HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA

Forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China

The People's Republic of China has been alleged to harvest the organs of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners. Initial reports of organ harvesting began with the Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times in 2006.[1] In a subsequent report, known as the Kilgour–Matas report, former lawmaker David Kilgour and legal counsel David Matas estimated that over 41,500 organ transplants in China were unexplained between 2000 and 2005 and suggested that the source was Falun Gong practitioners.[2] They updated their research in 2007 and released it as a book in 2009, receiving further media coverage.[3] Journalist Ethan Gutmann began investigating the claims in 2006 and published his research in subsequent years. He estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed between 2000 and 2008 for their organs.[4] In 2016, Gutmann, Kilgour, and Matas updated their research and estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 transplant surgeries were performed in China per year, far higher than its official figure.[5][6] An informal, independent tribunal initiated by an advocacy group[a] made a final judgment in 2019 that forced organ harvesting had occurred in China on a significant scale and continued to do so, and Falun Gong practitioners are the primary source.[7][8][9] Since 2020, Gutmann has estimated that at least 25,000 and as many as 50,000 Uyghurs are being killed every year for their organs.[10]

These reports cite a combination of statistical analysis, interviews with former prisoners, medical authorities and public security agents, as well as more circumstantial evidence, such as the rapid growth of organ transplantation industry in China after 1999, the short wait times for recipients, the low number of known donors, the large number of Falun Gong practitioners detained and persecuted, and the profits that can be made from selling organs.[1][11][12] A 2006 report from the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) questioned the credibility of Kilgour-Matas's first report and stated that American officials in China were unable to verify organ harvesting allegations at a hospital in Shenyang.[13][14] Dissenters have cited the allegations' inconsistency with other data, rejection by lawyers representing Falun Gong practitioners, and implausibility of the numbers.[15]

The Chinese government has denied harvesting organs but admitted that executed prisoners were once used legally as well as illegally as a source of organs for transplantation.[15] Its efforts to rely on voluntary donation exclusively have been met with skepticism.[16][17] Since 2006, U.N. Special Rapporteurs have called on the Chinese government to account for the sources of organs used in transplant practices.[18] Since 2013, the European Parliament and the United States House of Representatives have adopted resolutions expressing concerns over credible reports of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and calling to end the practice.[1] In 2021 U.N. human rights experts expressed alarm over credible information that minority detainees in China may be subjected to involuntary medical tests intended for organ registries.[19] Countries have taken or considered measures to deter their citizens from travelling to China to receive transplanted organs.[20]

Background

Organ transplantation in China

Main article: Organ transplantation in China

China has one of the largest organ transplant programs in the world. China Daily, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, reported that as many as 20,000 organ transplants were performed in 2006.[21] According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, kidney transplants increased from 3,000 to 6,000 per year from 1997 to 2000, peaking at around 10,000 in 2004 before falling again.[22] Some sources say the actual number of transplants is significantly higher based on hospital records.[23] Wait times for obtaining vital organs in China are among the shortest in the world—often just weeks for organs such as kidneys, livers, and hearts. This has made it a destination for international transplant tourism[24] and a venue for testing pharmaceutical anti-rejection drugs.[25][26] According to Kilgour and Matas in 2007, organ transplant recipients in China are generally not told the identity of the organ donor, nor are they provided with evidence of written consent. In some cases even the identity of the medical staff and surgeons may be withheld from patients. The problem of transparency is compounded by the lack of any ethical guidelines for the transplant profession or system of discipline for surgeons who violate ethical standards.[27]

The Chinese government approved a regulation in 1984 to allow the removal of organs from executed criminals, provided they give prior consent or if no one claims the body.[28] By the 1990s, growing concerns about possible abuses arising from coerced consent and corruption led medical groups and human rights organizations to start condemning China's use of prisoner organs. In 1994, an investigation by Human Rights Watch reported that "political offenders and other nonviolent criminals are used as sources for organs" and that "Chinese doctors participate in pre-execution medical tests, matching of donors with recipients, and scheduling of operations, often on a first-paid, first-served basis."[29] In 2001, a former Chinese military surgeon testified before U.S. Congress that he had taken part in organ extraction from executed prisoners, one of whom had been shot in the head but had not died yet.[30] As a matter of culture and custom, China had extremely low rates of voluntary organ donation. Between 2003 and 2009, only 130 people volunteered to be organ donors.[31] In 2010, the Chinese Red Cross launched a campaign to attract voluntary organ donors in eleven provinces, but only 37 people signed up as of 2011.[32] Further complicating the matter, as of 2011, organs could be legally collected only after cardiac death but not brain death.[32] Due to the low levels of donation, most organs used in transplants are sourced from prisoners.[28][33] Critics say that this creates a lucrative source of revenue for the Chinese medical, military and public security establishments.[34][27] Since 2005, China's Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu acknowledged on several occasions that approximately 65% of organ transplants in China were sourced from executed prisoners.[35][36][37] In 2006, the World Medical Association demanded that China cease harvesting organs from prisoners, who are not deemed able to properly consent.[38] When China banned organ exports to foreign countries in 2007, the price for kidneys skyrocketed in South Korea.[39] In 2014, Huang Jiefu said that reliance on organ harvesting from death row inmates was declining, while simultaneously defending the practice of using prisoners' organs in the transplantation system.[40]

Experts have also expressed concern that in addition to executed prisoners, non-death-row political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are also being used to supply the organ transplant industry.[41][42] Researchers, including ones affiliated with The Epoch Times, the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, point out that data from China between 2010 and 2018 may have been falsified or manipulated because of "contradictory, implausible, or anomalous data artefacts" and because they match a quadratic equation with model parsimony that is one to two orders of magnitude smoother than those of other nations. Some apparently nonvoluntary donors appear to have been misclassified as voluntary. This occurs alongside voluntary organ transplant activity often incentivized by cash payments. They also report that in some cases, problematic declarations of brain death suggest that surgeons in China "executed" organ donors from 1980 to 2015.[43][44][45]

Persecution of Falun Gong

Main article: Persecution of Falun Gong

Falun Gong is a Chinese qigong discipline involving meditation and a moral philosophy rooted in Buddhist tradition. The practice rose to popularity in the 1990s in China, and by 1998, Chinese government sources estimated that as many as 70 million people had taken up the practice.[46][47] Perceiving that Falun Gong was a potential threat to the Party's authority and ideology, Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin initiated a nationwide campaign to eradicate the group in July 1999.[48] An extra-constitutional body called the 6-10 Office was created to lead the persecution of Falun Gong,[49][50] and authorities mobilized the state media apparatus, judiciary, police force, army, education system, families, and workplaces to "struggle" against the group.[51][52] Since 1999, Falun Gong practitioners have been the targets of systematic torture, mass imprisonment, forced labour, and psychiatric abuse, all with the aim of forcing them to recant their beliefs.[53][54] As of 2009, The New York Times reported that at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed amid the persecution campaign;[55] Falun Gong sources documented over 3,700 named death cases by 2013.[53]

Due to the difficulty in accessing and relaying information from China, however, this may represent only a small portion of actual deaths.[53]

Allegations, investigations, and tribunal

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Epoch Times reports on Sujiatun

The first allegations of large-scale organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners were published by The Epoch Times.[56] According to its articles in early 2006, three individuals claimed knowledge of involuntary organ extractions at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province. One of the whistleblowers, the wife of a surgeon at the hospital, claimed her husband had performed numerous operations to remove the corneas of Falun Gong practitioners for transplant.[27] Representatives of the U.S. State Department were dispatched to the Sujiatun hospital to investigate the claims. They made two visits, first was unannounced and another a tour of the facilities and found no evidence that the hospital was used for anything other than its normal function, but said they remained concerned over China's treatment of Falun Gong and reports of organ harvesting.[57][58] Soon thereafter, in May 2006, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong asked former Canadian parliamentarian David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas to investigate the broader allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. Kilgour and Matas agreed to conduct an investigation as volunteers.[59]

Kilgour-Matas report

Main article: Kilgour-Matas report

David Kilgour and David Matas released the results of their preliminary investigation on 20 July 2006, in a report titled "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China".[60] Although the pair were denied visas to travel to China, they nonetheless compiled over 30 distinct strands of evidence which were consistent with allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. These included an analysis of statistics on organ transplantation in China, interviews with former Falun Gong prisoners, and recorded admissions from Chinese hospitals and law enforcement offices about the availability of Falun Gong practitioners' organs.[27]

David Matas, senior legal counsel of B'nai Brith Canada, international human rights lawyer, coauthor of Bloody Harvest. In the absence of evidence that would invalidate the organ harvesting allegations—such as a Chinese government registry showing the source of transplant organs—Kilgour and Matas concluded that the Chinese government and its agencies "have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas, and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries." They estimated that from 2000 to 2005, the source for 41,500 organ transplants was unexplained, and that Falun Gong prisoners were the most plausible source for these organs.[27][61][62] The authors qualified their report by noting the inherent difficulties in verifying the alleged crimes: no independent organizations are allowed to investigate conditions in China, eyewitness evidence is difficult to obtain, and official information about both organ transplantation and executions is often withheld or is contradictory.[27] The initial report however received a mixed reception. In the US, a 2006 Congressional Research Service report by Thomas Lum stated that the Kilgour–Matas report relied largely on logical inference, without bringing forth new or independently obtained testimony; the credibility of much of the key evidence was said to be questionable.[14]

In 2007, Kilgour and Matas presented an updated report under the title "Bloody Harvest: Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China". The findings were subsequently rewritten as a book released in October 2009.[63] The reports received international media coverage, and the authors travelled internationally to present their findings to governments and other concerned organizations.[64] Kilgour and Matas won the 2009 Human Rights Award from the International Society for Human Rights and were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.[3] A documentary on Kilgour and Matas's work, Human Harvest, received a 2014 Peabody Award.[65][66] In 2016, Kilgour, Matas and Ethan Gutmann published a new report updating their earlier works Bloody Harvest (2009) and The Slaughter (2014). Drawing on publicly available data, statements, and records from hospitals across China, the report estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 transplant surgeries were performed annually—far higher than the Chinese government's official figure of 10,000 per year.[5][6][67]

State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China

In 2012, State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China, edited by Matas and Dr. Torsten Trey, was published with essays from physicians, surgeons and professors of medicine including Gabriel Danovitch, Arthur Caplan, Jacob Lavee, Ghazali Ahmad, Maria Fiatarone Singh, Torsten Trey, as well as Ethan Gutmann and Matas.[68][69][70]

Ethan Gutmann

Ethan Gutmann with Edward McMillan-Scott (vice-president of the European Parliament) at Foreign Press Association press conference, 2009 Ethan Gutmann, a journalist and frequent speaker at Falun Gong-organized events,[71] initiated his own investigation of organ harvesting accounts in 2006.[72][73][74] Over the span of several years, he conducted interviews with over 100 refugees from China's labor camp and prison system, as well as with Chinese law enforcement personnel and medical professionals.[75] Gutmann reported that the practice may be traced back to the late 1980s[73] and expanded in the Xinjiang region during the 1990s, when ethnic Uyghurs were targeted in security crackdowns and "strike hard campaigns."[76][77] Enver Tohti, an exiled pro-Uyghur independence activist, claims to have carried out the first live organ transplant on a Uyghur Muslim prisoner in 1995. He said that the first time he performed the transplant procedure, he was taken to a room near the execution ground in Urumqi and the man's heart was still beating as he removed the liver and kidneys.[78]

Gutmann says that by 1999 organ harvesting in Xinjiang began to decline precipitously, just as overall rates of organ transplantation nationwide were rising. The same year, the Chinese government launched a nationwide suppression of Falun Gong. Gutmann suggests that the new Falun Gong prisoner population overtook Uyghurs as a major source of organs.[12] He estimated that approximately 65,000 practitioners had been killed for their organs between 2000 and 2008 and notes that this figure is similar to that produced by Kilgour and Matas when adjusted to cover the same time period.[12][79] Gutmann has also provided testimony on his findings before U.S. Congress and European Parliament, and in August 2014 published his investigation as a book titled The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem.[80]

In 2020, Gutmann[81] and Matthew Robertson, a fellow researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and former editor at The Epoch Times,[44] suspected that a large number of Uyghurs were being killed for their organs.[10] The estimated number ranges from 25,000 to 50,000 per year.[82]

China Tribunal

The Independent Tribunal Into Forced Organ Harvesting of Prisoners of Conscience in China, known as the China Tribunal,[83] was initiated in 2018[9] by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) co-founded by Gutmann, Kilgour, Matas, Swedish filmmaker Normann Bjorvand, and Susie Hughes, a long time advocate of the issue.[84] The tribunal, based in London, was made up of a seven-member panel.[85][86] Sir Geoffrey Nice, a King 's Counsel, was commissioned by ETAC to serve as the chair of the tribunal;[87] he had previously led the international prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, former president of Serbia and of Yugoslavia, for war crimes.[88] According to an article in the scientific journal Nature, the tribunal does not have any legal authority.[85] The Chinese government declined an invitation to take part in the tribunal.[1]

The tribunal heard evidence over a six-month period.[83] The evidence included analyses of Chinese transplant data, and testimony from ex-prisoners, doctors and human rights workers.[85] Among the 50 witnesses, who testified either in person or via video link,[1] were David Kilgour and Jennifer Zeng.[88][86] The tribunal also examined reports from the Committee Against Torture, Freedom House and Amnesty International.[1] Other submissions included internal Chinese medical records, previous investigations and academic papers.[1] Covertly recorded phone calls with transplant surgeons and undercover footage inside hospitals were also reviewed.[1]

In June 2019, the tribunal published their final judgment which unanimously concluded that crimes against humanity had been committed and involved hundreds of thousands of victims.[9] The tribunal's report said "forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and ... Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply."[9] The tribunal estimated between 60,000 and 90,000 transplant operations occurred per year, much more than the official figures of 10,000 from the Chinese government.[1][88] The chair of the tribunal said "there is no evidence of the practice having been stopped and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing."[88] In an accompanying statement, ETAC called on doctors and organizations worldwide to stop transplantation-related collaboration with China.[8][89] In September 2019, the tribunal's legal counsel presented its findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council.[90][91] The tribunal's report included a reference to a research paper that examined voluntary organ transplant data from 2010 to 2016.[44] The paper's authors said it was difficult to believe the consistent and significant growth in voluntary transplants each year, and they concluded that China's voluntary system probably included non-voluntary donors, likely prisoners.[85] A statistician commissioned by the tribunal reviewed the paper's analysis and agreed that the data on voluntary transplants appeared to be unreliable, while Francis L. Delmonico, a transplant surgeon, said he was unconvinced by the paper because it did not contain direct evidence of organ harvesting from prisoners.[85]

The Telegraph reported in 2022 that the tribunal's findings were largely corroborated by at least eight UN Special Rapporteurs, who described the alleged practices as "credible indicators of forced organ harvesting".[92][93]

Evidence cited

Various statistics, reports, and anecdotes have been cited as evidence by Gutmann, Kilgour, Matas, and other researchers to argue that Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs in China.[94] They range from the volume and growth of organ transplants in China compared to a relatively low number of known donors, the concurrent mass imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners, the short wait times for receiving a transplant as if scheduled on-demand, and reports that the health Falun Gong prisoners' organs were medically assessed in custody.[80][95][94] In August 2024, The Diplomat published the account of Cheng Pei Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner detained by Chinese authorities in 2002.[96] According to Cheng, he was forced to undergo repeated operations, including one surgery after he had swallowed a nail and a blade. The removal of such objects is usually done via endoscopy, but Cheng underwent an open chest surgery in 2004. His family, who still remains largely in China, was informed that Cheng likely would not survive. In 2006, he escaped detention during a restroom break and hid in China for nine years. After spending five more years as a refugee in Thailand, he entered the United States in 2020. Medical exams show that portions of his liver and lung had been removed. Cheng is said to be the only known survivor of forced organ harvesting.[96][97]

