried out more executions than all other countries combined - at least 3,400. The global rise in executions was "alarming", said Amnesty's UK director Kate Allen, who called the figures from China "genuinely frightening.
China executes, on an average, 40 people every week, according to an Amnesty International Report, and throughout the 1990s condemned more of its citizens to death each year than the rest of the world put together. From 1990 to 1999, Amnesty recorded 27,599 death sentences and 18,194 executions in China. " However the actual figures are likely to be far more than this, as only a fraction are reported and the Chinese Government regards the total figure as a state secret". In March 2004, a delegate at the China's National People's Congress asserted that "nearly 10,000" cases per year "result in immediate execution." The statement sparked calls for reform, including returning the power to issue death sentences from provincial courts to the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and eliminating the death penalty for economic and other nonviolent crimes. But death is announced unabatedly and indiscriminately in China.
With similar élan, The White Paper mentioned that China also attached great importance to the health conditions of its people, " In 2004, China had 296,000 health care institutions, 3,047,000 hospital and clinic beds, 4,390,000 medical personnel, and 3,586 disease prevention and control centers (including anti-epidemic stations) with 160,000 medical personnel. Moreover, there were 1,279 health care supervision and examination institutions with 26,000 medical personnel, and 42,000 township clinics".
The real cannot be further from the truth. Terence Neff, an American pediatrician found his team of eight medical personal to be the very first to provide medical treatment in the life of the people of Shangri-La County or Gyalthang of Yunnan province. "These people were so hungry for the medical care. It was so badly needed that, and they referred to western medical practices as magical", Sydney Herald (ID) Jan 20 quoted Neff as saying. "If you don't have money, you don't get any medical care in China. We saw a lot of iodine deficiency, cataracts and arthritis", Neff was further quoted as saying. The team of eight medical professionals was supported by the Friends Church, Coeur d' Alene, Idaho.
China said that a new medical regulations had been implemented in the rural areas of Tibet under which those who pay 20-30 yuan medical insurance each year could apply for 60 percent of reimbursement for their hospital bills. It said that currently 85 % of the rural residents, or 1.94 million farmers and herdsmen, had registered in this new medical insurance. "But in many cases, the question is the absence or gross inadequacy of medical facilities themselves, rendering such insurance quite meaningless. It is like buying discount coupons to stop in an empty or very poorly stocked shop" a report said.
Despite China's assertion of improvement in overall health, it proved a major headache. According to the 2000 Census, the infant mortality rate was 28.4 per 1,000. According to UNICEF statistics, the mortality rate for children under 5 years of age was 37 per 1,000 live births. More than 150,000 homeless "street children" lived in cities, according to state-run media.
The White Paper also explain in length China's medical campaign, "The State Council has issued the 'Notice on Enhancing the Prevention and Treatment of AIDS' A working committee on the prevention and treatment of AIDS was set up, and a national conference on the prevention and treatment of AIDS was held. The state has provided free anti-AIDS medicine to patients among farmers and to other patients in straitened circumstances".
China faces what could be one of the largest AIDS epidemics in the world. According to official statistics, 840,000 men, women, and children are living with HIV/AIDS, but the real number could be much higher. Many Chinese citizens lack basic information about AIDS, and some AIDS activists face state harassment and detention.
The authorities continued to resist calls from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others to conduct an independent inquiry into the operation of state-sanctioned blood collection stations in Henan and other central provinces which reportedly resulted in up to one million HIV infections. Vaguely defined "state secrets" legislation continued to be used to detain those suspected of publicizing statistics about the spread of the disease. Medical specialists and others who attempted to raise public awareness of the issue were arrested or intimidated.
Dr. David Ho, in an article, "The Aids Bombshell" said, "The Aids epidemic is a real worry for China, although its magnitude is still unclear. The Chinese put the official total of Aids cases at about a million. The reality is, the data are so poor that it could be half a million or two millions. UNAIDS has called China's epidemic the 'titanic peril' because it could blow up to ten or twenty million cases by the end of this decade. To me, that's frightening… As they reflected, Chinese officials realized that they had serious health-care problems. That includes HIV/ AIDS. It includes a healthcare infrastructure that has broken down, particularly in the rural areas, where 800 million people live. Most people don't have insurance, and the costs of health care are rising. If the Aids epidemic spreads, it could overwhelm the health-care system. A lot of work needs to be done. Prevention efforts should be expanded. But there's a window of only a few years to get that work done before the epidemic growth curve takes off exponentially. A balance must be struck between prevention and treatment. Lately the emphasis has been on treatment. It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. China has to realize that Aids is a threat to its well-being and prosperity in the long term. Greater resources must be committed to the effort".
