Untitled Document

(Tibetan response to the White Paper published by the State Council of People’s Republic of China in August 2005, titled “Gender Equality and Women’s Development in China.)

Anyone who examines the condition of Chinese women cannot help but be touched by woeful tales
of indignity, anguish and torture that innocent daughters, wives and mothers suffer.

The Information Office of the State Council of People’s Republic of China in August 2005 released a White Paper entitled “Gender Equality and Women’s Development in China”. The most common feature of this White Paper is its robust claim to have provided the Women in China equal rights and status, which as usual, is buttressed with some impressive yet questionable figures. The White Paper begins with its affirmation that out of China’s total population of 1.3 billion, “women account for about half. Therefore, the promotion of gender equality and the overall development of women is not only of great significance for China’s development, it also has a special influence on the efforts for the advancement of mankind.” This assertion seems to be based on Chairman Mao Zedong’s famous declaration that, as women constitute half the population, they must “hold up half the sky”. But as China transforms from stifling rigidity of the state controlled economic model to the ruthless disorder of market-oriented model, the sky seems to be falling in on millions of women. After half a century of struggling to achieve equality with men, women are bearing the brunt of the nation’s massive social dislocations.

Chinese families without sons still continues to fear poverty and neglect. The male offspring represented continuity of lineage and protection in old age. The Chinese thinking is best described in the ancient “Book of Songs” (1000-700 B.C.):

“When a son is born, let him sleep on the bed, Clothe him
with fine clothes, and give him jade to play…
When a daughter is born, let her sleep on the ground,Wrap her in common
wrappings, and give broken tiles to play…”

Hence the White Paper’s claim that women in China, “enjoy equal rights with men in terms of politics, economy, culture, and social and family life, and continuously pushes forward women’s development in an all- round way” seems to have been made either fallaciously or taking only an elite group of urban educated women into consideration. The fact remains that women in China are losing out in all spheres of life. With the increase in the discrimination against them, they are the first to be laid off from state jobs. They are the first to be deprived of local-government seats, as Beijing no longer enforces long-held gender quotas. They are the first to drop out of school as academic fees climb ever higher. And they have regressed financially, too: in the 1980’s women made 80 cent for every dollar that men earned; now, women make only 65 cent, as private enterprises are free to pay as they please. In addition, the old social practices from China’s imperial past such as prostitution, concubinage, wife buying and female infanticide saw great resurgence.

In 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) defined violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the state […] force prostitution, forced sterilization, forced abortion, coercive/ forced use of contraceptives”. Several reports have indicated that women from all walks of life in China are suffering serious human rights violations. Many have been detained, restricted or harassed for exercising fundamental rights such as freedom of expression or association including demonstrations and peaceful religious activities, struggling to obtain justice for imprisoned relatives, or simply because of the activities of male relatives.

The BPFA also includes women living under foreign occupation and notes that they are particularly vulnerable to violence. Women in China belonging to minority group especially Tibetan women languishing under Chinese rule are facing dire circumstances. They are subject to a wide range of violence including gender specific torture, rape and reproductive rights violations, discriminatory practices concerning Tibetan women and their employment and health care, the status of the Tibetan girl child, and Tibetan women’s human rights in Tibet. There also are several cases of their arbitrary arrest, detention and torture without fair trials.

The White Paper outrageously asserts, “The Chinese government and its departments concerned have enforced laws and formulated and implemented relevant administrative rules and regulations to guarantee women’s rights and interests, and promote gender equality”. The characteristic of this paper or for that matter any of China’s White Papers is its limitation simply to the recitation of related laws and regulations. But a detailed discussion of the manner in which these laws are implemented highlights the great discrepancy between law in theory and law in practice. A closer appraisal of the enforced laws of the Chinese government and its actual implementation reveals the farcical details of these laws, meant actually to protect women’s rights and interests, and promote gender equality.

Although the Chinese government has made repeated commitments of equality for women and has enacted laws and formulated policies aimed at implementing those commitments, all too often in practice women’s rights are quietly sacrificed in favour of other goals: efficiency, attracting foreign investment, restructuring, social harmony and so on. Women have few avenues for pursuing rights claims when their rights and interests conflict with those of the government or its officials, or when the discriminatory treatment they have suffered is perpetrated by a government agency. Due to the absence of legal remedies and restrictions on freedom of association and expression women are left with little opportunity for challenging lack of government action or violations of their own rights. In effect the government has blamed women for their own predicament. Women in China are repeatedly urged to “improve their quality.” For example the Article 6 of the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests (LPWRI) provides that “the state shall encourage women to cultivate a sense of self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-strengthening” and that “women shall abide by the laws of the state, respect social morality and perform their obligations described by law.” This implies that discrimination against women is caused by their lack of self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-strengthening. The government officials has time and again repeated that women employees are less capable than men, having less wisdom, costing employers more and having less education.

Article 48 of China’s Constitution stipulates that women “enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of life” and that “the state protects the rights and interests of women.” However, it makes no mention of prohibiting discrimination against women, or discrimination against any other category of persons. Some Chinese legal scholars have claimed that the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests (LPWRI) is an “anti-discrimination law” and the Chinese government has stated that the law was passed in part to give effect to its responsibilities under CEDAW. But the LPWRI does not address the question of whether a practice that causes a difference in the treatment of women in comparison to men, even if not intending to discriminate, is discriminatory and therefore prohibited. The law is silent on whether a pattern of behaviour that in effect adversely impacts on women in comparison to men may be considered proof of discrimination, or when an absence of action may constitute discrimination. This points to the fact that the LPWRI is not actually intended to be used as an anti-discrimination law. The lack of available legal mechanisms and the government’s lack of action to enforce them are the major problems with the implementation of the LPWRI and other laws protecting women’s rights. In essence, the LPWRI depends almost entirely for its enforcement on whether or not the government chooses to take administrative measures to fulfil the promises of the law and unfortunately it rarely does so.