Increase in nationwide organ transplants after 1999

This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: The data here only goes until the early 2000s and does not cover more recent years.. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (September 2022) Liver transplants performed annually at the Tianjin Orient Organ Transplant Centre, 1998–2004 The number of organ transplants performed in China grew rapidly beginning in 2000.[98] This timeframe corresponds with the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong, when tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were being sent to Chinese labor camps, detention centers and prisons.[99][100] In 1998, the country reported 3,596 kidney transplants annually. By 2001, overseas organ transportation became marketable, and in 2005 alone, there were hundreds of heart, kidney, and liver transplants, with China reporting over 10,000 kidney transplants in particular.[27][101] Similarly, according to China Daily, the number of liver transplantation centers in China rose from 22 to over 500 between 1999 and 2006.[21] The volume of transplants performed in these centers also increased substantially in this period. [citation needed]

One hospital reported on its website that it performed 9 liver transplants in 1998, but completed 676 liver transplants in four months in 2005.[102] The Jiaotong University Hospital in Shanghai recorded seven liver transplants in 2001, 53 in 2002, 105 in 2003, 144 in 2004, and 147 in 2005.[27] Kilgour and Matas write that the increase in organ transplants cannot be entirely attributed to improvements in transplant technology: "kidney transplant technology was fully developed in China long before the persecution of Falun Gong began. Yet kidney transplants shot up, more than doubling once the persecution of Falun Gong started...Nowhere have transplants jumped so significantly with the same number of donors simply because of a change in technology."[27]

Furthermore, they note that during this period of rapid expansion in China's organ transplant industry, there were no significant improvements to the voluntary organ donation or allocation system, and the supply of death row inmates as donors also did not increase.[27][41] The parallel between rapid growth in organ transplants and the mass imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners is consistent with the hypothesis that Falun Gong practitioners in custody were having their organs harvested.[11]: 99 [103][104][105] In 2015, China was credited with having the world's largest DNA bank, corresponding the investment with the business of organ transport, with the country reporting 60,000 operations per year with kidney operations being the most lucrative.[106]

Low quantity of known sources of organs

According to a US congressional report in 2005, up to 95% of organ transplants in China are sourced from prisoners.[107] However, China does not perform enough legal executions to account for the large number of transplants that are performed, and voluntary donations are exceedingly rare (only 130 people registered as voluntary organ donors nationwide from 2003 to 2009).[31] In 2006, the number of individuals sentenced to death and executed was far fewer than the number of transplants. Based on publicly available reports, Amnesty International documented 1,770 executions in 2006; high-end estimates put the figure closer to 8,000.[108] Because China lacks an organized organ matching and allocation system, and in order to satisfy expectations for very short wait times, it is rare that multiple organs are harvested from the same donor.[109] Moreover, many death row inmates have health conditions such as hepatitis B that would frequently disqualify them as organ donors. This suggests the existence of a secondary source for organs.[33]

In a statement before the U.S. House of Representatives, Damon Noto, a spokesman for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting said "the prisoners sentenced to death cannot fully account for all the transplantations that are taking place in China ... Even if they executed 10,000 and transplanted 10,000 a year, there would still be a very large discrepancy. Why is that? It is simply impossible that those 10,000 people executed would match perfectly the 10,000 people that needed the organs."[110] David Kilgour and David Matas similarly wrote that traditional sources of transplants such as executed prisoners, donors, and the brain dead "come nowhere near to explaining the total number of transplants across China."[111]

Like Noto, they point to the large number of Falun Gong practitioners in the labor camp and prison system as a likely alternative source for organs.[27]

Short organ transplant wait times

Wait periods for organ transplants in China are significantly shorter than elsewhere in the world. According to a 2006 post on the China International Transplantation Assistance Center website, "it may take only one month to receive a liver transplantation, the maximum waiting time being two months. As for the kidney transplantation, it may take one week to find a suitable donor, the maximum time being one month...If something wrong with the donor's organ happens, the patient will have the option to be offered another organ donor and have the operation again in one week."[112] Other organ transplant centers similarly advertised average wait times of one or two weeks for liver and kidney transplants.[27][113][114] This is consistent with accounts of organ transplant recipients, who report receiving organs a matter of days or weeks.[24][115][116] By comparison, median wait times for a kidney in developed countries such as the United States, Canada and Great Britain typically range from two years to over four years, despite the fact that these countries have millions of registered organ donors and established systems of organ matching and allocation.[117][118][119] [improper synthesis?] Researchers and medical professionals have expressed concern about the implications of the short organ transplant wait times offered by Chinese hospitals. Specifically, they say these wait times are indicative of a pool of living donors whose organs can be removed on demand.[41] This is because organs must be transplanted immediately after death, or must be taken from a living donor (kidneys must be transplanted within 24–48 hours; livers within 12 hours, and hearts within 8 hours).[120]

Kirk C. Allison, associate director of the Program in Human Rights and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, wrote that the "short time frame of an on-demand system [as in China] requires a large pool of donors pre-typed for blood group and HLA matching," which is consistent with reports of Falun Gong prisoners having blood and tissue tested in custody. He wrote that China's short organ wait times could not be assured on a "random death" basis, and that physicians he queried about the matter indicated that they were selecting live prisoners to ensure quality and compatibility.[120] Dr. Jacob Lavee, Director of the Heart Transplant Unit at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel, recounts one of his patients traveling to China for a heart transplant. The patient waited two weeks for a heart, and the surgery was scheduled in advance—meaning the organ could not have been procured on the basis of a random death.[121] Franz Immer, chairman of the Swiss National Foundation for organ donation and transplantation, reports that during a visit to Beijing in 2007, he was invited by his Chinese hosts to observe a heart transplantation operation: "The organizer asked us whether we would like to have the transplantation operation in the morning or in the afternoon. This means that the donor would die, or be killed, at a given time, at the convenience of the visitors. I refused to participate."[12]

Editors of the Journal of Clinical Investigation write that "The only way to guarantee transplant of a liver or heart during the relatively short time period that a transplant tourist is in China is to quickly obtain the requisite medical information from prospective recipients, find matches among them, and then execute a person who is a suitable match."[41] Noto similarly says that China's organ transplant wait times and the ability to schedule transplants in advance can only be achieved by having a large supply of "living donors that are available on demand." Death row inmates alone are not numerous enough to meet this demand.[110]

Detention of Falun Gong practitioners

Chinese torture victims as reported in the 2006 investigation of UN Special Rapporteur Manfred Nowak Since 1999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in re-education through labor camps, prisons, and other detention facilities in China, making them the largest group of prisoners of conscience in the country.[122] In 2008, the US Department of State cited estimates that half of China's official labor camp population of 250,000 were Falun Gong practitioners,[123][124] and a 2013 report by Amnesty International found that Falun Gong practitioners comprised between 30 and 100 percent of detainees in the labor camps studied.[53]

Former Chinese prisoners have also reported that Falun Gong practitioners consistently received the "longest sentences and worst treatment" in the camps, and that they are singled out for torture and abuse.[53][125] In 2006, a study by the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture noted that 66% of reported cases from China involved Falun Gong victims.[126] Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have died or been killed in custody, often under disputed circumstances.[48][53] Family members of the deceased have reported being denied an autopsy;[127] in some instances bodies were summarily cremated without the family's consent.[128] Analysts and rights groups have pointed to several factors that drive the especially severe treatment against Falun Gong practitioners in custody. These include directives issued from central government or Communist Party authorities;[129][130] incentives and quota systems that encourage abuse;[53] a sense of impunity in the event of deaths in custody;[131] and the effects of the state propaganda that dehumanizes and vilifies Falun Gong practitioners.[52][54] The large numbers of Falun Gong prisoners in custody has led researchers to identify them as a likely source for organs. According to Gutmann's research, other marginalized prisoner groups may also have been targeted, including ethnic Tibetans and Uyghurs who reside predominantly in China's western regions. However, for reasons of geographic proximity, Falun Gong practitioners are more likely to be targeted. In addition, because their spiritual practice prohibits smoking or consumption of alcohol, they tend to be comparatively healthy.[12]

In the context of organ harvesting, Kilgour and Matas point to a further source of vulnerability. Namely, in order to protect family members from punishment by security agencies, many detained Falun Gong practitioners refuse to give their names or other personally identifying information to police. "Though this refusal to identify themselves was done for protection purposes, it may have had the opposite effect. It is easier to victimize a person whose whereabouts is unknown to family members than a person whose location the family knows," says their report. Kilgour and Matas wrote that they had yet to meet or hear of any Falun Gong practitioners who were safely released from custody after refusing to identify themselves, despite the prevalence of this practice.[27] Similarly, Ethan Gutmann reports that in over a hundred interviews with former prisoners, he encountered only one Falun Gong practitioner who had remained nameless while in custody, and "her organs were even more worn out than my own."[12]

Medical testing in custody

Ethan Gutmann interviewed dozens of former Chinese prisoners, including sixteen Falun Gong practitioners who recalled undergoing unusual medical tests while in detention. Gutmann says some of these tests were likely routine examinations, and some may have been designed to screen for the SARS virus. However, in several cases, the medical tests described were exclusively aimed at assessing the health of internal organs.[80] One man, Wang Xiaohua, was imprisoned in a labor camp in Yunnan in 2001 when he and twenty other Falun Gong detainees were taken to a hospital. They had large quantities of blood drawn, in addition to urine samples, abdominal x-rays, and electrocardiogram. Hospital staff did not tend to physical injuries they had suffered in custody. This pattern was repeated in several other interviews. Qu Yangyao, a 30-something Chinese refugee, was taken from a labor camp to a hospital in 2000 along with two other Falun Gong practitioners. She says that hospital staff drew large volumes of blood, conducted chest x-rays and probed the prisoners' organs. There was "no hammer on the knee, no feeling for lymph nodes, no examination of ears or mouth or genitals—the doctor checked her retail organs and nothing else," writes Gutmann.[12]

Another woman, Jung Tian, recounts comprehensive physical exams and the extraction of large volumes of blood—enough for advanced diagnostics or tissue matching—while in a detention center in Shenyang city. At a women's labor camp in Guangdong province, a former detainee says that 180 Falun Gong prisoners were subject to medical tests in early 2003 and that the tests exclusively focused on internal organs. Another female witness who was held at Masanjia Labor Camp in 2005 said that only young, healthy practitioners had comprehensive medical exams upon arrival at the camp; the old and infirm were given only cursory treatment.[12] In addition to Falun Gong practitioners, researcher Jaya Gibson identified three Tibetan prisoners who were subject to "organs-only" medical exams, all of them shortly after 2005.[12]

Phone calls to hospitals and detention centers

In March 2006, after allegations of forced organ harvesting emerged, overseas Falun Gong members began placing phone calls to Chinese hospitals and police detention centers posing as prospective transplant recipients or organ brokers.[132] They inquired about the availability of Falun Gong organs and in several instances obtained recorded admissions that organs could be procured from Falun Gong prisoners. A selection of these conversations were cited as evidence in the report by David Kilgour and David Matas.[12][27] In one such call to a police detention center in Mishan city, an official said that they had five to eight Falun Gong practitioners under the age of 40 who were potential organ suppliers. When asked for details on the background of these individuals, the official indicated that they were male Falun Gong prisoners from rural areas.[133]

A doctor at the Minzu hospital in Nanning city said that the hospital did not currently have Falun Gong organs available, but that he had previously selected Falun Gong prisoners for organ harvesting. The doctor also advised the caller to contact a university hospital in neighboring Guangdong province, saying that they had better channels to obtain Falun Gong organs.[133] At the Zhongshan hospital in Shanghai, a doctor told investigators that all his hospital's organs were sourced from Falun Gong practitioners. During an April 2006 phone call to a military hospital in Guangzhou, a doctor told investigators that he had "several batches" of Falun Gong organs, but that the supply could run dry after 20 May 2006. In another call, investigators posed as an organ broker to call the Jinzhou city people's court. In response to a question about obtaining organs from Falun Gong prisoners, a court official said "that depends on your qualifications ... If you have good qualifications, we may still provide some [organs]."[133]

Kilgour and Matas concede that in at least some instances, the hospital staff may have been supplying answers that the callers wanted to hear in order to make a sale. The results of these phone calls would also be difficult to replicate; as allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong gained attention, hospitals would become more reluctant to candidly discuss their organ sourcing practices.[27] A 2006 report from the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) noted the conclusions of Kilgour-Matas Report had relied heavily on the telephone transcripts, in which PRC respondents allegedly described the practice of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong detainees. However, the CRS report expressed doubt regarding the reliability of these phone conversations and the "apparent candor" of the respondents, given Chinese government controls over sensitive information.[13]

Later, such phone recordings were examined by China Tribunal's panel and considered credible.[134] One of the organizers professed that a forensic speech scientist had verified the recording of an undercover phone conversation with Bai Shuzhong, former Minister of Health for the People's Liberation Army's General Logistics Department, during which Bai said the order to harvest organs from Falun Gong practitioners came from former Chinese president Jiang Zemin.[135][136] According to Kilgour and Matas, Chinese transplant doctor Lu Guoping of Minzu hospital publicly admitted to receiving such a call in a TV interview; this confirms that the voice they had recorded was indeed from Lu and "as close to a smoking gun" as they were ever likely to get.[11]: 85–86 Chinese hospitals began to systematically delete data and evidence after the first reports based on international investigation were published in 2006.[137] One undercover phone investigator said that the Chinese doctors in her calls were more open to admitting having Falun Gong organs over the phone before the allegations gained international publicity.[138]

Commercial incentives

The growth of a commercial organ trade is linked to economic reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s that saw a steep decline in government funding to the healthcare system. Healthcare moved toward a more market-driven model, and hospitals devised new ways to grow their revenue. This pattern also applies to military hospitals; since the mid-1980s, the People's Liberation Army has engaged in commercial and profit-making ventures to supplement its budget.[27][110] In their report on organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, Kilgour and Matas describe transplant hospitals in China that cater to wealthy foreigners who paid upwards of $100,000 for liver, lung, and heart transplants. For instance, the website of the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center posted the following price list on its website in 2006: Kidney: $62,000; Liver: $98,000–130,000; Liver+kidney: $160,000–180,000; Kidney+pancreas: $150,000; Lung: $150,000–170,000; Heart: $130,000–160,000; Cornea: $30,000.[27] In a statement before the U.S. House of Representatives, Gabriel Danovitch of the UCLA Medical Center said, "The ease in which these organs can be obtained and the manner that they may be allocated to wealthy foreigners has engendered a culture of corruption."[139]

Bo Xilai and Liaoning province

Bo Xilai was governor of Liaoning province, which researchers believe was a major center for organ harvesting. [who?] The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong made phone calls to mid- and high-level officials with prior connections to Bo, posing as members of the Communist Party's discipline and inspection body that was building a case against him. They asked questions about the chain of command involved in procuring organs from prisoners, including Falun Gong practitioners. When asked about Bo's involvement in organ harvesting, one senior Politburo member reportedly told investigators that Standing Committee member and security chief Zhou Yongkang "is in charge of this specifically. He knows it."[74]

A city-level official in Liaoning province was asked by investigators what instructions Bo Xilai may have given on organ removal from Falun Gong prisoners. The official replied: "I was asked to take care of this task. Party central is actually taking care of this... Bo was involved quite positively. At that time we mainly talked about it during the meetings within the Standing Committee." [verification needed] The official ended the call after realizing that he had not confirmed the caller's identity.[74] In his book on organ transplant abuse, Ethan Gutmann included a case study centered on Liaoning province. Bo served as mayor and party chief of Dalian in the 1990s and was appointed governor of Liaoning from 2001 to 2004. The province had a high concentration of Falun Gong practitioners and recorded the country's highest number of reported Falun Gong deaths in custody.[12] Several observers [who?] have noted that Bo pursued an especially intense campaign against Falun Gong in the province, leading to allegations of torture and crimes against humanity.[140][141][142] Bo's close associate Wang Lijun was appointed head of the Public Security Bureau in Jinzhou, Liaoning, in 2003. In this capacity, he ran an organ transplantation facility where he reportedly oversaw "several thousand" organ transplants, leading to concerns that many of the organs were taken from political prisoners.[143][144] During a 2006 award ceremony, Wang stated: "For a veteran policeman, to see someone executed and within minutes to see the transformation in which this person's life was extended in the bodies of several other people—it was soul-stirring.[74] Gutmann argued that it was "extremely unlikely" all the organs used in these operations came from executed death-row prisoners, who would not have been sufficient in number to supply thousands of transplants. He noted that Liaoning detained large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps and prisons, and added: "It is also germane that both Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun built a large measure of their political power on the repression of Falun Gong."[12][74] In addition to the organ transplants in Jinzhou, Gutmann wrote that security agencies in Dalian supplied human cadavers to two major plastination factories, where the bodies were plastinated and displayed internationally. According to an informant interviewed on the program 20/20, the cadavers came from executed prisoners. [citation needed] Gutmann again noted a numerical disparity: the plastination factories in Dalian processed thousands of cadavers, far more than could plausibly have been sourced from voluntary donations or legally executed prisoners. The establishment of these factories coincided with the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong.[12]