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"The Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted the "Decision on Strengthening the Party's Governing Capability," which stresses that state power should be exercised in a scientific and democratic manner within the framework of the law, and that human rights should be respected and protected", says the paper.
Despite the flowery worded laws, no attempt was made to introduce the fundamental legal and institutional reforms necessary to bring an end to serious human rights violations. Tens of thousands of people continued to be detained or imprisoned in violation of their rights to freedom of expression and association. No country in the world could be indicted with such a wide variety of horrendous and bizarre human rights abuses as China. Protection of human rights was written into China's state constitution in the recent years, but these are simply dismissed as a tactical move aimed at consolidating communist rule and maintaining enforced social stability. Moreover, China's oblique legal system also made the constitution impossible to enforce.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention which visited the People's Republic of China from 18 to 30 September 2004, said that China was lagging in bringing human rights laws into line with international agreements and suggested this left the door open for continued abuse of dissenters. The report further regretted that "at this stage, the four recommendations formulated in its 1997 report have not yet been implemented. Namely, the provision which stipulates that everyone shall not be consider guilty until convicted has not been amended to clearly stipulate the presumption of innocence until proven guilty; no definition for the term in criminal law "endangering national security" has been given, hence the application of criminal law provisions using this unduly broad notion may invariably give rise to arbitrariness; no legislative measures have been taken to ensure a clear-cut exception from criminal responsibility for those peacefully exercising their rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and finally, no real judicial control is exercised within the procedure to commit someone to re-education through labour."
During the visit, the UNWGAD urged China to bring national laws into compliance with international human rights standards. Later, UNWGAD cut short its visit to Tibet's Drapchi prison after the China refused requests to meet with prisoners who were severely injured during and after the 1997 visit.
Despite reluctant and lackadaisical efforts to improve the rule of law, China's legal system itself remains a major source of rights violations. Many laws are vaguely worded, inviting politically motivated application by prosecutors and judges. The judiciary lacks independence: Party and government officials routinely intervene at every level of the judicial system in favor of friends and allies. Trial procedures favor the prosecution, and despite the public prosecution of a large number of judges, corruption remains a widespread problem. The criminal justice system relies heavily on confessions for evidence, creating institutional pressures on the police to extort confessions through beatings and torture. According to Chinese experts, legal aid services meet only one-quarter of the demand nationwide. Defense lawyers may face disbarment and imprisonment for advocating their clients' rights too vigorously.
The White Paper emphasis, "In 2004, the State Council promulgated China's first comprehensive administrative regulation on religious matters - "Regulations on Religious Affairs." It clearly defines the rights of religious groups and adherents with regards to religious activities, establishment of religious colleges and schools, publishing of religious books and periodicals, management of religious properties and foreign religious exchanges".
However, there is a little respect in China for religious freedom, though it is recognized in the constitution. All religious groups and spiritual movements must register with the government, which judges the legitimacy of religious activity. The government also monitors the activities of the official religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism). It targets leaders and the adherents of various religious groups for harassment, interrogation, detention, abuse, and prosecution and destroys or seizes unregistered places of worship. The extent to which such actions are taken or rules are enforced, though, varies widely by region. Religious controls remain particularly tight in Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other areas.
The communist Party of China keeps playing two-hand tactics with the Chinese people and the international community as a whole. On the one hand, it makes domestic laws and international commitments to protect human rights including the "freedom of religious faith," on the other hand; it still promulgates secret documents depriving people of basic human rights such as religious freedom. Although the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in the actual practice every religious groups has to undergo an onerous registration process and their activities are rigorously monitored Any group seen as attempting to move away from the strict and intrusive controls the Chinese Government exercises is immediately charged with criminal activities or illegal gatherings. This invariably results in police action, with routine physical abuse, torture and long-term imprisonment of religious leaders and practitioners.
Freedom of assembly and association is severely restricted. Protests against political leaders or the political system in general are banned, and the constitution stipulates that assemblies may not challenge, "Party leadership" or go against the "interests of the State." Security forces are known to use excessive force against demonstrators. All nongovernmental organizations must be registered with and approved by the government. Though the formation of political parties is not specifically discussed in any laws or regulations, the one opposition party that has formed, the China Democrat Party, has been targeted and suppressed by the government and has no real political power. Independent trade unions are illegal, and enforcement of labor laws is poor. All unions must belong to the state-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions, and several independent labor activists have been jailed for their advocacy efforts.