The laws and regulations pertaining to trafficking are never implemented seriously. On 4 September 1991, the National People’s Congress passed two bills to prohibit solicitation of prostitution and to increase penalties for the crimes of women and children abduction and trafficking. But the number of reports of women and girls trafficked inside the country and across its border has been rising since the 1980s, giving rise to serious concern. In addition to the factors including economic change, persistence of “feudal” customs, regional disparities in wealth and so on, “insufficient crackdown” on traffickers and “lenient punishment” of purchasers were some of major contributing factors. The complicity of officials with traffickers or with those who profit from trafficking through selling the labour of trafficking victims has been insufficiently examined. Currently the government severely restricts reporting about the issue of trafficking. This means that deficiencies in the laws and policies relating to this problem are not exposed. The government’s present anti-trafficking campaign directed only at potential victims has little impact on mobilizing society as a whole to fight this egregious abuse of women’s rights, or to change the attitudes and practices which allow women and girls to be bought and sold like cattle.

Article 13 of China’s Labour Law states, “Women and men enjoy equal rights to employment.” However, in reality, women do not enjoy the same rights as men in the existing structure. Despite the existence of such laws and regulations-which protect a variety of rights relating to employment-women have suffered disproportionately from unemployment resulting from economic restructuring, as they are the first to be laid-off and the last to be hired. Although they constitute less than 40 percent of the formal urban workforce, women have suffered 60 percent of the layoffs in this sector. Women also encounter widespread discrimination in hiring and promotion with even some government departments openly refusing to hire them. Most relevant laws contain only administrative mechanisms for enforcement, and the reality of a lack of official action demonstrates that addressing such problems is not a high priority for central or local governments.

Furthermore, in many cases the person who has committed the violation may actually be a leader in the administrative agency, which should be responsible for dealing with it. As a Chinese legal scholar has put it:

Therefore, despite the enactment of various laws and regulation to protect the rights and interests of women, such laws are rarely put into practice and there are still no reliable guarantees for the protection of women’s legal rights and interests.

“The state has made the guarantee of equal employment opportunities between women and men […] and has worked out and adopted a series of policies and measures to ensure that women can equally participate in the economic development, enjoy equal access to economic resources and effective services, enhance their self-development ability and improve their social and economic status” proclaims the White Paper. Ironically, there is a great contrast between the policies in theory and that in practice as women in China are denied their right to equality and development. Most of the women in China still remain economically dependent on men and frequently unaware of their rights, social services and laws that protect their health, security and financial interests.

Moreover, most of the policies or initiatives themselves demonstrate a sexist approach. News headlines in the state media often contain sexist messages; for example, “Care for Girl Child Action: 4 million single males in China to be saved.” Such headlines imply that the aborted, killed and missing girls are of value only as the possessions of men as brides, wives and sources of sexual pleasure. The life and death of girls and women as individual human beings does not seem to be the key issue. According to the UNDP’s China Human Development Report:

As per the White Paper’s claim, Article 13 of China’s Labour Law also states, “Women and men enjoy equal rights to employment.” However, the reality is that women do not enjoy the same rights as men in the existing structure. Despite the existence of such laws and regulations which protect a variety of rights relating to employment, women have suffered disproportionately from layoffs and unemployment resulting from economic restructuring, encounter widespread discrimination in hiring and promotion, women are deprived of benefits employers are required to provide them under the law and often have to face working conditions which violate national laws on health and safety and work practices, endangering their lives and health.

Women suffer employment discrimination even in the civil services, which was the traditional refuge for bright women. A survey by the All-China Women’s Federation says that women hold only 8% of top provincial jobs. Due to the dismantling of the state-owned and controlled industries/enterprises that had been inefficient and unproductive for a long time, the downsizing of governmental agencies, more than 12 million state workers were laid off in 1997, and some 8,000,000 government employees were put out of work in 1998 and 1999. Unsurprisingly, women-the essential labour force that “held up a half sky” in the old times-were considered most dispensable during this radical shake-up of the state run enterprises. They were the first to be laid off and the last to be hired and held a much lower proportion of highly paid jobs than men, and have often been paid less even in the same occupations as their male counterparts. In 1990, women earned 83% of men’s pay. By 1999, that figure had dropped to just 70%.

According to the researchers at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, 65% of the layoffs in the state sector are women, even though only 40% of the workforce is female. A 2002 study by officials in north-eastern Liaoning province says that, of the millions being laid off by state factories, 80% of the men eventually find work as compared to 49% of the women. Chinese government in their reports have blamed the victims by stating, “Women make up a larger share of the laid off workers as a result of their disadvantaged educational and technical background.” But as with most stereotypes this is a myth and given the opportunity, Chinese women are as able as their male counterpart if not more. Some women are even forced to take early retirement. China’s official retirement age for men is 60 while a woman must retire at the age of 55, much in contrast to their claim of gender equality.

The massive layoff of women and the consequent unemployment has driven many women to seek alternative job opportunities such as prostitution. Two surveys sponsored by the Beijing women Federation in 1991 and 1999 had revealed that even more older women have entered the illicit sex services to earn a living. Accordingly, the oldest age of the women detained for prostitution rouse from 37 in the 1991 survey to 54 in the 1999 survey.