Counterarguments

According to a 2016 Associated Press article, claims of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners had existed for years but not been independently verified. This was in part due to China's opaque legal system. The issue had not been advocated by most international human rights groups,[145] although in 2017 the U.S.-funded Freedom House stated that there was credible evidence suggesting large-scale organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.[146] A 2017 article by The Washington Post disputes that China secretly conducts 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants per year.[15] Data compiled by Quintiles IMS show China's share of global demand for immunosuppressant drugs, which are necessary to prevent the bodies of patients from rejecting transplanted organs, was approximately in line with the proportion of global transplants China said it performed.[15] The journal also reports that lawyers who had represented Falun Gong practitioners rejected organ harvesting allegations and quotes a lawyer had "never heard of organs being taken from live prisoners" after defending 300 to 400 adepts of the movement.[15] According to health official Huang Jiefu, who has been working with an American surgeon to transform China's transplant practices, a total of 13,238 organ transplant operations were performed in 2016.[15] Xu Jiapeng, a Quintiles IMS account manager in Beijing, said it was "unthinkable" to operate a clandestine system that the data on immunosuppressants did not pick up.[15] An Australian surgeon and vocal critic of China's past transplant practices said it would not be plausible for the country to have more transplantations per year than the United States without that information leaking out.[15]

Kilgour, Matas, Gutmann, and experts in fields such as medicine wrote to the Post saying that drug prices can be 2.5 to 4 times cheaper in China than in the U.S., making sales data an unreliable proxy for dosage, and that a country's global share of immunosuppressant sales does not need to match its share of transplantations, citing Japan and the U.S. as counterexamples.[147] Their letter also states that most Chinese hospitals have an unofficial pharmacy whose "significant" amount of business data are not included in IMS figures.[147] Critics have alleged that China's immunosuppressant data would not include foreign transplant tourists but The Washington Post reported that these assertions did not stand up to scrutiny.[15] Jose Nuñez, head of the World Health Organization's transplantation program, said the number of foreigners going to China for transplants in 2015 was "really very low" compared with India, Pakistan, the United States as well as China's past.[15] On the other hand, a documentary by South Korea's TV Chosun contained interview footage showing that a Chinese transplant center, as of late 2017, was accepting foreign patients and providing them and their families with customized services.[148]

Chinese government response

From 2006 to 2008, two UN Special Rapporteurs made repeated requests to the Chinese government to respond to allegations about Falun Gong prisoners and explain the source of organs used in transplant operations.[11]: 103 [18][149] The Chinese government said it is in compliance with World Health Organization standards and described the conditions under which organ transplants are permitted under Chinese laws and regulations. It further stated that allegations of organ harvesting "are merely the product of agitation by Falun Gong ... most of them have already been revealed to be unfounded rumours".[18][100][11]: 105–106 Kilgour and Matas say that the Chinese government's response to their investigation contained "a good deal of invective, but no factual information which contradicts or undermines our conclusions or analysis".[27]

The Chinese government also has sought to prevent public discussion of the issue outside its own borders, and has punished Chinese nationals who have spoken on the subject of organ harvesting. According to British politician Edward McMillan-Scott, during a visit to China in 2006, a Falun Gong practitioner and tour guide named Cao Dong said, while imprisoned, he saw his friend's cadaver "in the morgue with holes where body parts had been removed".[150] Cao was later convicted of meeting with McMillan-Scott and re-imprisoned.[151] In 2007, the Chinese embassy in Canada intervened to cancel the broadcast of a documentary on Falun Gong and organ harvesting, which was scheduled to air on the national broadcast network CBC Television.[152][153] The same year, the Chinese embassy in Israel tried unsuccessfully to cancel a talk by researcher David Matas on the subject of organ harvesting, threatening that his testimony would have an adverse impact on China–Israel relations.[121]

In response to a 2014 resolution on organ harvesting by the U.S. House of Representatives, a Chinese embassy spokesperson said that China requires written consent from organ donors, and declared that "the so-called organ harvesting from death-row prisoners is totally a lie fabricated by Falun Gong". The embassy representative then urged American lawmakers to stop "supporting and conniving" with Falun Gong.[154]

International response

Medical associations

Allegations about organ harvesting from Falun Gong led to renewed focus on China's transplant practices by international medical authorities and professional associations. Medical professionals have raised a number of concerns stemming from the use of prisoner organs, and have debated the ethics of conducting exchanges with Chinese transplant hospitals. In 2006, the World Medical Association adopted a resolution demanding that China stop using prisoners as organ donors.[155] Since 2011, several medical journals have declared that they would cease publishing articles related to organ transplantation operations in China due to concerns about violations of medical ethics. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, a prestigious publication on biomedical research, declared that China's use of organs from executed prisoners "violates basic human rights. It violates core ethical precepts of transplant medicine and medical ethics. Worse still, some of those who are killed may be prisoners whose 'crimes' involve no more than holding certain political or spiritual beliefs." The journal decided that it would no longer accept manuscripts on human organ transplantation "unless appropriate non-coerced consent of the donor is provided and substantiated".[41] A similar opinion was expressed by authors in the American Journal of Transplantation.[156]

Writing in The Lancet in 2011, a group of prominent American surgeons and bioethicists called for a boycott of Chinese science and medicine pertaining to organ transplantation. "It is clear from the numbers provided by China that not all of the organs for Chinese citizens and transplant tourists are provided by voluntary consenting donors. The source of many of these organs is executed prisoners whose consent is either non-existent or ethically invalid and whose demise might be timed for the convenience of the waiting recipient", they wrote.[157] The article's lead author, Dr. Arthur Caplan, later added "Killing prisoners for their parts is unethical on its own", but the practice is even more heinous given that some of the executed prisoners were imprisoned for religious or political beliefs.[158][159] In contrast, Jeremy Chapman, Australian transplantation surgeon, dismissed Kilgour and Matas's report as "pure imagination piled upon political interest".[160]

In 2022, the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) issued a policy statement to exclude transplant-related research involving human donors from China from its publications and scientific meetings due to the amount of evidence showing that the Chinese government stands alone in systematically supporting organ or tissue procurement from executed prisoners, a practice that the ISHLT identifies as a violation of fundamental human rights and the principle of voluntary donation.[161][162]

United Nations Special Rapporteurs

From 2006 to 2008, two UN Special Rapporteurs made repeated requests to the Chinese government to respond to allegations about Falun Gong prisoners and explain the source of organs used in transplant operations.[18] In a February 2008 report, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak noted that in China "there are many more organ transplants than identifiable sources of organs ... It is alleged that the discrepancy between available organs and numbers from identifiable sources is explained by organs harvested from Falun Gong practitioners, and that the rise in transplants from 2000 coincides and correlates with the beginning of the persecution of these persons".[149] The Chinese government's responses did not address these questions or explain the sources of transplant organs.[18]

In June 2021, the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council voiced concerns over having "received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations." The press release stated that UN's human rights experts "were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged 'organ harvesting' targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China."[19]

Responses from other governments

Several national governments have held hearings in their national legislatures regarding organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, with some of them subsequently adopting resolutions condemning organ transplant abuses in China or developing legislation to ban transplant tourism.

United States

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who co-sponsored a Congressional resolution condemning organ harvesting from Falun Gong adherents, speaks at a rally in Washington D.C. In July 2014, the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution condemning state-sanctioned organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience and members of other minority groups.[154][163] The allegations have also surfaced in reports by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China,[164] and in the Department of State Country Report on Human Rights for China for 2011.[165] In January 2015, the White House responded to a petition signed by 34,000 Americans condemning organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners. The response noted that: "China's leaders have announced a pledge to abolish the practice of taking human organs for transplant from executed prisoners, although we are aware of continued reports of such practices. We take such allegations very seriously and will continue to monitor the situation."[166]

In 2016, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed resolution H.Res.343 expressing concerns over credible reports of state-sanctioned organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience, and urging China to stop the practice.[167][67] In 2023, several U.S. House representatives introduced legislation and spoke out against organ harvesting in foreign countries. One such bill, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, addressed some of these concerns by "imposing sanctions and allowing the State Department to revoke the passports of those convicted of organ trafficking-related crimes."[168] In 2024, after multiple hearings, the "Falun Gong Protection Act" (H.R. 4132) was unanimously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on 25 June. The Act focuses on addressing forced organ harvesting in the People's Republic of China, specifically targeting the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.USA Congressional Bill, H.R.4132 - Falun Gong Protection Act, 25 June 2024

European Union

The European Parliament heard testimony about organ harvesting in China during a 6 December 2012 session on human rights in China. One year later, it passed a resolution expressing "deep concern over the persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the People's Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned for their religious beliefs, as well as from members of other religious and ethnic minority groups." The resolution called for the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience, and urged Chinese authorities to respond to United Nations inquiries about the source of organs used in transplants.[169] In March 2014, the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels convened a follow-up event on organ transplant abuses in China.[170] Participants and speakers at the session endorsed the recommendations of the parliamentary resolution, which recognized that Falun Gong and other minority groups are targets of forced organ harvesting in China. EESC President Henri Malosse called for greater pressure to be put on the Chinese government to end organ transplant abuses.[171] In 2022 the European Parliament adopted another resolution expressing concerns over reports of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China and calling on the EU and its Member States to condemn China's transplant abuses and take preventative actions.[172]

Italy

In March 2014, the members of the Italian commission on human rights unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the immediate release of Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience in China, and urging Italian hospitals to reconsider collaborations with China in the area of organ transplants.[173] In 2015, the Italian Senate adopted a bill which makes it a crime to traffic in organs from living donors. Individuals found guilty of this offence could face 3–12 years in prison and fines of up to 300,000 Euros (US$350,000).[174]

Australia

In December 2006, the Australian Ministry of Health revealed that two of the country's major organ transplant hospitals had banned training of Chinese surgeons, in response to concerns about organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners.[175] On 21 March 2013, the Australian Senate unanimously passed a motion concerning reports of organ harvesting in China.[176][177] The motion, which was introduced one day after a parliamentary briefing on the subject of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners, called on Australia to adopt strict standards to address the practice of international organ trafficking.[178] The same year, Green party lawmakers in New South Wales, Australia, proposed legislation to criminalize and create specific offenses related to trafficking in human organs and tissue.[179]

In 2018, Graham Fletcher, the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's North Asia Division, said "the idea that there is a separate, parallel, hidden, vast network of unspeakable activity where people are essentially killed for their organs, we don't believe that that is happening." Graham's statement was to a parliamentary inquiry into organ trading.[1]

Israel

In 2007, Israel's national legislative body the Knesset adopted new legislation barring insurance companies from providing coverage to Israeli citizens who travel abroad to purchase organs. The move was partly a response to an investigation in which Israeli authorities arrested several men involved in mediating transplants of Chinese prisoners' organs for Israelis. One of the men had stated in an undercover interview that the organs came from "people who oppose the regime, those sentenced to death and from prisoners of the Falun Gong."[180] In addition to prohibiting citizens from buying organs overseas, the law also imposed criminal charges on organ traffickers. The new rules resulted in a significant decrease in the number of Israeli citizens seeking transplants abroad, while also helping to catalyze an expansion of the voluntary donor registry domestically.[121]

Spain

In 2010, Spain implemented a law prohibiting its nationals from traveling abroad to obtain illegal organ transplants. The legislation was proposed after a Spanish citizen reportedly traveled to Tianjin, China, where he obtained a liver for US$130,000 after waiting for just 20 days. The Spanish legislation makes it a crime to promote or facilitate an illegal organ transplant, punishable with up to 12 years in prison. In addition, any organization found to have participated in illegal organ transplant transactions will be subject to a fine.[181]

Taiwan

In June 2015, Taiwan passed an amendment to the "Human Organ Transplantation Act" to require people who have transplants abroad to provide details to local hospitals. Democratic Progressive Party legislator Yu Mei-nu said many Taiwanese go to China for illegal organ transplantations.[182]

Canada and France

Similar bills against organ tourism have been proposed in the French national assembly (2010) and in Canadian parliament (2007, 2013).[183][184][185] On 10 December 2018, the S-240 bill – An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (trafficking in human organs), was read the second time in House of Commons of Canada and referred to Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.[186] In the debate, Vice-chair of Foreign Affairs and International Development Subcommittee on International Human Rights (SDIR) MP Ms. Cheryl Hardcastle stated that: "...the numbers may actually be between 60,000 and 100,000 organ transplants per year...

The principal victims of China's organ-harvesting industry was the country's Falun Gong followers... China's organ-harvesting industry developed in tandem with its systematic repression of Falun Gong... Organ harvesting and trafficking are a nauseating reality and we must put a stop to them."[187] The bill was not passed into law during the 42nd Parliament[186] or when reconsidered in the 43rd as S-204.[188] However, the bill was passed by the 44th Parliament as S-223 on 15 December 2022.[189]

Human trafficking in China

The People's Republic of China is a main source and also a significant transit and destination country for men, women, and children who are subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labour and forced prostitution. Women and children from China are trafficked to Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America, predominantly Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labour. Women and children from Myanmar, Vietnam, Mongolia, former USSR (except for the Baltic States), North Korea, Romania, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Ghana are trafficked to China for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labour.[1][2] U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 3" , the lowest one, in 2017.[3] As of 2025[update], China has remained in Tier 3, since the U.S. State Department determined that China did not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and was not making significant efforts to do so.[4] This 2025 report mentions especially widespread forced labor in government-affiliated sectors regarding ethnic and religious minorities such as Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgiz in the Xinjiang Region as well as ethnic Tibetans under the guise of "vocational training", "poverty alleviation" or "deradicalization' programs[4].