Despite some recent criminal procedure reforms, trials-which in any case are often mere sentence hearings-are often closed; few criminal defendants have access to counsel. Officials often subject suspects to "severe psychological pressure" to confess, and coerced confessions are frequently admitted as evidence. Many political prisoners and ordinary alleged criminals lack trials altogether, detained instead by bureaucratic fiat in "re-education through labor" camps. The U.S. State Department claimed that some 250,000 people were serving sentences in these camps in 2003. Endemic corruption further exacerbates the lack of due process in the judicial system. And judicial conditions are worst in capital punishment cases. Sixty-five crimes carry the death penalty, and perpetrators are often executed within days of their arrest. Although security forces are generally under civilian control, serious human rights abuses are widespread. These include extra-judicial and politically motivated killings, torture, physical abuse of prisoners, coercion, arbitrary arrest and detention, and lengthy incommunicado detention.
For example, police can detain a person for up to 37 days before releasing or formally arresting him. Arrests to thwart political dissent are frequent. Moreover, the government does not permit independent observation of prisons or of reeducation-through-labor camps.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Convent of Civil and Political Rights include the right to see, receive and impart information and ideas as part of the right to freedom of expression.
The White Paper too claimed, "Citizens' freedom of information, of speech and of the press is protected by law… Protection of citizens' rights to information, supervision and participation in public affairs were further promoted".
But China's media are tightly controlled by the country's leadership. Beijing also attempts to restrict access to foreign news providers by jamming shortwave radio broadcasts, including those of the BBC, and blocking access to web sites. A Paris-based media rights group, Reporters Without Borders reported in 2004 that China was the world's "biggest prison for cyber-dissidents".
The New York Times reported on a study by Harvard Law School researchers, that China had the most extensive and effective Internet censorship in the world. It regularly denies local users access to 19,000 websites that the government deems threatening. The study, which tested access from multiple points in China over six months, found that Beijing blocked thousands of the most popular news, political and religious sites, along with selected entertainment and educational destinations. Those that do not comply are shut down. In 2004, more than 47,000 net cafes were shut for 'breaking' these laws
A recent BBC report from Beijing stated that China was expanding its censorship controls to cover text messages sent using mobile phones. New regulations have been issued to allow mobile phone companies to police and filter messages.
Press freedom is severely limited in China. The government bars the media from criticizing senior CCP leaders or their policies, challenging CCP ideology, and discussing "sensitive topics"-in particular, constitutional reform, political reform, and reconsideration of the 1989 Tiananmen movement. Journalists violating these restrictions may be harassed, detained, and/or jailed. The government owns all television and radio stations and most print media outlets, and uses these organs to promote its ideology.
According to the U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report, "All media employees were under explicit, public orders to follow CCP directives and 'guide public opinion' as directed by political authorities. Because of this, most journalists practice a high degree of self-censorship. The government also directly censors both the domestic and foreign media. The government promotes use of the Internet, but regulates access, monitors use, and restricts and regulates content. China's Internet control system employed some 30,000 people and was the world's largest such system. Authorities target and punish Internet publishers and essayists far more frequently than journalists affiliated with more conventional media", the report added.
In October 2004, China also banned all reporting on rural land seizures by the government. In September, New York Times research assistant and author Zhao Yan was arrested on charges of passing state secrets to foreigners, apparently for his work uncovering leadership changes in the Communist Party. In early 2004, authorities banned a best-selling non-fiction book, 'Investigation of Chinese Peasants', which documented cases of official corruption, excessive taxation, and police brutality in rural Anhui province. Numerous newspapers tested the limits of the possible in 2004, and some came under attack. Staff of the parent group of the Southern Metropolis Daily received long prison sentences on charges of corruption; the former editor-in-chief was fired. The charges were widely viewed as politically motivated, as the newspaper had been the first to report on several stories of national significance
"Women's equal rights and interests in political, economic and social spheres are being gradually realized along with social development" proclaims the White Paper.
Reality shows that women continue to be underrepresented in China's political leadership and in senior positions in business. Chinese women reportedly face serious discrimination in education and employment and are far likelier than men to be laid off when state firms are downsized or privatized. Despite government crackdowns, trafficking in women and children for marriage, to provide sons, and for prostitution remains a serious problem. However, women still held few positions of significant influence at the highest rungs of the Party or government structure. There was one woman on the 24-member Politburo; she concurrently held the only ministerial post (out of 28) occupied by a woman.