The much-hyped “economic reform” has created a new category of employers, i.e. private and foreign employers who have mushroomed in China since the 1980s. This in turn, has resulted in a new form of exploitative labour-employer relationships. For women this has included sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape or forced prostitution. ‘Single and beautiful young women under the age of 25’ is the basic quality which most of these employers openly advertise and solicit for. The spread of discriminatory recruitment practices is reflected in terms such as “sex determined occupation” (xingbie zhiye) and “youthful occupation” (qingchun zhiye)-which refer to jobs performed mostly by young women. The title ‘PR officer’ is often synonymous with an escort service lady or company-employed prostitute for high-ranking executives, potential clients, and partners of the company. Most of the women are reluctant to resist the unwanted sexual advances of bosses or clients for fear of losing their job or of possible legal consequences. Knowing all these circumstances China, unfortunately, does not have any statute outlawing sexual harassment in the workplace. Few of those who manage to gain courage and lodge complaints to the local police have often ended up with being harassed more, intimidated, fired from the job or even arrested, fined and sentenced to jail for defamation.

The condition of Tibetan women under Chinese rule is even worse as they are victims of the gross and widespread employment discrimination against them. Numerous reports produced by various international bodies have reflected and criticized such a trend of discrimination in employment against Tibetans and specifically against Tibetan women. In 1998, an investigation by ICLT, revealed disturbing evidence regarding gender-specific discriminatory employment practices against Tibetan women, such as “virginity testing, gender-specific hiring and recruiting practices, and employment-related fines and penalties tied to family planning policies”.

The evidences strongly suggest that the unemployment rate among Tibetans is rising at a brisk rate and in consequence, there is an increase in poverty. The prominent reason is the large-scale and rapid influx of Chinese migrants from the Mainland China, who enjoy: preferential treatment for jobs, higher wage, retirement pensions, financial incentives, exemption from the one child policy and various other facilities. Many Tibetans cannot find employment unless they speak Chinese, the language in which Government and judicial proceedings are conducted. Under such circumstances, there is no wonder that Tibetan women are at the bottom of the employment hierarchy, behind Chinese men, Chinese women and Tibetan men. Numerous reports indicate that Tibetan women are paid less for equal work compared to Chinese workers. Tibetan women who are associated with political activities have lost jobs as Chinese authorities consider them as “separatist”. Those who have given birth to children exceeding the authorized quotas have also lost their jobs, given extra duties, or have had their salary and benefits withheld as penalties. Sexual harassment exercised against Tibetan women in the workplace have also been reported, complaining about which, they feel, is useless and could make the matter worse.

The White Paper outrageously asserts, “With the implementation of large-scale and effective special poverty-reduction development programs, the government has succeeded in reducing the poverty-stricken rural population, the majority of whom are women”. But, much of China’s rural population lives in constant fear of being poor. Some mothers are able to send their children to school, but others struggle just to provide for their basic needs: food, shelter, clothes. According to the World Bank’s poverty line of one dollar per person per day, as many as 350 million people in China may be classified as poor. Many of those above the official poverty line remain highly vulnerable. The overwhelming majority of poor people live in the countryside or counties and thus are not eligible for the government’s anti-poverty programs. Some analysts have said that even within the poverty counties, production-oriented programs may not reach the poorest people, including the women.

Hence, the people of rural areas continue to remain the poorest and the most marginalized. They are discriminated against in education, political representation, social security and welfare, etc. 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. UNFPA noted that in China there are “great socio-economic disparities, especially between urban and rural areas in terms of income and access to and availability of social services including health care, particularly reproductive health care.” As a result of the shift from central to local and provincial governments in the provision of welfare, reproductive health is under-funded in some regions. In poor areas, Chinese women thus do not enjoy equal access to family planning services. For example, according to UNFPA, in some rural areas, the maternal mortality rate is reported to be between 400 and 700 deaths per 100,000 live births.

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.

The growing poverty in the countryside and the shortage of females has increased the interest of traffickers in girls, who are sold as servants or brides or are forced into prostitution. The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women said in her 1997 report that in some Chinese counties and villages, 30 to 90 percent of marriages were the result of trafficking. A UNICEF report estimated that China now has 200,000 to 500,000 child sex workers.

Today, a large segment of China’s new generation of women sit huddled in a row of brothels such as the one in Xingsha, a grimy town in Hunan province where some of the kidnapped girls from Xupu County have ended up. It is estimated that China has about 4 million prostitutes working as san pei ladies (escorts), in hotels, dance halls, nightclubs and other entertainment centers; as public relation officers or ‘Miss Protocol’ in private and foreign companies; and as street walkers in massage parlours and beauty salons. According to the Human Rights Watch report, “A cultural preference for boy children, combined with state population control policies, has resulted in a shortage of women and girls in rural areas, creating a lucrative market for traffickers. While the state has cracked down on some trafficking rings, many Chinese women and girls, especially those from rural and ethnic communities, are kidnapped and either sold as wives or trafficked into the sex industry. During 2004, major stories in the domestic press also highlighted police brutality against suspected sex workers.”

Today, prostitution in China is so rampant that the latest edition of the Xinhua Dictionary of New Words has a new entry: pao niu, or looking for prostitutes. The pimps or the traffickers kidnap girls from the countryside to either make them a prostitute or to illegally sell them as brides. The provincial government of Yunnan announced in May 2004 that 571 children were abducted in Yunnan between 2001 and 2003. The All-China Women’s Federation estimates that the rate of female abductions is increasing by an average of 30% a year. In most of the cases local officials are also complicit in the abductions. The cops turn a blind eye after being paid off by traffickers. In 1994 a migrant woman who tried to bring a case of gang rape in Beijing was instead accused of prostitution and detained for 15 days by the police.