Definition

According to the United Nations Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons of 2000, as part of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, human trafficking involves "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons" by "the use of force or other means of coercion" with the "purpose of exploitation".[5] The Protocol further explains "exploitation" as, at a minimum, "the sex work of others" and "other forms of sexual exploitation". A person is considered a "trafficked victim if he or she is involved in the above-mentioned situations, regardless of whether the person consents to it or not."[5]

Extent

A global map of human trafficking. The United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking reports that around 600,000 migrant workers leave China annually to work overseas. This number accounts for those tracked by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and does not include those who leave without documents. Perhaps up to 90% of the migrant workers are migrating through unregulated and uninformed channels.[5] The number of female migrants is also rising rapidly, most of whom are young girls aged 17–25. It has been suggested that cross-border trafficking of women is increasing in China. Undocumented migrants who are trafficked into China mainly come from Vietnam, Russia, North Korea, and Myanmar. The UNIAP states that many individuals have been trafficked from southwest China through Myanmar and eventually into countries like Thailand and Malaysia.[5]

The trafficking of individuals across countries has a wide array of purposes, ranging from commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage to illegal adoption, forced labour, and begging.[5] For example, of the 8,000 Vietnamese women married to Chinese men in Guangxi province between 1989 and 1999, some were introduced by friends and relatives, and most were found to have been trafficked.[6]

Reports on human trafficking

According to a UNIAP study on the reports of human trafficking in China, there were 800 reported human trafficking cases reported in the print media between 2006 and 2007. The study found correlations between factors like age and gender with different types of human trafficking. For example, the trafficking of young boys for adoption, and girls and young women for sexual exploitation were different instances of human trafficking that had a positive correlation with another factor.[6] The main means of trafficking involved: fraud and deception, 37%; kidnapping, 26%; abuse of power or a position of vulnerability, 17%; and physical violence, 5%. 58% of the articles reported into which sector victims were trafficked: forced prostitution 19%; the entertainment industry, hairdressing or massage parlours 9%; brick kilns 9%; manufacturing 4%; domestic labour 3%; forced begging 3%; and others 11%.[6]

Geographic distribution of forced labourers

According to the UNIAP report on human trafficking in China, 301 trafficking cases reported by the media from 2007 to mid-2008 were analysed to determine that Yunnan and Guizhou were the main source provinces of human trafficking.[6] Fujian, Guangdong, and Shandong were the primary destination provinces.[6] Henan province is both a source and destination for human trafficking.[6] A correlation has also been found between sources and the destinations for trafficked victims. Trafficked victims come from provinces with low GDP per capita like Yunnan and Guizhou. Provinces with high GDP per capita like Fujian, Guangdong, and Shandong, are the prime destinations for trafficked victims because there is a great demand and resources available to utilise forced labourers.[6]

According to a 2023 report, there are up to 500,000 North Korean women and girls in China's northern provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang, where human trafficking industry exploded, reaching $105 million per year.[7] China remains a significant source of girls and women subjected to forced prostitution throughout the world. During the year, Chinese sex trafficking victims were reported on all of the inhabited continents. Traffickers recruited girls and young women, often from rural areas of China, using a combination of fraudulent job offers, imposition of large travel fees, and threats of physical or financial harm, to obtain and maintain their service in prostitution.[8] Locations of sex trafficking of Chinese women and girls abroad vary widely, and sometimes are collocated with concentrations of Chinese migrant workers in factories, and mining and logging camps.[2]

Most of the women trafficked from China to Thailand and Malaysia are from ethnic minorities like the Dai ethnicity from areas like the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan province and they are trafficked by men of their own ethnicity.[9][10][11][12][13] The Dai people are related to Thai people. While Chinese prostitutes in British Malaya refused to service non-Chinese men, Japanese karayuki-san prostitutes in British Malaya were open to non-Japanese men.[14][15] Chinese prostitutes in French Indochina also only served overseas Chinese men there unlike the Japanese karayuki-san prostitutes who serviced non-Japanese men.[16] In 2011, a brothel in Moscow with Chinese and Vietnamese prostitutes which served only Chinese male citizens as clients was uncovered, it advertised to its Chinese clients via coded messages in a Chinese language newspaper but was uncovered by the police.[17][18] Chinese women sex trafficked to Chinese owned offshore gaming operators in the Philippines only serve Chinese male clients who visit or work at those Chinese owned offshore gaming operators according to the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation, with both the pimps and clients of the prostitutes being Chinese men residing in the Philippines, not local Filipino men or other foreigners in the Philippines.[19]

Major Chinese hubs for human trafficking

The U.S. State Department's human trafficking report (2010) writes: "Internal trafficking is most pronounced among China's migrant population, which is estimated to exceed 150 million people. Forced labour remains a serious problem, including in brick kilns, coal mines, factories, and construction sites throughout China. There were numerous confirmed reports of involuntary servitude of children, adults, and migrant workers during the reporting period. As an example, in May 2009, media reports exposed a forced labour case at brick kilns in Anhui province, where mentally handicapped workers were subjected to slave-like conditions".[2] The U.S. State Department's human trafficking report (2024) estimated that the PRC's internal migrant population exceeds 169 million people, placing them at high risk of forced labor in brick kilns, coal mines, and factories.[20]

In addition to internal trafficking of the migrant population in China, rampant trafficking is often also attributed to a decade-long one-child policy that resulted in gender imbalance, and a universal expectation to marry. Men in communities experiencing a severe shortage of women are under strong pressure to find a bride. When they cannot afford to pay the high bride price for local women, they readily resort to purchasing brides kidnapped from other areas.[8] Popular areas of origin for domestically trafficked brides are the poorer areas of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou where poverty renders women more vulnerable to trafficking. Traffickers generally sell these women in distant areas, such as Shaanxi, Ningxia, Guangxi, Hainan, and Guangdong provinces with large gender imbalances.[8]

Types of human trafficking

Child labour

One demographic particularly susceptible to forced labour is children. The U.S. Department of State has issued a report stating that "Chinese children are forced into prostitution, and various forms of forced labour, including begging, stealing, selling flowers, and work in brick kilns and factories; the children of migrants are particularly vulnerable to trafficking."[2] For example, there were reports that child labourers were found working in brick kilns, low-skill service sectors and in small workshops and factories. These reports found that the underage labourers are in their teens, typically ranging from 13 to 15 years old, but some are as young as 10 years old.[6]

In another instance, children in Xinjiang were forced to pick cotton as part of a "work-study" program, according to foreign media reports. They worked long hours and were exploited under this simple guise. Students do not have a voice in raising concerns about how they are employed and have no protection against any abusive work practice or dangerous conditions of being on the job.[2] The overall extent of forced labour and child labour in China is also unclear in part because the government releases only limited information on the subject according to the report on trafficking issued by the U.S. Department of State.[6] In 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor where China was attributed 12 goods ranging from bricks, coal and cotton to electronics, fireworks and Christmas decorations.[21]

Sex trafficking

Main article: Sex trafficking in China

China's legal definition of trafficking does not automatically regard children over the age of 14 who are subjected to the commercial sex trade as trafficking victims.[2] Chinese laws only recognize forms of coercion other than abduction, such as threats of physical harm or non-physical harm, as constituting a means of trafficking. In the United States Department of State report: "Article 244 of the Chinese Criminal Law criminalizes forced labour, but prescribes punishments of a fine or no more than three years imprisonment, and only if the circumstances are found to be 'serious' - penalties which are not sufficiently stringent." In addition, the definition of trafficking does not pertain to male victims of trafficking or adult victims of labor trafficking.[2]

The number of women suffering from sexual exploitation is exponentially increasing. Traffickers usually attract victims through false promises of high salaries and stable job incomes. Many women are deceived because of their poor education and they are often also marginalized minority groups who believe the false promises of traffickers who offer the hope of living an urban life.[22] The problem of sex trafficking stems from the gender imbalance present in China. Women are most likely sold into provinces like Henan in which the gender imbalance is particularly stark and where there is a high demand for women. Often, men kidnap the women after enticing them with promises of employment and money, but later sell them to villages and other provinces. Trafficked women are often then forced into marriage and therefore suffer from prolonged sexual exploitation. Particularly, according to the article "Human Trafficking and Smuggling in China" by Cindy Chu, trafficked women were usually aged between 20 and 50 in the past, but "recently most of them were under 20 and some were girls as young as 12 years old."[23] The sex industry in China is flourishing, primarily fueled by the trafficking and sale of young women and girls for the purpose of marriage. This phenomenon has been influenced by the historical implications of the one-child policy and the traditional Chinese inclination for male offspring, which has led to a significant gender imbalance with a surplus of men in the country.[24]

In 2018, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Kachin Women's Association Thailand published a study that estimated that in just one province in China, there are approximately 21,000 women and girls from the northern part of Myanmar who were forced into marriage from 2013 to 2017. This was then associated with the “One Child” policy in China, which was claimed to have caused the gender imbalance in China that reached its height in 2004, where about 121 boys were born for every 100 girls (Beech, 2019). [citation needed] China's ‘One Child’ policy was a program that officially started on September 25, 1980, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, as a way to curb China's rapid population growth rate, which was reaching the one-billion mark by the late 1970s (Pletcher 2020). [citation needed] The program later ended on October 29, 2015, when the rules were slowly relaxed to allow for a second child for every family (Zhang, 2020). [citation needed] The policy not only resulted in a general reduction in China's fertility and birth rates but also a skewed sex ratio towards males, where there were about 3-4 percent more males than females. This is due to the tradition in which sons (especially firstborns) usually inherit the family name and property and are tasked with taking care of the parents, which made having daughters undesirable. [citation needed] This also resulted in an increase in female fetus abortions, the number of female children abandoned/placed in orphanages, and infanticide of baby girls. Since males are the bearers of family heritage, the shortage of wives could mean an end to the family trees, so marrying wives from nearby countries became a coping mechanism (Beech, 2019). [citation needed] However, this demand has created an opportunity for human smugglers/traffickers to commit human trafficking crimes to meet the increasing demands for brides.

Economic hardships, especially in rural areas, are cited to be the main reason why so many women became victims of human trafficking through transnational marriages. The possibility of immigration through marriage, in a way, offers women opportunities towards a better life as it is often seen as an easy and secure path to wealth, stability, and mobility. Culturally, the perception of wifehood and modernity are also factors that motivate the idea of marriage migration, usually via media and other forms of communication, which convince many that establishing a stable family life with middle-class resources is possible beyond their borders (Yang and Lu, 2010). [citation needed] Another important factor is the political instability and violence in neighboring countries that leave women vulnerable to displacement and human trafficking. For example, brides trafficked from northern Myanmar into China are mostly part of an ethnic minority that is vulnerable to the long-run conflict in the region. They are often tricked by traffickers who promise well-paid employment opportunities in China (Barr, 2020). [citation needed] Although there are more initiatives to combat the issue both domestically and internationally, more cooperation in the region is needed either through bilateral or multilateral arrangements.

Extraction of organs

See also: Forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China and Organ transplantation in

China The buying and selling of organs is prevalent in the black market of China. The organ trade is the trade of organs for organ transplantation. There is a shortage of organs available for transplantation which fuels a thriving black market for organs. Traditionally, Chinese culture dictates that organs should be buried and cremated for the individual to be reincarnated as a whole which has led to a dearth of bodies being donated. Therefore, China has resorted to harvesting organs from the bodies of prisoners for the use of organ transplants. According to an organ trafficking paper written by Budiani-Saberi and Delmonico, 11,000 transplants were performed in China using the organs of executed prisoners in 2006.[25]

Of the transplants performed, 8,000 were kidney transplants, 3,000 were liver transplants, and 200 were heart transplants. In 2006, the 8,000 kidney transplants alone in China would have accounted for at least 10% of the total number of annual organ transplants done in programs of organ trafficking. However, since China has recently adopted the Human Transplantation Act that bans commercial use of prisoner organs, China has reduced the number of transplants to foreign patients by 50% in 2007.[25] According to a New Yorker article written by Jiayang Fan, even though China performs more transplants annually than any country except the United States, less than 1% of the population in need of life-saving transplants receives them (as compared to about 20% in the United States). According to China's Ministry of Health, some 1.5 million people continue to wait for transplants.[26]

In 2021, UN human rights experts published that they were "extremely alarmed by reports of alleged 'organ harvesting' targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China." According to the UN experts, it is a form of trafficking with a medical nature allegedly involving medical professionals.[27] In August 2024, The Diplomat reported the first known survivor of forced organ harvest, Cheng Pei Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner.[28]

Surrogacy

Although surrogacy in China is illegal, it is still a common practice among the wealthy Chinese population. In fact, in the past thirty years, over 25,000 children have been born to surrogate mothers in China. Most of these surrogate mothers are recruited from the countryside and are paid around 140,000 yuan. The couples looking for a surrogate mother go through an unlicensed agency that acts like a middleman and establishes communication with women willing to rent their wombs. The growing demand for surrogate mothers is based upon the fact that many urban Chinese are marrying later and postponing childbirth as work demands and the high costs of city living weigh couples down. In addition, vanity may also be involved as women continue to maintain their figures.

In particular, couples look for surrogate mothers the year before the dragon so that their children can be born on an auspicious year. Many wealthy couples often hire more than one surrogate mother to ensure that eight babies are born because eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture. [citation needed] In-vitro fertilization also produces a higher chance of having twins or triplets, leading to the circumvention of China's one-child policy. This exploitation of women's bodies has called for stricter laws against surrogacy. The Chinese Health Ministry has cracked down on many of these practices and even forced the abortion of fetuses by surrogate mothers when discovered. [citation needed]

Anti-trafficking laws and policies

Law enforcement against trafficking

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) last reported in 2016 a number of 1,004 investigations of possible trafficking cases, but did not give numbers since then. In May 2024 the Ministry claimed that trafficking had declined by two thirds over the previous five years but did not share any evidence of this.[29] As human trafficking is a prevalent problem within China, regulations and laws have been implemented to prohibit forms of trafficking. The Chinese government ratified the UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol in December 2009, which obligates China to prohibit all forms of trafficking and bring its domestic laws into conformity with international standards within 24 months. In 2010 the U.S. Department of State reported that China had "arrested 19 of the country’s 20 most wanted traffickers and pursuit of criminal networks and organized crime syndicates involved in trafficking."[2]

The Chinese government passed several laws against trafficking and smuggling. The penalties for traffickers and buyers of the 'human goods' are high and severe. The laws against trafficking in women in China are as severe as the law prohibiting rape according to the U.S. Department of State in 2001.[2] However, the amount of corruption and weak enforcement by officials have impeded the successful implementation of such laws and programs. In addition, police complicity with smugglers has further exacerbated the problem, leaving women vulnerable to trafficking and forced marriage.[22] Chinese law also prescribes the death penalty for certain offences of child trafficking. In the case of convicted child trafficker Yu Huaying, she was sentenced to death for abducting 17 children and selling them to other families, and the court deemed her conduct extremely heinous and warranted a harsh punishment. Yu was executed on 28 February 2025 after losing her appeal.[30][31] Another case is the execution of Zhang Weiping and Zhou Rongping on 27 April 2023, who abducted multiple children and sold them via an intermediary nicknamed "Mei Yi".[32][33] Mei Yi was arrested on 21 March 2026, and confessed to the child trafficking.[34] As of 8 April 2026[update], the penalty is still undecided, but multiple lawyers in multiple media interviews expressed the opinion that she is likely to be sentenced to death.[35][36]

Central government action

In a report by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice, details have been provided into combating human trafficking in China. For example, the report states that "since combating trafficking in women and children started nationally in 1991, a large number of cases of trafficking in women and children has been solved and handled and offenders severely punished according to law."[37] In 2008, courts nationwide convened to decide 1353 cases of trafficking in women and children which was a 9.91% increase of cases from 2007. In total, from the 1353 cases, 2161 offenders were sentenced, representing an 11.05% increase from 2007. Of those who were sentenced, 1319 were sentenced to more than 5 years of fixed-term imprisonment, life imprisonment or death, representing a 10.1% increase from 2007.[37]

In 2009, courts nationwide decided 1636 cases of trafficking in women and children, representing a 20.9% increase from 2008. In total, 2413 offenders were sentenced, representing an 11.7% increase from 2008. Of those who were sentenced, 1475 were sentenced to more than 5 years of imprisonment, life imprisonment, or death, representing an 11.83% increase from 2008."[37]

Organizations against trafficking

Several organisations within China have dedicated efforts to ameliorating the human trafficking situation. For example, Save the Children is a program that has helped fund research to gain a clearer understanding of issues like migration, trafficking, and street children to help promote safer migration. By educating children and young people about the dangers of trafficking, especially in communities of ethnic minorities, they will be better equipped to stay on their guard against trafficker organisations.[38] According to a pamphlet created by Save the Children debriefing the current situation in China, the organisation is "helping to build networks that migrants can turn to when they arrive in their destinations."