The All China Women's Federation reported that 47 percent of laid-off workers were women, a percentage significantly higher than their representation in the labor force. Many employers preferred to hire men to avoid the expense of maternity leave and childcare, and some even lowered the effective retirement age for female workers to 40 years of age (the official retirement age for men was 60 years and for women 55 years).
According to expert estimates, there were 1.7 to 5 million commercial sex workers in the country. The increased commercialization of sex and related trafficking in women trapped thousands of women in a cycle of crime and exploitation and left them vulnerable to disease and abuse. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, one in five massage parlors in the country was involved in prostitution, with the percentage higher in cities. A 2004 Guangdong Province survey found that 74.2 percent of massage parlor workers were involved in prostitution.
"China fears bachelor future", by Louisa Lim speaks of China facing a demographic crisis. China was found to be heading towards becoming a nation of bachelors, with official statistics predicting as many as 40 million single men by 2020. The shortage of women is due to a traditional preference for sons, combined with the effects of China's strict birth control policies. Ms Louisa estimates that 70% of the newborns in her hospital are male. And statistics indicate that as many as two million extra boys are born every year nationwide. These are men who will not find wives, and Chinese officials have warned that this gender imbalance could lead to an increase in prostitution, sex crimes and wife-buying.
"China attaches great importance to the development of services for the disabled and protect their rights", so claim the Paper. In 2004, an amendment of the "Law on Protection of the Disabled" was started, aiming to further improve the legal guarantee for the rights and interests of the disabled and for the development of undertakings relating to the disabled. But the Government statistics itself showed that almost one quarter of the approximately 60 million persons with disabilities lived in extreme poverty.
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The "White Paper" entitled, "China's Progress in Human Rights in 2004" released by Chinese Communist Party on 13th of April, as always, fail to convince the world in general and the people of China in particular, that all is well in China as clarified and vindicated by these factual truths.
In 2004, as it had in the past, China did not permit independent domestic NGOs to monitor or to comment on human rights conditions. The Government generally did not permit independent monitoring of prisons or reeducation-through-labor camps, and prisoners remained inaccessible to most international human rights organizations. It was difficult to establish an NGO and the Government tended to be suspicious of independent organizations; most existing NGOs were quasi-governmental in nature and were closely controlled by government. Although China established the China Society for Human Rights, but the mandate of the so-called "nongovernmental" organization was not to monitor human rights conditions, but to defend the Government's views and human rights record.
In 2004 China's cooperation with U.N. human rights mechanisms remained sore. After almost a decade of discussion, China extended an invitation to the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, but two weeks before the June 2004 visit was to take place, the government postponed it indefinitely. The prime reason cited for the failure of the visit was the reluctance on the part of China to agree to the standard U.N. terms for such a visit, which include unannounced visits to prisons and confidential interviews with prisoners.
In 2004 China denied the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) permission to operate along its border with North Korea and deported several thousand North Koreans, many of whom faced persecution and some of whom may have been executed upon their return, as provided in North Korean law. Likewise during an annual meeting of the Commission on Human Rights, China again blocked consideration of a resolution condemning its human rights record by calling for a "no-action" motion.
In December 2004, the Government postponed a planned seminar by the Organization for Economic Cooperation on Socially Responsible Investment, which resulted in the cancellation of a visit by the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council to discuss labor issues. By the end of 2004, China had not announced any progress in talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on an agreement for ICRC access to prisons, although there were several rounds of consultations between the ICRC and the Government about allowing the ICRC to open an office in Beijing.
It is the biggest irony of the new millennium that the word 'human rights', the birthright of every human being, was constitutionally introduced to 1.3 billion people of the world only in the year 2004 and that too after decades of international pressure. It is but simple logic that when the word 'human rights' took such a long time to get on paper how many more centuries will it take to put the word into genuine practice.
Perhaps the most substantial fact about China, which directly refutes all their claims as well as future claims of progress in human rights is that the Government still maintains that there were 'legitimate, differing approaches to human rights based on each country's particular history, culture, social situation, and level of economic development'. A conformist attitude which means that China doesn't deem it important as well as necessary to submit to internationally accepted norms and standards of human rights and that China will continue to practice its own authoritarian benchmark of communist dictatorial rule and that 1.3 billion human beings will continue to feel insecure in their own homes and suffer under the Communist Party of China.
All in all, China, despite the heightened diplomatic and economic relations to boost and assert its undeserving position in the global stage, must, sooner or later, heed to the call of inevitable change and realize that realities inside China cannot be shrouded with a pack of "White lies" from the world, not that easy...
©Tibetan Youth Congress