In Tibet, despite China’s repeated claims of bringing economic developments, thousands of Tibetans still languish under absolute poverty. Tibetan see China’s highly touted “Great Western Development Program” as a “Great Western Rip-off”. The pattern of development in Tibet is intended to control the Tibetan economy rather than stimulate initiative enterprise and production. The much-hyped economic boom and the resultant growth in economic activity have benefited Chinese and not the Tibetans, leaving the chasm between rich and poor even more wider.

Since 1960, Chinese Government has made repeated yet baseless claims of bringing great economic advancements in Tibet: bumper crops, industrial growth, improvement of infrastructure and so forth. These claims can be considered baseless from the very fact that such claims were made even in 1961-1964 and 1968-1973 when Tibet was suffering its only famines in history. The late Xth Panchen Lama, in his last speech in 1989, remarked, “The price Tibet paid for this development was higher than the gains”. There have been no signs of reduction in the disproportionate level of poverty in Tibet. This fact is evidenced from a report entitled “China Human Development Report, 1997 and 1999” published by the World Bank and the United Nation Development Programme, which stated that UNDP has consistently found that the TAR and other Tibetan areas are ranked lower than most other areas of China in the Human Development Index which uses indicators such as education, income and health. The report further states that Tibet is the poorest and the least developed region of China with a Human Development Index of only 0.39, placing it within the bottom 12 of a list of the world’s 49 officially recognized least developed regions, between Rwanda and Maldives. The poverty in Tibet is still very high and some estimate that around 40% of Tibetans lives below the poverty line.

The condition of Tibetan women is even more critical as they need social support system for health, family planning and education. Abject poverty exposes Tibetan women to extreme hardship in gaining employment and educational opportunities. As a part of its overall mission to eradicate the Tibetan culture, there has been a large-scale introduction of prostitution into Tibet. In 1998, it was estimated that over 658 brothels existed on the 18 main streets of Lhasa. Although majority of the prostitutes in these brothels are Chinese women. But due to economic hardship, discrimination and lack of opportunity, the number of Tibetan women falling prey to this sex industry is also increasing. This veracity has also been confirmed by a report produced by Tibet Information Network (TIN) entitled, “Prostitution on the Rise Among Tibetans” which states:

The Chinese authorities have deliberately failed to prevent prostitution in Tibet as, they think, it may covertly contribute to the desecration of Tibetan society and culture.

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Through this White Paper, China sang its own eulogy by stating, “Women’s ability to be involved in the management of state and social affairs has been constantly strengthened, and their ability in handling political affairs has gradually enhanced”. But in reality, a combination of lack of representation of women in the highest organs of power in the state, political control over association and the low priority given to women’s needs and concerns means that women’s representation does not comply with the standards set out in the official papers. The paper further asserts that the Election Law, promulgated in 1995, “stipulates that deputies to the National People’s Congress (NPC) and local people’s congresses at all levels should include appropriate numbers of women” and that there has been an increase in the proportion of women members. As a Chinese scholar who has studied this subject, puts it, “[T]he official release of partial data […] tends to highlight the positive aspects of women’s political participation, while avoiding more uncomfortable data or interpretations.” But considering the robust and repeated claims made by Chinese Government, the proportion of increase in the number of women members is, by no means sufficient. According to the Paper there has been an increase of only 0.5 percentage points of women deputies of the National People’s Congress over the previous National Congress. According to the Human Rights Watch report, “Women continue to be underrepresented in China’s political leadership and in senior positions in business”.

When the 16th Party Congress convened in Beijing in 2002 to elect the Central Committee, only five of the 198 members were female. Surprisingly, there isn’t a single woman in the secretariat of the Central Committee, while there is only one female member in the state councillor. Wu Yi is the only woman in the China’s Cabinet, who was appointed on April 26, 2003 as the Minister of Health after the SARS scandal claimed her predecessor. It’s the men who take most of the decisions relating to policy matters, while women have little or no say in it. In 2002, Mayor Li was elected to head her 350-strong village in eastern Anhui province but despite her ballot-box victory, she hasn’t been able to wrest the keys to her rightful office from her predecessors. “They tell me a woman is not smart enough for this job […] But I think they are just afraid that I will expose their corruption” says the 58 year-old Mayor. According to Li Yinhe, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “Some men don’t trust women in power”. Rather, men like to see women as objects and feel that the more they achieve, the more ability or charisma they have.

The White Paper claims, “The role of women’s federation in participating in and supervising government work has been strengthened […] they are also involved in supervising the enforcement of such laws and regulations.” Ironically, China’s social organizations are not pressure groups, as their interests are “identical” to those of the authorities. A prime example of this is the fact that the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF)-meant to voice the opinions of women regarding their rights and interests-was responsible for drafting the government’s report to CEDAW. The report ignores news and commentary on problems of discrimination faced by women published daily in the Federation’s own newspaper, China Women’s News, as well as the many reports and studies prepared by Federation researchers. According to the ACWF, its “guiding policy” is to “unite and educate the broad mass of women and implement the basic line of the party…” Official documents state that the primary task of the organization is “to implement government policies at all levels of society, from working women upwards.” Furthermore, ACWF officials are considered “state cadres”. Hence, when women’s interests come into conflict with those of the ruling party and the government, the ACWF cannot represent them. More importantly, national laws and policies give ACWF a monopoly on representing women’s interests, and require that all initiatives and groups focussing on women’s concerns should be controlled by it. Thus, concerns about the many negative effects of government policies on women and girls often cannot find proper channels for expression, and women are unable to forcefully advocate changes in such policies.