They created a safe migration textbook for children that has been instituted into the education system in the Ping Xiang, Guanzi province. There is also child protection work at children's activity centres in cities like Nanning, Kunming, Shenzhen, and Shanghai with huge migrant communities.[38] Another organization, called the All-China Women's Federation, is an anti-trafficking education campaign aimed at educating vulnerable women and children to protect themselves against prevailing social and cultural perspectives that propagate human trafficking. The All-China Women's Federation is also involved in a collaboration project with Vietnam to combat trafficking on the borders.[6]

Also, in 2016 TongJuBao.com, a collaborative mutual help model (also referred to sometimes as P2P Insurance) launched a Child Safety scheme intended to mobilise the resources of all members to fund professional rapid investigation support (supporting the family and police efforts) in case a child from the community should go missing.[39]

Pressure from human rights and activist groups

Countries in ASEAN The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed its first human rights convention in November 2012 and committed itself to a trafficking agreement in 2014.[40][41] Original ASEAN member countries formed in 1967 included Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. It has expanded to include Bruenei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam since then along with adding the ASEAN Plus Three of China, Japan, and Korea. These countries are dedicated to the fight against trafficking of people.[42] This includes commitments to work together to prevent trafficking, to identify and protect the victims, and to ensure that offenders are punished. According to Helen Stacy, director of the CDDRL Program on Human Rights and an FSI senior fellow, human rights issues are becoming integrated into regional discussions on trade and economic development.[43] ASEAN, being a free trade organisation, has taken an interest in human trafficking because countries have begun to recognise that if they want to claim national governance credibility, they have to at least acknowledge the problem, sign human rights agreements, and start cooperating with their neighbours in combating human trafficking.[43] One of the primary purposes of ASEAN is to prevent trafficking, protect victims and prosecute traffickers.[40]

Child abuse in China

Legal status

Laws

The Law of the People's Republic of China on Protection of Minors (Chinese: 未成年人保护法)[1] and the criminal law of China (Chinese: 刑法)[2] do not address the subject of child abuse.[3][needs update?] Article 49 of the current Chinese Constitution, however, forbids the physical abuse of elderly people, women, and children.[4] According to Wang Shengjun, former president of the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China, China does not have a specific law protecting the welfare of children. Although statutes have been passed concerning child abuse, and there are more than 30 organisations within the Chinese government in which child protection is referenced, they lack a systematic codification as none have been established specifically to tackle child abuse.[5][6]

Initiatives

In 2019, China announced plans to build a national database of sex offenders against minors.[7] It also issued new guidelines for educators, with a lifetime ban from teaching recommended for the sexual harassment of students.[8] In 2021, China announced a mandatory reporting system to improve the prosecution of such crimes.[9] Further procedures address how schools and government agencies deal with individuals subject to disqualification from working with children. In 2022, China’s supreme court and justice agencies issued the Opinions on Implementing the System of Occupational Disqualification, which translate to Rules for Professional Disqualifications in American and British English. The rules regulate how teachers and other educational staff with criminal records should be barred from working with children. They require courts to professionally disqualify educators who commit felonies such as sexual assault, abuse, human trafficking, or violent crimes against minors, and to provide mandatory notification to education agencies to revoke or deny teaching licenses or certifications. Under the rules, prosecutors' offices are obligated to recommend professional disqualification during prosecution and to oversee whether schools and other educational institutions perform thorough criminal background checks and enforce employment disqualifications.[10]

Punishments

Currently, a large number of child abuse incidents in China have not been adjudicated. Further, punishments have typically been lenient, including 5-day detentions for offenders. These detentions are executed according to the public security administration penal code (Chinese: 治安管理处罚法) which does not have the regulatory authority to enforce the protection of children. Article 45 of the aforementioned law refers to the detention of the abusers of family members who are requested to be prosecuted by their family members.[6]

Traditional values and consequences

The prevalence of Confucianism in Chinese culture, where many of China's traditional values are derived, has led to legal ambiguity regarding child abuse. Within Confucianism, children are expected to show extreme devotion towards their parents. Confucians believed that familial figures would one day become powerful spirits, and hence should be honored accordingly.[11] Filial piety is also emphasized through the notion that the collective family takes precedence over any individual rights. According to a 2017 paper by Fang Zhao and colleagues, "most young couples are willing to live with their ageing parents or parents-in-law", which "shows that traditional values are still quite prevalent among the current younger generation in China".[12]

These traditional beliefs have complicated Chinese policy on child abuse.[12][13] According to Confucianism, it is the responsibility of the parents to decide how they wish to raise and discipline their children. The notion of the family as the biggest priority further hinders the government from separating children from their families. In traditional Chinese society "anyone with a family was thought to have his or her basic life needs satisfied, and only the homeless and those from poverty-stricken families would be identified as needing social services".[12] These factors make it difficult to establish a functional child protective service, as children who are not impoverished are not seen as needing assistance.

According to a systematic review published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization in 2015, of the 400 million children in China, 26.6% had suffered physical abuse, 19.6% emotional abuse, 8.7% sexual abuse, and 26% neglect.[14] The "Reform and Opening Up" policy that started in the late 1970s has made cities in China flourish.[15] Yet, poverty is still prevalent in rural areas and, "to help families get rid of adverse circumstances, many young adults leave rural residences for cities in pursuit of better salaries, leaving their children at home".[15] Because of this, there has been a group of left-behind children (LBC) in rural China.[15] Parents will travel to the city out of a desperate need to provide for their families, but having little to no contact with one's parents leaves a child especially vulnerable to mental health issues.[16] Tian states: "According to the released data in 2013 by All China Women's Federation, the number of LBC had climbed to a staggering 61 million, accounting for 37.7% of the rural children and 21.9% of the total Chinese children".[16]

This is a problem because, according to Tian, children with little to no parental support are more likely to participate in, or experience, self-harm (SH), depression, and suicidal thoughts or attempts. He states that "children with less perceived family support had higher incidence and severe SH behaviors".[16] With their parents gone, LBCs are far more likely to exhibit such behaviors. "Existing studies highlight the importance of SH in suicide, as it has been estimated that approximately 50–60% of suicidal deaths were coupled with a history of SH, and SH adolescents reported a threefold risk of suicidal ideation (SI) compared with their non-SH counterparts".[16] LBC are at a heightened risk of depression, SH, and suicidal thoughts.[16]

Gender differences

A study published in 2021 found that "boys in rural China have a higher rate of abuse compared to girls as a whole, while girls are at a higher risk of experiencing neglect".[17] It would seem that boys and girls tend to suffer in different ways, due to gender roles in a Confucian society: "Rural boys are expected to take more responsibility for family prosperity in Confucian society, whereas it is thought that most girls will leave home after they are married, so higher expectations tend to cause more physical or verbal punishment for boys."[17] In traditional Chinese culture, the parents' livelihood depends on their son's ability to support them when they can no longer work.

When it comes to the reasons why girls seem to be affected more by neglect than other types of abuse, the answer is more complicated: "In rural China, girls' emotional neglect may come not only from girls' characteristics of being sensitive, fragile, and precocious but also from the insufficient attention and limited resources they receive from their families ... Confucian culture regards tolerance and understanding as virtues inherent to women, which will also reduce girls' willingness to externalize their pressure and strengthen their feelings of loneliness".[17] After several violent cases were brought to light, continual backlash from both the general public and netizens caused the courts in late 2018 to toughen sentences for offenders.[18][19]

Sexual abuse against minors

According to the China Daily, "between 2010 and 2013, national prosecutors accused 8,069 suspects of obscene behavior involving minors in 7,963 cases, and have charged 255 people with sexually abusing young girls in 150 cases."[20] The China Daily quoted a law professor as saying: "Because of the lack of sex education, some juveniles may not even realize they have been sexually abused".[20] In 2019, China announced a series of efforts, including a national database of offenders and potential lifetime bans from teaching, to tackle sex crimes against children.[7][8] In 2020, over 80 former students came out against a teacher and later administrator at an international school in Sichuan for sexually harassing them, leading to his arrest.[21][22] A case involving a businessman who had allegedly sexually assaulted his foster daughter raised calls for a more clearly defined age of consent.[9]

From 2018 to 2022, 290,000 individuals were charged with crimes against minors, of which 131,000 were prosecuted for sexual offenses such as rape and child molestation. 41% of those prosecuted received a prison sentence of more than three years, 23.9% higher than the average for criminals overall. In addition, 700 people who failed to report crimes against minors were punished.[9] 2,503 centers have been set up in China to handle sexual abuse cases against minors.[9]

Child labor

Child labor is a social issue in China.[23] In October 2018, a study was conducted based on data from the China Family Panel Studies.[24] The study found that about 7.74% of children aged 10 to 15 worked in 2010, and a positive correlation was observed between child labor and school dropout rates.[24] The study found that on average, a child who works 6.75 hours a day has 6.42 fewer hours to study compared to other children.[24]

One-child policy

The one-child policy (Chinese: 一孩政策 / 独生子女政策; pinyin: yī hái zhèngcè / dú shēng zǐ nǚ zhèng cè) was a controversial population planning initiative in Mainland China implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. The program had wide-ranging social, cultural, economic, and demographic effects, although the contribution of one-child restrictions to the broader program has been the subject of controversy.[1] Its efficacy in reducing birth rates and defensibility from a human rights perspective have been subjects of controversy.[2] China's family planning policies began to be shaped by fears of overpopulation in the 1970s, and officials raised the age of marriage and called for fewer and more broadly spaced births.[3] A near-universal one-child limit was imposed in 1980 and written into the country's constitution in 1982.[4][5] Numerous exceptions were established over time, and by 1984, only about 35.4% of the population was subject to the original restriction of the policy.[6]: 167 In the mid-1980s, rural parents were allowed to have a second child if the first was a daughter. It also allowed exceptions for some other groups, including ethnic minorities under 10 million people.[7] In 2015 in response to demographic issues of the Chinese population, the government raised the limit to two children, and in May 2021 to three.[8] In July 2021, it removed all limits,[9] shortly after implementing financial incentives to encourage individuals to have additional children as well as other pronatalist policies.[10]

Implementation of the policy was handled at the national level primarily by the National Population and Family Planning Commission and at the provincial and local level by specialized commissions.[11] Officials used pervasive propaganda campaigns to promote the program and encourage compliance. The strictness with which it was enforced varied by period, region, and social status. In some cases, women were forced to use contraception, receive abortions, and undergo sterilization.[12][13] Families who violated the policy faced large fines and other penalties.[14] The population control program had wide-ranging social effects, particularly for Chinese women.

Patriarchal attitudes and a cultural preference for sons led to the abandonment of unwanted infant girls, some of whom died and others of whom were adopted abroad.[12][15] Over time, this skewed the country's sex ratio toward men and created a generation of "missing women".[15] However, the policy also resulted in greater workforce participation by women who would otherwise have been occupied with childrearing, and some girls received greater familial investment in their education.[16][16] The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) credits the program with contributing to the country's economic ascendancy and says that it prevented 400 million births, although some scholars dispute that estimate.[17]

Some have also questioned whether the drop in birth rate was caused more by other factors unrelated to the policy.[17] In the West, the policy has been widely criticized for human rights violations and other negative effects.[2]

Background

See also: Family planning policies of China, Reform and opening up, and Boluan Fanzheng

China's population since 1950 Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, socialist construction was the utmost mission the state needed to accomplish. Top state leaders believed that a bigger population would effectively contribute to the national projects. During Mao Zedong's leadership in China, the birth rate fell from 37 per thousand to 20 per thousand.[18] Infant mortality declined from 227 per thousand births in 1949 to 53 per thousand in 1981, and life expectancy dramatically increased from around 35 years in 1948 to 66 years in 1976.[18][19] Until the 1960s, the government mostly encouraged families to have as many children as possible,[20] especially during the Great Leap Forward, because of Mao's belief that population growth empowered the country, preventing the emergence of family planning programs earlier in China's development.[21][22][23] The state tried to incentivize more childbirths during that time with a variety of policies, such as the "Mother Heroine" award, a programme inspired by a similar policy in the Soviet Union.[23] As a result, the population grew from around 542 million in 1949 to 807 million in 1969, corresponding to an average annual growth rate of about 2.45% per year.[24] (If the same rate had continued unabated from 1969 through 2025, China's population in 2025 would be on the order of 2.4 billion people.) Beginning in 1970, citizens were encouraged to marry at later ages and many were limited to have only two children.[25]

The devastating Great Chinese Famine (late 1950s to early 1960s) resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 million people.[26][27] Following the famine, China's leadership saw rapid population growth as a threat to resources and development, fearing a return to food insecurity.[28] Although China's fertility rate plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world during the 1970s under these restrictions, the Chinese government thought it was still too high, influenced by the global debate over a possible overpopulation crisis suggested by publications such as the Club of Rome's 1972 report The Limits to Growth and the Sierra Club's 1968 book The Population Bomb. The fertility rate dropped from 5.9 in the 1950s to 4.0 in the 1970s. Yet, the population still grew at a significant rate: There were approximately 807 million in China in the year 1969; the number then went up to 975 million in 1979, an average annual growth rate of about 2.1%.[24]

In the early 1970s, the state introduced a set of birth planning policies. It mainly called for later childbearing, longer time spans between having new children, and giving birth to fewer children.[29]: 57 Men were encouraged to marry at age 25 or later, and women were encouraged to marry at age 23 or later.[29]: 57 The authorities began encouraging one-child families in 1978, and in 1979 announced that they intended to advocate for one-child families. Ma Yinchu, a founder of China's population planning theory,[30] was also an author of the policy.[31][32][33][34][35][36] In the late spring of 1979, Chen Yun became the first senior leader to propose the one-child policy.[37][16] On 1 June 1979, Chen said that:[38][39] Comrade Xiannian proposed to me planning "better one, at most two". I'd say be stricter, stipulating that "only one is allowed". Prepare to be criticized by others for cutting off the offspring. But if we don't do it, the future looks grim.

Deng Xiaoping, then paramount leader of China, supported the policy, along with other senior leaders including Hua Guofeng and Li Xiannian.[38][22] On 15 October 1979, Deng met a British delegation led by Felix Greene in Beijing,[40][41] saying that "we encourage one child per couple. We give economic rewards to those who promise to give birth to only one child."[38]

Formulation of the policy

Family planning billboard in Chengdu. In 1980, the central government organized a meeting in Chengdu to discuss the speed and scope of one-child restrictions.[25] The notable aerospace engineer Song Jian was a participant at the Chengdu meeting. He had previously read two influential books about population concerns, The Limits to Growth and A Blueprint for Survival, while visiting Europe in 1980. Along with several associates, Song determined that the ideal population of China was 700 million, and that a universal one-child policy for all would be required to meet that goal.[42] If fertility rates remained constant at 3 births per woman, China's population would surpass 3 billion by 2060 and 4 billion by 2080.[25] In spite of some criticism inside the CCP, the family planning policy[43] was formally implemented as a temporary measure on 18 September 1980.[17][44][45][46] The plan called for families to have one child each in order to curb a then-surging population and alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China.[47][48]

"Virtual" population crisis

Despite the legitimate ongoing rapid growth of China's population and the evident effects it brought to society, using the term "population crisis" to describe the situation is disputed. Scholars including Susan Greenhalgh argue that the state intentionally created a virtual population crisis in order to serve political ends.[50] According to state promotions, the looming overpopulation crisis would ruin the national agenda of achieving "China's socialist modernization", which includes industry, agriculture, national defense, and technology.[51] China's attitude towards population control on the global stage in international forums evidenced an ambiguous stance on the nature of the crisis. In the mid-1960s, when global movements for birth control emerged, Chinese delegates expressed their opposition toward population control. In the first UN-organized World Population Conference held in Bucharest in 1974, they claimed that it was an imperialist agenda that Western countries imposed on Third World countries, and that population was not a determining factor of economic growth and a country's well-being.[49] Yet, in the domestic setting the state leaders were already wary of the perceived "population crisis" that was thought to endanger the modernization of China.[49]

It is also suggested that mathematical terms, graphs, and tables were utilized to form a convincing narrative that presents the urgency of the population problem as well as justifies the necessity of mandatory birth control across the nation.[53] Due to the previous traumas of the Cultural Revolution, public and top state leaders turned to the charisma of science, and sometimes blindly worshipped it as the solution to every problem. As a result, any proposal that was veiled and decorated by the so-called scientific back-ups would be highly considered by both the people and the state.[53] Arguments started to come out in 1979 suggesting that the excessively rapid population growth was sabotaging the economy and destroying the environment, and essentially preventing China from being a rightful member of the global world. Skillful and deliberate comparisons were made with developed and industrialized countries such as the United States, Japan, and France.[54] Under such a comparison, China's relatively low income per capita was attributed directly to population growth and no other factors.

