Human Rights Watch

Even as it engages with U.N. human rights institutions, China has worked consistently and often aggressively to silence criticism of its human rights record before U.N. bodies and has taken actions aimed at weakening some of the central mechanisms...

According to official statistics, over 40 percent of people with disabilities are illiterate and 15 million live on less than one dollar a day in the countryside. The Chinese government has an impressive record in providing primary education for...

Human Rights Watch believes the Chinese government should take immediate steps to protect the human rights of all people who engage in sex work. It should repeal the host of laws and regulations that are repressive and misused by the police, and end...

More than 350,000 people identified as drug users are held in compulsory drug "treatment" centers in China and Southeast Asia. Detainees are held without due process for periods of months or years and may be subjected to physical and...

Since June 2011, an estimated 75,000 ethnic Kachin have hostilities between the Burmese army and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in northern Burma. Thousands of them have sought refuge in southwestern China’s Yunnan province, where the Chinese...

Over the past decade, numerous mass lead poisoning incidents have been reported across China. In response, Environmental Protection Ministry officials have become more outspoken, directing local officials to increase supervision of factories and...

In 2009, the Chinese government unveiled the National Human Rights Action Plan (NHRAP), the first of its kind in China. However, two years on, deficiencies in the action plan and government failures to adequately implement some of its key...

More than two years after protests—the largest and most sustained in decades—erupted across the Tibetan plateau in March 2008, the Chinese government has yet to explain the circumstances that led to dozens of clashes between protesters and police...

Based on research in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, this report documents how China's June 2008 Anti-Drug Law compounds the health risks of suspected illicit drug users by allowing government officials and security forces to incarcerate them for...

Since 2003, large numbers of Chinese citizens have been held incommunicado for days or months in secret, unlawful detention facilities. These "black jails" are housed in state-owned hostels, hotels, nursing homes, and psychiatric hospitals...

In the aftermath of the July 2009 protests in Xinjiang province, which according to the Chinese government killed at least 197 people, Chinese security forces detained hundreds of people on suspicion of participating in the unrest. Dozens of these...

This paper focuses on issues of drug rehabilitation practices in China. Chinese law dictates mandatory rehabilitation for drug users. Every year tens of thousands of drug users are sent—without trial or due process of law—to mandatory drug treatment...

This report focuses on the treatment of foreign journalists by the Chinese government. In the buildup to the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the authors contend, the Chinese government has tried to force foreign journalists to avoid sensitive issues. As a...

This report concerns human rights issues surrounding the suppression of Tibetan protesters in Nepal. Following a Chinese governmental crackdown in Tibet in 2008, many Tibetans in Nepal began to protest. Nepali authorities have harshly suppressed the...

This report delves into the situation of the children of undocumented North Korean refugees and Chinese nationals in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. It explains that many children of North Korean parents are not able to be registered with...

While major gains have been made in terms of the rule of law over the past thirty years, this report from Human Rights Watch details consistent patterns of abuses against legal practitioners. These include intimidation, harassment, suspension of...

This report describes the effects on Tibetan herders of Chinese government policies of resettlement, land confiscation, and fencing. The author draws on interviews with about 150 Tibetans from the areas directly affected, including Gansu, Qinghai,...

China’s system of Internet censorship and surveillance, popularly known as the “Great Firewall,” is the most advanced in the world. In this report, Human Rights Watch documents how extensive corporate and private sector cooperation—including by some...

This 2005 report is the first in-depth look at the treatment of Chinese citizens who travel to Beijing to demand redress to their complaints of mistreatment by officials. While petitioning has long been in use in China, it is now on the rise; an...