In the late 1990s, while addressing the new leadership of the ACWF, the then President of China Mr. Jiang Zemin emphasised that “without the advancement of the cause of the Communist Party and the people, Chinese women will not witness their own progress.” Problems arising from the dual and contradictory roles of representation and implementation of state policy is manifested in the ACWF’s actual work. For example there is no doubt that the organization has “many dedicated local women’s cadres [who] have worked hard to investigate and redress complaints of sex discrimination and abuse in the workplace, as well as reports of women being forced into prostitution” But at the same time “the arbitrary power that these local ACWF cadres hold can lead to abuse. Incidents of forced sterilizations have often been attributed to overzealous local ACWF cadres…” Their primary role in enforcing the state’s population policy means that ACWF cadres are often unpopular figures in their communities.

The strength of the CCP’s hold over women’s representation has been further enhanced and formalised by laws and regulations passed since the brief flowering of autonomous organizations during the 1989 Democracy Movement. By requiring all groups to register with the Ministry of Civil Affairs prior to operation, the Regulations on the Management and Registration of Social Groups (1998) aim to incorporate and therefore control all social groups wishing to organize. Official studies have shown that most women cadres in leadership positions are involved with “women’s work” through the All-China Women’s Federation and its local branches. For example, more than 80 percent of women delegates to township-level people’s congresses are directors or committee members of village women’s congresses. This means that women are essentially confined to a particular sphere of work, and have few opportunities to gain experience in broader political issues, and thus to get promoted into higher-level posts.

The White Paper Says, “The state takes concrete measures and actions to ensure that girls receive nine-year compulsory education and that women have more opportunities to receive secondary and higher education […] Governments at all levels have formulated special policies and taken measures concerning the education of girls in poor areas and areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, work hard to raise the level of compulsory education for girls in rural China.” But the ground reality is that China’s shift to a free-market system has increasingly placed the economic burden of education on local governments. The Fiscal decentralization has left many poor communities with insufficient money to provide basic education for free; hence they pass expenses on to parents, resulting in growing gender inequities in education. Although according to the Compulsory Education Law, nine years of education should be provided to all children for free, whereas in practice, fees are now charged in many rural schools under the title of “miscellaneous fees,” “book-bag fees,” “school building fees” and so on. Because the poorest areas have the lowest resource base, fees charged may actually be higher in these areas than in more well off locations. According to the little information available, fees for primary school students are around 100 plus Yuan per semester, with higher fees charged for middle school children.

Over the past decade, China’s cash-strapped Education Ministry has started allowing schools to increase their fees to make up for financial shortfalls. In some rural school districts, the fees are half a peasant’s yearly income. As most of the Chinese families cling to the traditional patriarchal values, including a preference for and reliance upon sons as a form of social security, results in female children having less access to education, particularly when resources are scarce, forcing families to prioritise education of a son over a daughter. In families with more than one child, a daughter’s education might be seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. Women’s illiteracy in China stands at 22.9 percent compared with men at 7.9 percent. Girls are more likely than boys to be pulled out of school at an earlier age to work to maintain the household. It is estimated that in rural areas, girls were 11 times more likely than boys to drop out of primary school. In one sampling survey conducted in the late 1990s, 40 percent of males dropped out of school before age 15, while 87 per cent of females dropped out by the same age. The proportion of women to men declines at each educational tier, with women comprising some 25% of undergraduates in universities. Consequently, there are fewer women going to college: since 1995, the number of female university students has declined every year, to one-third of the student body today, according to the State Education Commission. Illiteracy and lack of education contribute to women’s vulnerability in a number of ways. HIV/AIDS exacerbates this factor, as girls are more likely to be pulled from school to provide care for a sick family member in the home. Additionally, a lack of general education reduces women’s opportunities to acquire knowledge about healthy sexual practices and denies them the ability to develop skills and knowledge to protect themselves from HIV by all means of transmission.

It is an undeniable fact that the educational institutions in Tibet remained highly confined to the urban areas serving mainly the Chinese migrants. The rural areas, where over 85% of Tibetans live, remain neglected and deprived of these educational facilities. For example, between 1998 and 2001, the total percentage of regular secondary schools in the rural areas of the TAR-which plays a vital role for training the rural youth in skilled work and for providing a bridge to higher education-had been reduced from 2% to 1%, while the urban secondary schools had increased from 18% to 20% and county and town secondary schools from 70% to 79%. Corroborating this dismal situation, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Ms. Katarina Tomasevski, has deplored the fact that compulsory education has not been made free in China and the literacy rate in Tibet is only 39% and that the situation warrants redressal by the Beijing authorities.

Roughly, one-third of the school-aged children in Tibet continue to receive no education at all. This is prominently due to the prohibitively high fees charged by the Chinese authorities. A vast majority of the interviewed new Tibetan arrivals in India confirmed that Tibetan students either do not get any educational facilities or they have to pay extremely high fees. Even primary education is not free for them. This falls in total contrast to the Chinese repeated claims and the provision in Article 10 of the 1986 Chinese ‘Law of Compulsory Education’ that instructs that state shall not charge tuition fee for students receiving compulsory education. An internal TAR Party Committee document reveals that schools in the TAR are collecting as much as 13 different kinds of fees from students, six of which are not legally authorized. The unaffordable school fee prevents many Tibetan families from being able to send their children to school at all. Under such circumstances, girls are the first ones to drop out of schools. Unsurprisingly, the number of drop-outs among Tibetan girls is several times higher than that of their male counterparts.

The Chinese Government controls curricula, texts and other course materials, and continues to represent a distorted picture of the Tibetan history in schools across Tibet. Tibetan children are imparted education, which is marked by: indoctrination policy, culturally biased curriculum and censorship, the denial of Tibetans’ cultural right and dignity, and discrimination in terms of educational facilities. The Tibetan schoolgirls are the major victims to such a discriminatory policy. The Chinese teachers even sexually harass them. A witness interviewed by ICLT et.al. in 1998 described that:

As a result of such an unlawful and anti-Tibetan educational policies, thousand of children risk their lives fleeing Tibet in search of an education that preserves their language, culture, history and tradition. Between January and August 2004, 2,416 new refugees have reached the Tibetan Reception Centre in Dharamshala. Of these refugees young Tibetans below the age of 25, account for 61.21% of the total. If China had complied with their immodest claims by providing rightful educational facilities to Tibetan children particularly girls, there wouldn’t have been a reason for such a large-scale exodus.