Though the data is truthful, its arrangement and presentation to readers gave a single message determined by the state: that the population problem is a national catastrophe and immediate remedy is desperately needed.[54]

Chinese population science

China was deprived of data, skills, and state support to conduct population studies. Due to Mao's ambivalent attitude toward the population issue, population studies were abolished in the late 1950s. After Mao's death, family planning became a critical component and premise for reaching China's national goal: that is, to achieve "China's socialist modernization," which includes modernizing industry, agriculture, national defence, and technology.[51] Therefore, at this point, population science was closely related and tied with state politics. There was a perceived need to redefine population as a domain of science, identify the population problem in China, and propose a solution to it.[55] Such efforts included many groups of people with diverse backgrounds. Among these experts, two groups held the most influence in defining the population problem and providing a solution to it. They were a group of scientists led by Liu Zheng, and another group led by Song Jian. Liu's group mainly came from a social science background, while Song's group came from natural science background.[56]

Social scientists

Social scientists involved in this discussion in the mid-1970s, including Liu Zheng, Wu Cangping, Lin Fude, and Zha Ruichuan, prioritized the Marxist formulation of the population problem. They saw the problem as an "imbalance between economic and demographic growth", and wished to design a reasonable policy that considered the social consequences.[55] These scientists came from the fields of social science, statistics, genetics, history, and many others. However, they had limited access to resources compared to the natural scientists who became involved in population policy making in 1978.[56] Since population studies were forbidden from the 1950s until 1979, population science had made no progress during these two decades. [55]

Natural scientists

Natural scientists were interested in using control theory and applying it to the actual policy. The leader of the group, Song Jian, was a control theorist at the Ministry of Aerospace Industry. He was known for his career in missile science. Yu Jingyuan and Li Guangyuan were trained engineers in the field of cybernetics.[56] Compared to the social scientists, this group of natural scientists had numerous advantages. They were politically protected during the Maoist period due to their importance in national defense and technology. They also had access to Western science. Eventually, they took an important role in examining the population model as well as designing the details of one-child policies.[56] After quantitative research and analysis, they showed the top state leaders that the only solution would be a policy "to encourage all couples to have only one child, regardless of the costs to individuals and society".[56]

Although Greenhalgh claims that Song Jian was the central architect of the one-child policy and that he "hijacked" the population policy making process,[50] that claim has been refuted by several leading scholars, including Liang Zhongtang, a leading internal critic of one-child restrictions and an eye-witness at the discussions in Chengdu.[51] In the words of Wang et al., "the idea of the one-child policy came from leaders within the Party, not from scientists who offered evidence to support it."[52] Central officials had already decided in 1979 to advocate for one-child restrictions before knowing of Song's work and, upon learning of his work in 1980, already seemed sympathetic to his position.[53]

History

The one-child policy was originally designed to be a "One-Generation Policy".[54] It was enforced at the provincial level and enforcement varied; some provinces had more relaxed restrictions. The one-child limit was most strictly enforced in densely populated urban areas.[55] When this policy was first introduced, 6.1 million families that had already given birth to a child were given "One Child Honorary Certificates". This was a pledge they had to make to ensure they would not have more children.[56] Beginning in 1980, the official policy granted local officials the flexibility to make exceptions and allow second children in the case of "practical difficulties" (such as cases in which the father was a disabled serviceman) or when both parents were single children,[57] and some provinces had other exemptions worked into their policies as well. In most areas, families were allowed to apply to have a second child if their first-born was a daughter.[58][59] By 1984, only approximately 35.4% of the population fell within the policy's original restriction.[6]: 167 Furthermore, families with children with disabilities have different policies and families whose first child suffers from physical disability, mental illness, or intellectual disability were allowed to have more children.[60] However, second children were sometimes subject to birth spacing (usually three or four years). Children born overseas were not counted under the policy if they did not obtain Chinese citizenship. Chinese citizens returning from abroad were allowed to have a second child.[61] Sichuan province allowed exemptions for couples of certain backgrounds.[62] By one estimate there were at least 22 ways in which parents could qualify for exceptions to the law towards the end of the one-child policy's existence.[63]

In 1991, the central government made local governments directly responsible for family planning goals.[64]: 77 Also in the early 1990s, experts from leading population-research institutes began appealing to policymakers to relax or end the one-child policy.[64]: 79 As of 2007, only 36% of the population were subjected to a strict one-child limit. 53% were permitted to have a second child if their first was a daughter; 9.6% of Chinese couples were permitted two children regardless of their gender; and 1.6% – mainly Tibetans – had no limit at all.[65] The Danshan, Sichuan Province Nongchang Village people Public Affairs Bulletin Board in September 2005 noted that RMB 25,000 in social compensation fees were owed in 2005. Thus far 11,500 RMB had been collected, so another 13,500 RMB had to be collected.

Following the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, a new exception to the regulations was announced in Sichuan for parents who had lost children in the earthquake.[66][67] Similar exceptions had previously been made for parents of severely disabled or deceased children.[68] People have also tried to evade the policy by giving birth to a second child in Hong Kong, but at least for Guangdong residents, the one-child policy was also enforced if the birth took place in Hong Kong or abroad.[69] In accordance with China's affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-Han ethnic groups were subject to different laws and were usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas.[7] Han Chinese living in rural towns were also permitted to have two children.[70]

Because of couples such as these, as well as those who simply paid a fine (or "social maintenance fee") to have more children,[71] the overall fertility rate of mainland China was close to 1.4 children per woman as of 2011[update].[72] On 6 January 2010, the former National Population and Family Planning Commission issued the "national population development" 12th five-year plan.[73] On 1 January 2016, the one-child policy was replaced by the two-child policy.

Enforcement

The one-child policy was managed by the National Population and Family Planning Commission under the central government since 1981. The Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China and the National Population and Family Planning Commission were made defunct and a new single agency, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, took over national health and family planning policies in 2013. The agency reports to the State Council. The policy was enforced at the provincial level through contraception, abortion, and fines that were imposed based on the income of the family and other factors. In 1982, the central government published the Document 11, which allowed local governments to adjust birth-control policies based on their special situations. Then in 1984, the Document 7 went a step further and gave provinces huge rights to punish the people who gave extra births.[74] Since then, the enforcement started to be different across regions.

After 1989, the central government began to link local officials promotions to the outcomes of their local family planning situations. Between 1989 and 1992, 16 out of the 30 provinces started to ask fines, with the average amount increasing from a family's one year income to three years income. Officials who raise the amount of fines were usually more likely to get promoted in their career.[75] Population and Family Planning Commissions existed at every level of government to raise awareness and carry out registration and inspection work.[76][14] The fine was a so-called "social maintenance fee", the punishment for the families who had more than one child. According to the policy, families who violated the law created a burden on society. Therefore, social maintenance fees were to be used for the operation of the government.[77]

The 2019 documentary One Child Nation portrayed the experiences of enforcement, primarily focusing on rural China.[78] Enforcement of the One-Child Policy was more uneven in China. In urban areas, enforcement largely operated through workplace penalties. For instance, if a person was employed by state agencies or public institutions, he or she would face demotion or even dismissal if having additional children. In contrast, the enforcement in rural areas worked differently, and usually just punished them by fines. However, many rural areas continued to rely on sons for old-age caring, and at the same time, they could get economic incentive by agricultural reforms, so they treated these fines as a manageable cost and carried on giving birth.[79]

Financial

The Family Planning Policy was enforced through a financial penalty in the form of the "social child-raising fee", sometimes called a "family planning fine" in the West, which was collected as a fraction of either the annual disposable income of city dwellers or of the annual cash income of peasants, in the year of the child's birth.[80] For instance, in Guangdong, the fee was between three and six annual incomes for incomes below the district's per capita income, plus one to two times the annual income exceeding the average. Families were required to pay the fine.[81] However, the social maintenance fees actually maintained unclear. Authorities described them as "compensation for social resources" rather than fines, but the government never fully explained how the money was used. In 2013, a lawyer named We Youshui sent requests to all 31 provincial family planning agencies and asked for details about their fee collections during 2012. Only 24 agencies responded, but none of them said the details of how the money was spent. According to China's professional financial news media Caixin Global, the 24 provinces collected around 20 billion yuan, which roughly 3.3 billion US dollars in 2012 alone.[82]

The one-child policy was a tool for China to not only address overpopulation, but to also address poverty alleviation and increase social mobility by consolidating the combined inherited wealth of the two previous generations into the investment and success of one child instead of having these resources spread thinly across multiple children.[83] This theoretically allowed for a "demographic dividend" to be realized, increasing economic growth and increasing gross national income per capita.[84] If the family was not able to pay the "social child-raising fee", then their child would not be able to obtain a hukou, a legal registration document that was required in order to marry, attend state-funded schools, or to receive health care. Many who were unable to pay the fee never attempted to obtain their hukou for fear that the government would force extra fees upon them. Although some provinces had declared that payment of the "social child-raising fee" was not required to obtain a hukou, most provinces still required families to pay retroactive fines after registration.[85]

Contraception and sterilization

Propaganda slogan on a building at Yangxin County, Hubei, reading "an IUD after the first child, tubal ligation after the second" Since the 1970s, the intrauterine device (IUD) has been one of the most widely promoted and practiced forms of contraception. It was the primary alternative to sterilization. As directed, the IUD was medically implanted into women in their child-bearing years to prevent pregnancies (and thus births). In the 1980s, women either had to receive an IUD after giving birth to their first child, or the husband would have to undergo a vasectomy.[86] Between 1980 and 2014, 324 million Chinese women received IUDs and 108 million were sterilized.[13] By law, the IUD was placed four months after the delivery of the first child. It was only medically removed after permission to conceive is granted by the community based upon various laws and policies on childbirth quotas.[87] Despite this, some midwives illegally removed the device from their patients.[88] This led to IUD inspections, ensuring that the IUD remained in place.[89] Permanent legal removal of IUDs happens once a woman reaches menopause.[77] In 2016 as means of loosening restrictions and abolishing the one-child policy, the Chinese government now covers the price of IUD removals.[90]

The most widely used alternative to IUDs has been sterilization. As the leading form of contraception in China, sterilization has included both tubal ligation and vasectomy.[91] Starting in the early 1970s, massive sterilization campaigns swept across the country. Urban and rural birth planning and family planning services situated themselves in every community.[91] Cash payments or other material rewards and fines acted as incentives, increasing the number of participants.[87] Socially willing participants were considered role models in the community.[88] In 1983 mandatory sterilization occurred after the birth of the second or third child.[92] As the restrictions tightened a few years later, if a woman gave birth to two children, legally she had to be sterilized. Alternatively, in some cases her husband could be sterilized in her place. In other cases, sterilization of surplus children occurred.[93]

The degree of coercion is different across different provinces because the central government gave rights to local governments to carry out their policies accordingly. In some places, the enforcement was very aggressive, including forced abortions and even confiscating family property. In some other places, authorities relied more on financial penalties. This kind of harsh enforcement was especially common during 1983 and 1984. Though the central government called for an end to what was described as "coercive commandism," but the results still remained like the past and carried on differently from place to place. For example, the province Zhejiang was known as the harsh place to punish people who broke the rules, but Shanghai was relative lenient.[94][95] In the early years of the sterilization campaigns, abortion was a method of birth control highly encouraged by family planning.[77] With 55 percent of abortion recipients as repeat customers and the procedure easily accessible,[77] women had chosen to abort and had been forced to abort because of laws, social pressure, discovery of secret pregnancy, and community birth quotas.[87] In 1995, the People's Republic of China (PRC) warned against abortion as a means of family planning and as a contraceptive. Should an abortion be required, the woman was to have a safe procedure done by a registered physician.[93] Despite this, some women even in the 2000s chose or were encouraged to use traditional abortive products such as blister beetles, also known as Mylabris.[96] Women would ingest the toxins orally or by means of douching with the hopes of inducing abortion. An overdose could lead to death of the mother and fetus.[96] The efficacy of these products has been very low with a high mortality rate. The medical community and PRC have warned against use of these traditional methods.[77]

The priorities of individual families also played a role in the birth rate. Families debated the social and economic stability of the household prior to conception. Some families chose to follow the single-child limit due to varying social and economic factors such as marrying later, spacing out children, the cost of raising a child, the fines for having multiple children, birth control policies, and the accessibility of contraceptives.[77] In addition, those who violated the one-child policy could lose their jobs, their titles, a portion of medical insurance, and opportunities for higher education for the second child; they could also face sterilization and the labeling of the second child as a "black child".[87] All of the variables played an important role in couples' decisions on when to conceive, placing their social and economic situation above the desire to bear additional children.

Other examples of contraceptives have included the morning-after pill, birth control pills, and condoms. The morning-after pill has made up 70 percent of oral contraceptives in the Chinese market.[86] Only seven percent of Chinese women had shared that they use the pill and condom in combination.[90] The Chinese government promoted the use of IUDs and sterilization over the combined pill and condom because PRC authorities questioned the voluntary commitment of the public.[89] The Chinese government has distributed free condoms at medical clinics and health centers to adults with proof that they are 18 years of age or older. Additionally, the rate [clarification needed] and highly debated sexual education have increased awareness of sex and contraceptive measures among groups of China's young population, further lowering the birth rate.[86]

Evasion

Some couples paid fines to have a second or third child, and others would attempt to circumvent the policy by having non-pregnant friends take the mandatory blood tests.[97]

Propaganda

The National Family Planning committee developed the slogan Wan Xi Shao ('later, longer, and fewer'), which was first enacted in 1973 and was in effect until 1979.[105] This national idea encouraged later marriages and having fewer children. However, this policy was not effective at enforcing the developing ideal of having fewer children since it was such a new concept that had never been seen in other regions of the world.[106] The various problems that arose during its introduction were slowly addressed and it became progressively more targeted to corner women into limited control over their own bodies. The Wan Xi Shao slogan emerged during the 1970s as a response to China's rapid population growth, which was viewed as a major obstacle to the country's economic and social development.[98] This slogan encapsulated three key principles: marrying later (wan, 晚), spacing pregnancies farther apart (xi, 稀), and having fewer children (shao, 少)[99] and was emblematic of China's national campaign of mandatory birth planning. The Chinese government aimed to reduce population growth by promoting guidelines for birth control and family planning. The government believed that having fewer children and spacing births more adequately would allow families to allocate more resources per child, resulting in better health and education outcomes for children. The policy aimed to achieve this by allowing parents more time and resources to invest in each child's health and education, as they would have fewer children to care for.[100]

The "later, longer, fewer" campaign was later replaced by the one-child policy.[98] According to Whyte and colleagues, many of the coercive techniques that became notorious after the one-child policy was launched actually date from this campaign in the 1970s.[99] During the campaign, the state bureaucracy was in charge of enforcing birth control and oversaw birth-planning workers in every village, urban work unit, and neighborhood. These workers kept detailed records on women of child-bearing age, including past births, contraceptive usage, and menstrual cycles, often becoming "menstrual monitors" to detect out-of-quota pregnancies. In some factories, there were quotas for reproduction, and women who did not receive a birth allotment were not supposed to get pregnant.[99]

Women who became pregnant without permission were harassed to get an abortion, with pressure also put on their husbands and other family members. Families were threatened that, if they persisted in having an over-quota birth, the baby would be denied household registration, which would mean denial of ration coupons, schooling, and other essential benefits that depended upon registration. In rural areas, women who gave birth to a third child were pressured to get sterilized or have IUDs inserted, while urban women were trusted to continue using effective contraception until they were no longer fertile.[99] Official statistics show that birth control operations, including abortions, IUD insertions, and sterilizations, increased sharply during the 1970s in association with the campaign to enforce birth limits. These drastic increases in birth-control operations suggest that highly coercive birth planning enforcement was already prevalent in both rural and urban areas, preceding the launch of the one-child policy.[101] However, during the 1970s, the Chinese government was still concerned that the Wan Xi Shao policy would not reduce the growing population sufficiently. They felt the population would grow too fast to be supported, and a one-child policy for all families was introduced in 1979.[102]

Many of the tactics used by the government were reflected in the day-to-day life of the average Chinese citizen. Since the Chinese government could not outright force its inhabitants to follow strict policy orders, the government developed strategies to encourage and promote individuals to take on this responsibility themselves. A common technique was placing an emphasis on family bonds and how having one child per family would increase emotional ties in parent-offspring relationships as well as extended family giving all their attention to fewer children.[112] While the message of population reduction was urgent and required immediate attention, it was more important for the government to stop conception and new pregnancies.

The Family Planning Commission spread propaganda by placing pictures and images on everyday items.[113] Aside from signs and posters on billboards, advertisements were placed on postage stamps, milk cartons, food products and many other household items to promote the benefits of having one child. Propaganda took many forms throughout the one-child policy era and was able to target a wide range of age demographics. Children born in this time period spent most of their lives being exposed to the new expectations placed on them by society. Educational programs were also encouraged to promote one-child policy expectations. Many young teenagers were required to read Renkou Jiayu (1981), which emphasized the importance of family planning and birth control measures that would ensure the stability of the nation.[114] Younger generations became the main target audience for much of the propaganda as the one-child policy continued, since they made up a large portion of the population that would contribute to continued growth if no policy was put in place.[115]

The one-child campaign extensively used propaganda posters. The aim of the posters was to promote the policy, encourage compliance, and emphasize the benefits of having fewer children. Many of the posters were educational in nature, paying attention to reproduction, sexuality, and conception. They were produced by various government departments, ranging from ministries of health to local population policy centers.[103] To convey the idea that couples should only have one child, the one-child campaign utilized traditional visual elements from nianhua (New Year prints) that were popular among the people. Traditionally, these prints employ visual symbols to convey good wishes for the coming new year. In the prints, young children often have been portrayed with pink, chubby cheeks to symbolize the success of family reproduction and a hopeful future.[104] [better source needed] Even without slogans, these pictures were effective in establishing a link between luck and prosperity associated with the New Year and the one-child policy.