The White Paper trumpets China’s progress in the field of women’s health by stating, “the state has promulgated and implemented such statutes as the Law […] on Health Protection of Mothers and infants and […] on Population and Family Planning” which are also infested with dubious figures. It further claims that there has been an increase in the number of Health care institutes, average life expectancy, state investments in health related facilities, and a consequent decrease in the mortality rate. As is apparent, China’s national health policies for women are focussed almost entirely on their role as mothers and link health interventions directed at women to family planning and the survival and health of children. The paper contains hardly any data on the health status of women in China today, and fails to address some of the major emergencies in women’s health. Such as the high suicide rate especially among rural women, the heightened mortality rate of female under-five and the “missing” girls indicated by unbalanced sex ratios among newborns and infants.

As China shifts to a system of fee-for-service medicine, with 79 percent of Chinese people now not covered by any kind of health insurance or benefits, women are particularly disadvantaged. The lower status of girls and women means that they are less likely to receive care, which is increasingly expensive. This is particularly so for rural women, whose access to health care is severely inadequate. It is estimated that about 60 percent of public health spending is disbursed for 15 percent of the population who live in cities or are employed by government, while the share of spending covering the needs of the poorest quarter of the rural population is very nominal.

Women in China are under intense pressure including the failure to produce a male child, poverty, unemployment, insufficient land tenure rights, family violence, or work-related problems. One symptom of the intensifying pressure is that 287,000 women in China committed suicide in 2000, making it the only country in the world where the suicide rate for the females is higher than for males. The World Bank estimates that Chinese women's suicide rate is five times the world average. China, with approximately one-fifth of the world's people, has 56% of the world's female suicides So common is the suicide that it now ranks as the No. 1 cause of death for women aged 18-34, states a study carried out by researchers at the Beijing Huilongguan hospital. The poor, uneducated masses of China’s interior are particularly vulnerable: one third of young rural women who die do so by their own hand.

The White Paper states, “the state has paid great attention to the prevention and treatment of AIDS, and earmarked extra funds for this purpose. As a result, practical effects have been achieved in the prevention and treatment of AIDS”. For Chinese authorities, it appears that, it is the public pronouncements that matter more than the practical implementation. Women in China are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection relative to men, both because of unique sociological and personal factors, such as access to information, education and the ability to protect oneself. Of the almost 1 million people estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in China, almost a quarter, 220,000 or 22 percent, were women (aged 15-49) as of 2001. Between 1990-1995, the ratio of HIV prevalence was 1 woman to 9 men. By 2001, the ratio had risen to 1 woman for every 3.4 men. Sexually transmitted HIV infections in China have increased from 5.5% in 1997 to 11% at the end of 2002. In recent reports by the Chinese government, the number of female intravenous drug users (IDUs) is also on the rise; some provinces report forty percent of users being women. The increase in female IDUs could lead to expanding HIV infection among women due to the high prevalence rate and frequency of high-risk behaviour (such as needle-sharing and unprotected sex) among IDUs.

STDs have been spreading rapidly in recent years, and so is HIV infection. The government has taken insufficient action to combat these diseases, and has not particularly targeted women, although they are at special risk because they are often unable to exercise control in their sexual lives. Sex workers and trafficked women present the most extreme examples. The knowledge about STDs and the use of condoms is known to be low amongst Chinese sex workers. It is even lower amongst Tibetans. According to the Chinese Association of STD/AIDS Control and Prevention, up to 80 percent of sex workers in rural provinces had never heard of HIV or AIDS. While sex workers in cities were slightly better informed. They are not generally in a position to insist on condom use. And women’s higher risk of contracting the disease through unprotected sex means that the general lack of information on HIV and STDs impacts particularly on them. The paper makes no mention about women’s access to primary health care or treatment for non-communicable diseases like stroke, cancer, heart disease and chronic lung disease that account for most mortality for age groups beyond child bearing years. China has a rapidly growing elderly population, and almost 10 percent of people in the PRC are already over 60.

Tibetans in general and that of women in particular have rather no or little access to health related facilities claimed to have granted by the paper. First of all, the basic health facility generally lags far behind those available in the wealthier regions of China. For example, one in five county-level hospitals reportedly cannot conduct simple surgery, and there is only one CT scanner in all of Tibet. Medical Sans Frontieres, a health NGO in Tibet, withdrew from the region at the end of 2002 after deciding that their organisation could not improve Tibetan’s health due to the lack of infrastructure in the region. In addition, the medical and health care services in TAR are confined to the urban areas-catering mainly to need of Chinese and their loyalists-which are located at substantial distances from the rural or pastoral areas where over 80% of the Tibetans dwell.

The refugee testimonies also reveal that Chinese doctors and health personnel use Tibetan patients as guinea pigs to practice their skills. As a result of such a dire state of health-related facilities, there is huge number of Tibetans suffering from several endemic diseases including tuberculosis, iodine deficiency, Kashin-Beck disease and Hepatitis B. The incidence of Tuberculosis is about twice as high in Tibet as it is in China generally. Similarly, according to the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, overall Hepatitis B prevalence in Tibet is several percent higher than the national average of nearly 10%.

Among Tibetans it is the women who greatly suffer from such a dearth of health facilities. They are doubly discriminated, both on the basis of their gender and their morality status as Tibetans. Many reports have indicated that Tibetan women virtually have no access to any basic health care, or if they do, services are far too expensive for them to afford. A Tibetan woman while testifying to the ICLT stated that she had to pay 2000 Yuan before she could be admitted to a hospital to deliver her baby. Due to the dearth of medical facilities many Tibetan female political prisoners have died after being tortured. Testimonies have revealed that during their menstruation in prisons, women are never provided with the basic health care needs like cotton or any sanitary materials.

Today, prostitution in China is so rampant that the latest edition of the Xinhua Dictionary of New Words has a new entry: pao niu, or looking for prostitutes. The pimps or the traffickers kidnap girls from the countryside to either make them a prostitute or to illegally sell them as brides. The provincial government of Yunnan announced in May 2004 that 571 children were abducted in Yunnan between 2001 and 2003. The All-China Women’s Federation estimates that the rate of female abductions is increasing by an average of 30% a year. In most of the cases local officials are also complicit in the abductions. The cops turn a blind eye after being paid off by traffickers. In 1994 a migrant woman who tried to bring a case of gang rape in Beijing was instead accused of prostitution and detained for 15 days by the police.

The condition of Tibetan women is even more critical as they need social support system for health, family planning and education. Abject poverty exposes Tibetan women to extreme hardship in gaining employment and educational opportunities. As a part of its overall mission to eradicate the Tibetan culture, there has been a large-scale introduction of prostitution into Tibet. In 1998, it was estimated that over 658 brothels existed on the 18 main streets of Lhasa. Although majority of the prostitutes in these brothels are Chinese women. But due to economic hardship, discrimination and lack of opportunity, the number of Tibetan women falling prey to this sex industry is also increasing. This veracity has also been confirmed by a report produced by Tibet Information Network (TIN) entitled, “Prostitution on the Rise Among Tibetans” which states:

Recent reports from Tibet indicate that an increasing number of Tibetan women from rural areas, particularly in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), are working as prostitutes. Though the fast growing sex trade is still dominated by Chinese sex workers, the number of Tibetan prostitutes, still marginal only a few years ago, has lately been on the rise. Observers unanimously link this change to the widening economic gap between urban and rural areas, itself a direct side effect of the current Western Development Drive.

The Chinese authorities have deliberately failed to prevent prostitution in Tibet as, they think, it may covertly contribute to the desecration of Tibetan society and culture.

The White Paper in length states that China’s legal system for protecting women’s legitimate rights and interests has been improved constantly, and has enacted and revised several law forbidding violence against women which includes, “The Criminal Law, the Criminal Procedure Law, the General Rules of the Civil Law, the Marriage Law, and the Law on Protection of Rights and Interests of Women”. Such law and regulations remain confined only to the official paper and are rarely put into practice (as discussed in section-I). As the popular saying goes, “In the court of hungry wolves, one can’t expect justice to a moose”. There are reports of several incidences where the person who has committed the violation may actually be a leader in the administrative agency, which should be responsible for dealing with it. A Chinese scholar has rightly put it:

Whereas the real situation of women in China can be best described by the following lines:

This is the experience of many liberal-minded women at the hands of the Chinese authorities. The government themselves have acknowledged the use of torture, especially when security officials are trying to obtain confessions. There have been flurry of reports of tortures through the "arrest, interrogate and beat" methods of the police. Of the issues currently being debated by women in China, violence against women is considered one of the most controversial.

Women from all spheres of life in China have suffered serious human rights violations. Many have been detained, restricted or harassed for exercising fundamental rights such as freedom of expression or association including participating in demonstrations and peaceful religious activities. They have been jailed under broad and ill-defined charges such as those concerning state secrets, which encompass matters that are the subject of public debate and scrutiny in many other countries. Women have also been the victims of human rights violations because for demanding justice for imprisoned relatives, or simply because of the activities of male relatives.

Once in police custody and penal institutions, women are tortured and ill-treated. They have reportedly been beaten with sticks, rifle butts and leather belts. In some cases dogs have reportedly been unleashed on naked women. In others electric batons have been used to give electric shocks to the breasts, thighs and sexual organs. Some women have alleged they were beaten with electric batons until they could not control their bladders. Others have had their arms cuffed diagonally behind their backs and have then been suspended by a rope attached to the cuffs. Many have also been exposed to extremes of heat and cold or deprived of food and water. Most testimony currently available about the ill-treatment of women comes from Tibet. Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners are the major victims of such a gross violation of human rights including the freedom of expression and of religious beliefs.

In order to meet the government’s required quota for the number of “transformed” Falun Gong practitioners, labour camps throughout China are under orders to extract signed “repentance statements” from Falun Gong practitioners in which they renounce their belief in the practice. The daily techniques used in various labour camps to meet this quota range from “re-education” videos denigrating Falun Gong played around-the-clock to sleep deprivation, freezing, burning, electric shock torture, force feeding torture and sexual assault. To cite some recent examples, in October 2004, Falun Gong organizations abroad publicized video footage of Wang Xia, a woman who had recently been released from prison in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia where she had served two years of the seven-year sentence for distributing materials promoting Falun Gong. She appeared withered and her body bore several scars. She had reportedly been tied to a bed, hung up, beaten, injected with unknown substances and shocked with electric batons after going on hunger strike to protest against her detention.