Traditional elements like chubby, healthy-looking babies resonated with people – making them believe that compliance with the policy would yield luck, good fortune, and healthy offspring. As the one-child campaign progressed, the policy was linked to national development and wealth. It was considered directly linked to the success of the policy of modernization and reform.[105] By promoting the one-child policy on a daily basis, the government was able to convince the people that it was their duty to fulfill this nationalistic pride. Once the idea and initial steps of this policy were introduced into society, it was regulated by local policy enforcers until it became an internal obligation the community accepted for the greater good of maintaining a nation. In many cases, health centers encouraged the idea of reducing the risks of pregnancy by distributing various forms of contraceptives at no cost, which made protected sex more common than unprotected sex.[114]

Material incentives

Couples who only had one child received healthcare subsidies (baojian fei), retirement funds, and larger grain allowances.[6]: 186

Relaxation

In 2013, Deputy Director Wang Peian of the National Health and Family Planning Commission said that "China's population will not grow substantially in the short term."[106] A survey by the commission found that only about half of eligible couples wish to have two children, mostly because of the cost of living impact of a second child.[107] In November 2013, following the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China announced the decision to relax the one-child policy. Under the new policy, families could have two children if one parent, rather than both parents, was an only child.[108][109] This mainly applied to urban couples, since there were very few rural, only children due to long-standing exceptions to the policy for rural couples.[110] Zhejiang, one of the most affluent provinces, became the first area to implement this "relaxed policy" in January 2014,[111] and 29 out of the 31 provinces had implemented it by July 2014,[112] with the exceptions of Xinjiang and Tibet. Under this policy, approximately 11 million couples in China were allowed to have a second child; however, only "nearly one million" couples applied to have a second child in 2014,[113] less than half the expected number of 2 million per year.[112] By May 2014, 241,000 out of 271,000 applications had been approved. Officials of China's National Health and Family Planning Commission claimed that this outcome was expected, and that the "second-child policy" would continue progressing with a good start.[114]

Abolition

See also: Two-child policy § China

In October 2015, the Chinese news agency Xinhua[115] announced the government's plans to abolish the one-child policy, now allowing all families to have two children, citing a communiqué issued by the CCP "to improve the balanced development of population" – an apparent reference to the country's female-to-male sex ratio – and to deal with an aging population.[47][116] The new law took effect on 1 January 2016 after it was passed in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on 27 December 2015.[117][118][119] The rationale for the abolition was summarized by former Wall Street Journal reporter Mei Fong: "The reason China is doing this right now is because they have too many men, too many old people, and too few young people. They have this huge crushing demographic crisis as a result of the one-child policy.

And if people don't start having more children, they're going to have a vastly diminished workforce to support a huge aging population."[120] China's ratio is about five working adults to one retiree; the huge retiree community must be supported, and that will dampen future growth, according to Fong. Since the citizens of China are living longer and having fewer children, the growth of the population imbalance is expected to continue. A United Nations projection forecast that "China will lose 67 million working-age people by 2030, while simultaneously doubling the number of elderly. That could put immense pressure on the economy and government resources."[47] The longer-term outlook is also pessimistic, based on an estimate by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, revealed by Cai Fang, deputy director. "By 2050, one-third of the country will be aged 60 years or older, and there will be fewer workers supporting each retired person."[121]

Although many critics of China's reproductive restrictions approved of the policy's abolition, Amnesty International said that the move to the two-child policy would not end forced sterilizations, forced abortions, or government control over birth permits.[122][123] Others had also stated that the abolition was not a sign of the relaxation of authoritarian control in China. A reporter for CNN said, "It was not a sign that the party will suddenly start respecting personal freedoms more than it has in the past. No, this is a case of the party adjusting policy to conditions. [...] The new policy, raising the limit to two children per couple, preserves the state's role."[124][125] The abolition having a significant benefit was uncertain, as a CBC News analysis indicated: "Repealing the one-child policy may not spur a huge baby boom, however, in part because fertility rates are believed to be declining even without the policy's enforcement. Previous easings of the one-child policy have spurred fewer births than expected, and many people among China's younger generations see smaller family sizes as ideal."[47][126] The CNN reporter added that China's new prosperity was also a factor in the declining[121] birth rate, saying, "Couples naturally decide to have fewer children as they move from the fields into the cities, become more educated, and when women establish careers outside the home."[124]

The Chinese government had expected the abolition of the one-child rule would lead to an increase in births to about 21.9 million births in 2018. The actual number of births was 15.2 million – the lowest birth rate since 1961.[127] On 31 May 2021, China's government relaxed restrictions even more, allowing women up to three children.[128][129][130][131] This change was brought about mainly due to the declining birth rate and population growth. Although the Chinese government was trying to spark new growth in the population, some experts did not think it would be enough.[132] Many called for the government to remove the limit altogether, though most women and couples already had adopted the idea that one child is enough and to have more is not in their best interest. Because of this new belief, the population would be likely to keep declining, which could have tragic repercussions for China in the coming decades.

All restrictions were lifted on 26 July 2021, thus allowing Chinese couples to have any number of children.[9] In 2022, the number of births in China hit another record low of 9.56 million births,[133] the first time the number had dipped below 10 million since the late 1940s according to China Daily.[134] 9.02 million births took place in 2023.[135][136] Falling numbers of women of childbearing age and reluctance of young women to have children had reduced the China's fertility rate to close to 1.0 by 2024 (a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed for a stable population).[137] A study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia forecast China's population would be 525 million in 2100 compared to 1.4 billion in 2024.[136] In September 2024 China announced the retirement age would be raised as from January 2025 as there were too few young people and a growing senior population.[138]

Public responses

In addition to stories of resistance to the policy and official reasons for support such as strengthening China, academic Sarah Mellors Rodriguez describes a surprising number of accounts from her fieldwork in which interviewees fully supported the mandate for personal reasons.[6]: 186 According to Mellors Rodriguez, for some couples the policy affirmed their own personal beliefs that having smaller families was wiser and more economical.[6]: 186–187

Urban responses

China's urban population generally accepted the policy, given the already crowded circumstances and shortage of housing in cities.[139]: 175 Incentives offered by the state were also effective to make the urban population compliant with the newly introduced family planning. Families that signed the single-child pledge and met the requirements of having only one child were given access to housing and daycare, while non-compliant ones would receive penalties. Examples are obstructing the parents' careers and delaying the payment of their salaries.[140] In her fieldwork interviews, Mellors Rodriguez found that middle income urbanites were more receptive to the limitations of the policy because they generally believed that having one child and providing them with all possible opportunities was more important than having additional heirs.[6]: 169 Long-term urban residents also reported that supporting multiple children was expensive and burdensome.[6]: 169

Rural responses

The rural population was more resistant to the policy[6]: 187 and variations upon the policy were permitted. Mothers of a daughter in several rural provinces were allowed to have a single additional child (a "1.5-child" policy) and families in remote areas a second or third child.[154] After collective co-ops were dismantled and decollectivization took place, children became more valued by their parents, as a source of agricultural production, and as a source of the care required by aging parents. Due to the inherently patrilocal nature of marriage, it was expected that daughters would leave their parents and contribute labor to their husbands' households. The consequent preference for sons came into conflict with the one-child policy and government enforcement of this policy.[141]

Coercive enforcement measures were taken, and included abortions of "over-quota" pregnancies, and sterilization of women. This led to a series of physical conflicts with the government cadres who were assigned to enforce the policy in a specific rural area. Rural families wished to add sons to their families in order to contribute to agricultural production.[141] But the cadres came on the way in conflict with them. Many cadres were middle-aged women who went through the collective period when childbearing was encouraged. They experienced continuous childbearing, and so were strongly supportive of the one-child policy. When these two distinct groups disapproved of each other, conflicts came. More than that, rural families that were desperate to have a son would abuse women who could not give birth to one. They also abandoned infant girls and even engaged in infanticide. As a result, societal relationships were tense within families and also between the cadres and people.[141]

Since the 1990s, rural policy violations decreased sharply.[6]: 193 Anthropologist Yan Yunxiang attributes this decrease to greater acceptance of family planning among the new generation of parents, as well as their increased prioritization of material comforts and individual happiness.[6]: 193

Effects

Population

Below are the results of the first three National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (中华 人民共和国全国人口普查). The first two censuses date back to the 1950s and 1960s, and the last one in the 1980s. They were conducted in 1953, 1964, and 1982 respectively.[142] 1st Census (1953)[143] 2nd Census (1964)[144] 3rd Census (1982)[145] Total population 601,938,035 723,070,269 1,031,882,511 Male population (proportion of total) 297,553,518 (51.82%) 356,517,011 (51.33%) 519,433,369 (51.5%) Female population (proportion of total) 276,652,422 (48.18%) 338,064,748 (48.67%) 488,741,919 (48.5%) Below are the results of population investigation after the implementation of one-child policy.

4th Census (1990)[146] 2005 Population Sample Survey (2005年全国1%人口抽样调 查)[147] 6th Census (2010)[148] Total population 1,160,017,381 1,306,280,000 1,370,536,875 Male population (proportion of total) 584,949,922 (51.6%) 673,090,000 (51.53%) 686,852,572 (51.27% ) Female population (proportion of total) 548,732,579 (48.4%) 633,190,000 (48.47%) 652,872,280 (48.73%)

Fertility reduction

The progression of China's population pyramid, International Futures

Further information: Demographics of China and Demographic transition

The total fertility rate in China continued its fall from 2.8 births per woman in 1979 (already a sharp reduction from more than five births per woman in the early 1970s) to 1.5 by the mid-1990s. Some scholars claim that this decline is similar to that observed in other places that had no one-child restrictions, such as Thailand as well as the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, a claim designed to support the argument that China's fertility might have fallen to such levels anyway without draconian fertility restrictions.[52][149][150][151] According to a 2017 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, "the one-child policy accelerated the already-occurring drop in fertility for a few years, but in the longer term, economic development played a more fundamental role in leading to and maintaining China's low fertility level".[152] However, a more recent study found that China's fertility decline to very low levels by the mid-1990s was far more extensive given its lower level of socio-economic development at that time;[153] even after taking rapid economic development into account, China's fertility restrictions likely averted over 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, with the portion caused by one-child restrictions possibly totaling 400 million.[154] Fertility restrictions also had unintended consequences such as a deficit of 40 million female babies, most of which was due to sex-selective abortion,[155] and the accelerated aging of China's population.[156][157]

Disparity in sex ratio at birth

The sex ratio at birth in People's Republic of China, males per 100 females, 1980–2010.

Further information: Missing women and Missing women of China

The sex ratio of a newborn infant (between male and female births) in mainland China reached 117:100, and stabilized between 2000 and 2013, about 10% higher than the baseline, which ranges between 103:100 and 107:100. It had risen from 108:100 in 1981—at the boundary of the natural baseline—to 111:100 in 1990.[158] According to a report by the National Population and Family Planning Commission, there would be 30 million more men than women in 2020, potentially leading to social instability, and courtship-motivated emigration.[159] The estimate of 30 million cited for the sex disparity, however, may have been very exaggerated, as birth statistics have been skewed by late registrations and unreported births: for instance, researchers have found that census statistics for women in later stages of life do not match the birth statistics.[160][161] The disparity in the gender ratio at birth increased dramatically after the first birth, for which the ratios remained steadily within the natural baseline over the 20-year interval between 1980 and 1999. Thus, a large majority of couples appeared to accept the outcome of the first pregnancy, whether it was a boy or a girl. If the first child was a girl, and they were able to have a second child, then a couple may have taken extraordinary steps to assure that the second child was a boy. If a couple already had two or more boys, the sex ratio of higher parity births swung decidedly in a feminine direction. This demographic evidence indicates that while families highly valued having male offspring, a secondary norm of having a girl or having some balance in the sexes of children often came into play. Yi Zeng (1993) reported a study based on the 1990 census in which they found sex ratios of just 65 or 70 boys per 100 girls for births in families that already had two or more boys.[162] A study by Anderson & Silver (1995) found a similar pattern among both Han and non-Han nationalities in Xinjiang Province: a strong preference for girls in high parity births in families that had already borne two or more boys.[163] This tendency to favour girls in high-parity [clarification needed] births to couples who had already borne sons was later also noted by Coale and Banister, who suggested as well that once a couple had achieved its goal for the number of males, it was also much more likely to engage in "stopping behavior", i.e., to stop having more children.[164]

The long-term disparity led to a significant gender imbalance or skewing of the sex ratio. As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2015, China had between 32 million and 36 million more males than would be expected naturally, and this led to social problems. "Because of a traditional preference for baby boys over girls, the one-child policy is often cited as the cause of China's skewed sex ratio [...] Even the government acknowledges the problem and has expressed concern about the tens of millions of young men who won't be able to find brides and may turn to kidnapping women, sex trafficking, other forms of crime or social unrest."[47] The situation was not expected improve in the near future. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there would be 24 million more men than women of marriageable age by 2020.[165]

As the gender gap became more prominent due to the preference of male children over female children, policy enforcers shifted their attention to promoting the benefits that came with having daughters. In rural, isolated regions of China, the government provided families with a daughter more access to education and other resources such as job opportunities to parents in order to encourage the idea that having a daughter also has a positive impact on the family.[180] In December 2016, researchers at the University of Kansas reported that the sex disparity in China was likely exaggerated due to administrative under-reporting and delayed registration of females, rather than abortion and infanticide. The finding concluded that as many as 10 to 15 million missing women had not been properly registered at birth since 1982.[166][167] The study found that the sex ratios of age groups during the one-child policy were similar to those born in the period without the single-child policy. The study also found significant amounts of females appear after the age of ten due to late registration across different age groups.[168] The reason for under-reporting was attributed to families trying to avoid penalties when girls are born and local government concealing the lack of enforcement from the central government. This implied that the sex disparity of the Chinese newborns was likely exaggerated significantly in previous analyses.[168] Though the degree of data discrepancy, the challenge in relation to the sex-ratio imbalance in China is still disputed among scholars.[169][170][171]

Education

The one-child policy has been a factor in China's rapid increase in higher educational attainment.[29]: 59 Research shows that a stricter fertility policy would induce higher female educational achievement.[16] Prior to the one-child policy, roughly 30% of women attended higher education, whereas between 1990 and 1992, 50 percent of students in higher education were women. The higher participation rate of women in education could be attributed to the lack of male siblings. As a result, families invested in their single female child.[172] Several studies conclude that girls on average received more years of schooling thanks to the one child policy.[29]: 69

Adoption and abandonment

A roadside sign in rural Sichuan: "It is forbidden to discriminate against, abuse or abandon baby girls." The one-child policy prompted the growth of orphanages in the 1980s.[173] For parents who had "unauthorized" births, or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up their child for adoption was a strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. Many orphanages witnessed an influx of baby girls, as families would abandon them in favor of having a male child.[15] Many families also kept their illegal children hidden so that they would not be punished by the government.[174] In fact, "out adoption" was not uncommon in China even before birth planning. In the 1980s, adoptions of daughters accounted for slightly above half of the so-called "missing girls", as out-adopted daughters often went unreported in censuses and surveys, while adoptive parents were not penalized for violating the birth quota.[175]

However, in 1991, a central decree attempted to close off this loophole by raising penalties and levying them on any household that had an "unauthorized" child, including those which had adopted children.[174] This closing of the adoption loophole resulted in the abandonment of some two million Chinese children, most of whom were daughters;[153] many of these children ended up in orphanages, with approximately 120,000 of them being adopted by parents from abroad. The peak wave of abandonment occurred in the 1990s, with a smaller wave after 2000.[174] Around the same time, poor care and high mortality rates in some state orphanages generated intense international pressure for reform.[176][177] After 2005, the number of international adoptions declined, due both to falling birth rates and the related increase in demand for adoptions by Chinese parents themselves. In an interview with National Public Radio on 30 October 2015, Adam Pertman, president and CEO of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency,[178] indicated that "the infant girls of yesteryear have not been available, if you will, for five, seven years. China has been ... trying to keep the girls within the country ... And the consequence is that, today, rather than those young girls who used to be available – primarily girls – today, it's older children, children with special needs, children in sibling groups. It's very, very different."[179]

Transnational adoption

See also: International adoption § China

In April 1992, China implemented laws that enabled foreigners to adopt their orphan children, with the number of children each orphanage could offer for international adoption being limited by the China Center of Adoption Affairs. That same year, 206 children were adopted to the United States, according to the U.S. State Department.[180] Since then, the demand for healthy infant girls increased and transnational adoption increased rapidly. In accordance with this high demand, China began defining more restrictions on foreign adoption, including limitations on applicant's age, marital status, mental and physical health, income, family size, and education.[180] According to the U.S. State Department, there have been over 80,000 international adoptions from China since international adoptions were implemented.