Victims and eyewitnesses detained in Tianjin City’s Women’s Labor Camp over Falun Gong report that gross violations of human rights continue after five years. Documenting infractions taking place in the month of November 2004, they reported a startling range of abuses that include forcing victims to eat excrement, gradual starvation, dousing with ice water while exposed to freezing temperatures, sexual abuse-including inserting cucumbers and sticks into the victim’s vagina-binding in contorted positions, as well as routine beatings. Inmates helping to enact the abuses reportedly are offered reductions of their sentences, while guards overseeing the violations have been rewarded with money, material incentives, and promotions. By April 2005, 350 Falun Gong practitioners have been confirmed as being tortured to death in China. According to Clearwisdom.net, 203 (58 percent) of those who were tortured to death in April were women and 223 (64 percent) were over 55 years old, including 72 who were in their 70s.

Women of Falun Gong who have been released from detention centres or labour camps tell wrenching tales of physical and sexual abuse in captivity. Severe torture is used in order to force them to renounce Falun Gong including electronic baton shocks often in sensitive areas such as the genitals, anus and mouth causing bleeding, violent beating with pipe, burning with hot irons, rape and gang rape. They have also been stabbed with sharp instruments and beaten about the breasts and genitals.

Women detainees such as 60-year-old Ms. Fu Shuying, 27-year-old Ms. Chen Hui and 30-year-old Ms. Sun Yan at the Dalian Re-education Camp were hung spread-eagle from the ceiling as sticks and pepper oil are shoved into their vaginas - a torture technique known as “hip-splitting.” A 32-year-old Ms. Zhao Xin, who was a university lecturer by profession died after severe beatings. She was paralyzed with her neck broken and unable to speak. She eventually died from her injuries. Zhao was arrested for practicing Falun Gong exercises in a public park. The face of 36-year-old Ms. Gao Rongrong, an accountant at a local fine arts college, was severely disfigured by torture with high-voltage electric shock batons. Victims have said that the smell of burning flesh permeates the air during the torture.

Woman suffers mental breakdown following such untold torture and rape in the brainwashing centres or re-education camps. For instance, 32 years old Ms. Zhu Xia suffered a complete mental breakdown when she was finally released on April 2, 2004 from the Pi County Brainwashing Center in Xinjin County, Sichuan Province. Her mental state and behaviours leave little doubt that she suffered untold torture and was repeatedly raped.

Gross violations of human rights in the Tibet have intensified since a resurgence of demonstrations and other activities in favour of Tibetan independence that began in September 1987. Since then thousands of Tibetan nationalists have been arbitrarily detained for their involvement in peaceful pro-independence activities and are being severely tortured. Female prisoners constitute around 19% of the total Tibetan political prisoners detained under Chinese prison and around 80% of them are nuns. Some are held without charge or trial, others are serving long prison terms imposed after unfair trials. Chinese authorities in Tibet routinely use torture as a means of political repression, punishment and intimidation.

Gender specific violence are imposed on Tibetan women which includes rape, extraction of blood, stripping them naked, inserting wires or rods which send electric shocks to sexual organs, and wrapping electrical wires with high voltage around the nipples. The cattle prod applied to the hands and feet, inside mouth, anus, and the vagina, also forms a standard instrument used to inflict torture. In addition women are also subjected to physical abuse such as long periods of standing in the sun, exposure to extreme temperatures, vigorous running exercises, solitary confinement and deprivation of food and sleep. During menstruation periods they have little choice but to bleed in their clothes, as they are not provided with sanitary napkins or clothes. Psychological torture is also common in Chinese prisons. Tseyang committed suicide in the winter of 2000 under huge psychological pressure from the head of Unit 3 of Drapchi Prison where she was serving six years of sentence since 1995. Despite regulations specifically prohibiting the detention of pregnant women, pregnant women have been imprisoned and put at risk. Tibetan juveniles are no exceptions, as they also suffer from the same torture and other forms of abuse in Chinese prisons resulting even to their death. In 1995, TCHRD reported the death of 12-year-old Sherab Ngawang, who was sentenced to three years imprisonment in Trisam Public Security Bureau Detention Centre for singing freedom songs.

Tibetan nuns-who form a large share of Tibetans suffering lengthy sentences in imprisonment for political or religious beliefs-in particular, have been singled out for sexual assault. In 1997, the International Committee of Jurists in its report “Tibet: Human Rights and Rule of Law” stated:

There are several cases of female deaths in custody as a result of torture. Ngawang Lochoe, a 28 years old nun died in February 2001 while she was detained at Drapchi Prison. Similarly, the year 1998 witnessed the death of several women specially nuns in prison including Ngawang Dekyi (January), Tashi Lhamo (June), kundol Yonten (June), Lobsang Wangmo (June), Tsultrim Sangmo (June), Dekyi Yangzom (June).

By now, one may have found that the fairy tales of a ‘utopian’ nation enjoying the utmost perfection in social and political system is what forms the substance of China’s latest White Paper entitled “Gender Equality and Women’s Development in China” released by the Information Office of the State Council of People’s Republic of China. The paper is merely a by-product of a recitation of related laws and regulations, supported by forged, fabricated and questionable figures. But, it is the practical implementation of these measures that matters and not public pronouncements. So instead of being economical with the truth, Chinese authorities must set in place effective measures to ensure that discrimination and violence against women is not only forbidden on paper, but also prevented in practice.

The paper is more a description of what the situation should be according to law and not of the reality of women’s life in China. Rather it could be considered a future benchmark for China to be achieved. Hence, like its predecessors, the paper’s attempt to portray present China as a paradise, fails to convince the world in general and women in China in particular. This response by the Tibetan Youth Congress titled, “THE W0(E)MEN IN CHINA AND TIBET: A STUDY” illuminates and vindicates the factual truth from the darkness of Fib. As for Tibetan women, whilst Tibet remains under Chinese control, Tibetans in general and women in particular will not be able to enjoy their rights, participate in the economic decision-making processes and unbound themselves from suffering of serious human rights violations, thereby affecting their future lives making them poor, curbed and backward.