As the flow of foreigners adopting from China increased, so did illicit adoption practices. Families in China that did not or could not keep their child would often be subject to abandonment or infanticide. Abandoned babies often found themselves in orphanages, ready to be adopted. This also made it easy for governments to engage in the trafficking of children. In the years between 2002 and 2005, officials in Hunan and Guangdong provinces profited from the buying and trafficking of approximately 1,000 abducted babies for international adoption.[180] In 2024, China ended its international adoption programme. With the exception of blood relatives, transnational adoption has since ceased.[181]

Twins

Since there were no penalties for multiple births,[29]: 58 it was believed that an increasing number of couples were turning to fertility medicine to induce the conception of twins. According to a 2006 China Daily report, the number of twins born per year was estimated to have doubled. [timeframe?][182] A 2016 study concluded that the increase in the policy fine of one year's income is associated with an increase in twin births by approximately 0.07 per 1,000 births, indicating that at least one-third of the increase in twins since the 1970s could be explained by the one-child policy.[183]

Quality of life for women

The increase in the number of only-child girls resulted in gradual changes in social norms regarding gender, including a decrease in the inequalities between women and men.[184]: 66 The one-child policy's limit on the number of children resulted in new mothers having more resources to start investing money in their own well-being. As a result of being an only child, women had increased opportunities to receive an education and support to get better jobs. One side effect of the one-child policy was the liberation of women from the significant duties of taking care of many children and the family in the past; instead, women have had more time for themselves to pursue their career or hobbies.

The other major side effect of the policy was that the traditional concepts of gender roles between men and women have weakened. Being one and the only "chance" the parents have, women have been expected to compete with peer men for better educational resources or career opportunities. Especially in cities where the one-child policy was much more regulated and enforced, expectations for women to succeed in life are no less than for men. Recent [when?] data has shown that the proportion of women attending college is higher than that of men. The policy also had a positive effect at 10 to 19 years of age on the likelihood of completing senior high school in women of Han ethnicity.

At the same time, the one-child policy reduced the economic burden for each family. The average conditions for each family improved. As a result, women also have had much more freedom within the family. They have been supported by family to pursue life achievements.[185] Mothers who complied with the policy were able to have longer maternity leave periods as long as they were older than 24.[186] The government encouraged couples to start family planning at an older age. Since many of these women were employed, the incentive to have later births was to provide paid leave as long as they followed the expectation of having one child. However, if they happened to have a second pregnancy they were stripped of their privileges and were not given the same resources compared to their first birth. During this time period [when?], another shift in attitude towards women was the harsh punishment they would receive if they acted against the newly established policy. In areas such as Shanghai, women faced similar punishments as men, while before the Revolution they tended to have more lenient penalties.[202]

Women's experiences of the one-child policy shaped their perceptions of it, both of which have been studied extensively by researchers. These studies have revealed a variety of perspectives. While some women viewed the policy as beneficial, particularly in terms of providing better educational and employment opportunities for their children, others experienced significant negative effects, including gender-based discrimination, psychological distress, and social stigma as a byproduct of the policy. One study by Greenhalgh et al. (2005) found that many urban women in China perceived the one-child policy as positive, as it allowed them to have greater control over their reproductive health and career trajectories. These women also valued the educational and economic opportunities afforded to their single child, which were seen as providing a pathway out of poverty and towards upward mobility.[16] However, the same study also found that women's perceptions of the one-child policy were heavily influenced by their social and economic circumstances. For example, women who were unable to afford the fines associated with violating the policy were more likely to form negative perceptions, as were women who faced pressure from their families to have a male child.[105] Another study by Poston and Glover (2005) found that women in rural China were more likely to view the policy as negative. These women reported experiencing significant pressure to have a male child, and those who were unable to do so faced social stigma and discrimination.[187] The distress and pressure to bear a son inflicted on women through marriage, family, and career expectations made Chinese women more likely than men to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and to commit suicide, contrary to the rates observed in Western countries.[188] In addition, women who violated the policy by having a second child were subject to fines, job loss, and other penalties, which could have significant economic and social consequences.[187]

A study by Mosher (2012) found that women who underwent forced abortions or sterilizations as a result of the one-child policy experienced significant psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, and trauma.[189] These women reported feeling violated and traumatized by the forced abortions and sterilizations that occurred as a byproduct of the one-child policy. Such experiences could have long-lasting effects on their mental health and wellbeing.[189] Taken together, these studies suggest that women's diverse perceptions of the one-child policy were based on their individual experiences with it. These experiences were heavily dependent on women's social and economic circumstances, which led to varied perceptions and attitudes on the policy. While some women perceived it as positive, particularly in urban areas, others experienced significant negative effects, including psychological distress and social stigma. The divorce risk was 43% higher for one-girl couples than one-boy couples in rural China during the 2000s, a disparity not found among urban couples who were under less extreme pressure to bear a son.[190] Parents, especially mothers, had to hide pregnancy and birth under great duress, often fleeing from one village to another or from the country to towns. Mothers during both pregnancy and delivery had to stay away from public facilities of maternal and infant health care.[191]

Healthcare improvements

The one-child policy contributed to China's decrease in maternal and child mortality.[184]: 66 It is reported that the focus of China on population planning has helped to provide better healthcare for women and a reduction in the risks of death and injury associated with pregnancy. Women and children were eligible for preferential hospital treatment. At family planning offices, women received free contraception and prenatal classes that contributed to the policy's success in two respects. First, the average Chinese household has expended fewer resources, both in terms of time and money, on children, giving many more money to invest. Second, since Chinese adults would no longer rely on children to care for them in their old age, there has been an impetus to save money for the future.[192]

"Four-two-one" problem

A government sign in Tangshan Township: "For a prosperous, powerful nation and a happy family, please practice family planning." As the first generation of legally enforced only-children came of age to become parents themselves, one adult child was left with having to provide support for their two parents and four grandparents.[193][194] Called the "4-2-1 Problem", this leaves the older generations with increased chances of dependency on retirement funds or charity in order to receive support. If not for personal savings, pensions or state welfare, most senior citizens would be left entirely dependent upon their very small family or neighbours for assistance. If for any reason, the single child is unable to care for their older adult relatives, the oldest generations would face a lack of resources and necessities. In response to such an issue, by 2007, all provinces in the nation except Henan had adopted a new policy allowing couples to have two children if both parents were only children themselves;[195] [failed verification][196] Henan followed in 2011.[197]

Impact on elder care

China's one-child policy had significant implications for many aspects of Chinese society, including care for elderly populations. In "Gender and elder care in China: the influence of filial piety and structural constraints," authors Zhan and Montgomery suggest that the decline of traditional family support networks began with the establishment of work units in the socialist period.[198] These collectives were meant to offer healthcare and housing to their workers. With the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, many of the work units dissolved, leaving many elderly workers without the social support they once had.[198] This was exacerbated by the one-child policy because many families now only had one child to care for elderly parents, leading to increased pressure and responsibility for the sole caregiver.[198]

According to a study by Gustafson (2014), the one-child policy has led to a significant decrease in the availability of family caregivers for the elderly in China.[199] So, tens of millions of retirees now only have one child to rely on for care. This has led to an "inverted pyramid", in which two sets of elderly parents must rely on a single married couple of two adult children (each of whom is an only child with no siblings), who in turn have produced a single child on whom the family must eventually rely on in the next generation. The one-child policy in China has had a significant impact on filial piety and elder care. Filial piety is a traditional Confucian value that emphasizes respect, obedience, and care for one's parents and elders.[200]

However, the one-child policy has led to a smaller pool of potential caregivers for elderly parents, and has also contributed to a shift in attitudes toward elder care.[201][202] One study found that the one-child policy has led to a decline in filial piety in China, as fewer children are responsible for caring for their elderly parents. The study also found that the one-child policy has led to a shift in the responsibility for elder care from the family to the state.[202] For example, Feng argued in 2010 that the Chinese government had increased efforts to build residential elder care services by actively promoting the construction of senior housing, homes for the aged, and nursing homes.[202] This included government-sponsored subsidies to spur construction and operation of new facilities.[202] The Virtual Elder Care Home [clarification needed] has gained popularity, which features home-care agencies providing a wide range of personal care and homemaker services in elders' homes.[202] Services are initiated by phone calls to a local government-sponsored information and service center, which then directs a qualified service provider to the elder's home. Participating providers contract with the local government and are reimbursed for services purchased by the government on behalf of eligible care recipients.[202] While these programs are mainly centered in urban areas, current policy directives in rural areas favor institutions by encouraging "centralized support and care" in rural homes that are run and subsidized by the local government.[202] For rural elders who do not have the option to turn to residential facilities, many have resorted to signing a "family support agreement" contract with adult children to ensure needed support and care.[202]

Furthermore, another study found that the one-child policy has had a significant impact on the quality of elder care in China, with many elderly parents reporting feeling neglected and abandoned by their adult children. This is due to a lack of resources and support from the younger generation.[203]

Unregistered children

Further information: Heihaizi

Heihaizi (Chinese: 黑孩子; pinyin: hēiháizi) or 'black child' is a term denoting children born outside the one-child policy, or generally children who are not registered in the Chinese national household registration system. Being excluded from the family register means they do not possess a hukou, which is "an identifying document, similar in some ways to the American social security card".[204] In this respect they do not legally exist and as a result cannot access most public services, such as education and health care, and do not receive protection under the law.[205][206][207] According to China's 2010 census, about 13 million people were living without official registration.[208]

A 2004 investigation in one China province shows that, 70%-80% of the 530,000 unregistered children are girls.[208] In December 2015, the government announced that approximately 13 million heihaizi would be allowed to obtain a hukou, and in January 2016, a State Council directive instructed local authorities to register children born outside family planning.[209]

Potential social problems & "little emperor" phenomenon

See also: Shidu (bereavement)

In urban areas especially, a byproduct of the one-child policy has been changing family dynamics. Traditionally, grandparents had been the focal point of the family in China: they were adored by all family members, and were the ones who exercised decision-making in the day-to-day life of the family.[210] Feng suggests that the implementation of the one-child policy and the resulting numbers of one-child families have greatly reduced the multigenerational family form and has weakened the central position of elders in the family.[210] Feng also suggests that the one-child policy has caused parents to spend less leisure time alone, and more leisure time with their children. Feng writes, "[t]he children tend to rely more so on their parents as companions and to participate together in recreational activities." He continues, "[t]his has promoted an equality in the parent-child relationship and has restricted to a certain extent the interactions of children with others."[210] In the one-child family, the core is the parent-child relationship and research suggests that the husband-wife relationship has been less emphasized and cultivated as a result.[211] In China, the one-child policy has been associated with the term "little emperor", which describes the perceived effects of parents focusing their attention exclusively on their only child. The term gained popularity as a way to suggest that only children may become "spoiled brats" due to the excess attention they receive from their parents.[210]

A study by Cameron and colleagues explored this phenomenon, finding that the one-child policy had behavioral impacts on only children. The authors tested Beijing youths born in several birth cohorts just before and just after the launch of the one-child policy using economic games designed to detect differences in desirable social behaviors like trust and altruism. The study found that only children in China were more likely to exhibit narcissistic and selfish behavior compared to those with siblings.[212] The study also found that only children had higher levels of academic achievement, but lower levels of social competence and empathy.[212] Overall, these findings suggest that the one-child policy had unintended social and psychological consequences that may have lasting effects on Chinese society as a whole.

Other scholarship supports that the "little emperor" phenomenon does exist. Jiao and colleagues compared children between the ages of four and ten from urban and suburban areas of Beijing using peer ratings of cooperativeness, leadership, and other desirable traits. When they analyzed a matched sample of only children and children with siblings from similar backgrounds, they reported constant patterns in which the only children were rated less positively.[213] However, researchers Chen and Jin outline some of the arguably positive byproducts of this "little emperor" phenomenon. They suggest that, since only children receive more attention and resources from their parents, it can lead to improved academic performance and overall success in life.[203]

With the first generation of children born under the policy (which initially became a requirement for most couples with first children born starting in 1979 and extending into the 1980s) reaching adulthood, such worries were reduced.[214] Toni Falbo, a professor of educational psychology and sociology at the University of Texas at Austin came to the conclusion that no measurable differences exist in terms of sociability and characterization between singleton children and multi-sibling children except that single children scored higher on intelligence and achievement – due to a lack of "dilution of resources".[215] Some 30 delegates called on the government in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in March 2007 to abolish the one-child rule, citing "social problems and personality disorders in young people". One statement read, "It is not healthy for children to play only with their parents and be spoiled by them: it is not right to limit the number to two children per family, either."[216] The proposal was prepared by Ye Tingfang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who suggested that the government at least restore the previous rule that allowed couples to have up to two children. According to a scholar, "The one-child limit is too extreme. It violates nature's law and, in the long run, this will lead to mother nature's revenge."[216][217]

Birth tourism

Reports surfaced of Chinese women giving birth to their second child overseas, a practice known as birth tourism. Many went to Hong Kong, which was exempt from the one-child policy. Likewise, a Hong Kong passport differs from China's mainland passport by providing additional advantages. [example needed] Recently [when?] though, the Hong Kong government has drastically reduced the quota of births set for non-local women in public hospitals. As the United States practices birthright citizenship, all children born in the US automatically have US citizenship at birth. The closest US location from China is Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US dependency in the western Pacific Ocean that generally allows Chinese citizens to visit for 14 days without requiring a visa. As of 2012, the Northern Mariana Islands were experiencing an increase in births by Chinese citizens because birth tourism there had become cheaper than in Hong Kong. This option is used by relatively affluent Chinese who may want their children to have the option of living in the US as adults.[218][219]

Sex-selective abortion

Due to the preference in rural Chinese society to give birth to a son,[220] prenatal sex discernment and sex-selective abortions are illegal in China.[221] It is often argued as one of the key factors in the imbalanced sex ratio in China, as excess female infant mortality and under-reporting of female births cannot solely explain this gender disparity.[222] Researchers found that the gender of the firstborn child in rural parts of China impacted whether or not the mother would seek an ultrasound for the second child. 40% of women with a firstborn son sought an ultrasound for their second pregnancy, versus 70% of women with firstborn daughters. This represented a desire for women to have a son if one had not yet been born.[221] In response to this, the Chinese government made sex-selective abortions illegal in 2005.[221]

In China, male children have always been favored over female children. With the one-child policy in place, many parents often chose abortions to meet the one-child standard as well as for the satisfaction of having a male son.[239] Male offspring were preferred in rural areas to ensure parents' security in their old age since daughters were expected to marry and support their husbands' family. A common saying in rural areas was Yang'er Fang Lao, which translates to 'rear a son for your old age'.[223] After the initial forced sterilization and abortion campaign in 1983, citizens of urban areas in China disagreed with the standards being placed on them by the government and having complete disregard for basic human rights.[241] This led to the Chinese government straying away from the forced sterilization processes in attempts to encourage civilian compliance.

Savings rate

The one-child policy has been a factor behind China's high urban household savings rate.[29]: 59

Criticism

This "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help integrate negative information into other sections or remove undue focus on minor criticisms and controversies. (July 2023) The policy was controversial outside China for many reasons, including accusations of human rights abuses in the implementation of the policy, as well as concerns about negative social consequences.[2]

Statement of the effect of the policy on birth reduction

The Chinese government, quoting Zhai Zhenwu, director of Renmin University's School of Sociology and Population in Beijing, estimates that 400 million births were prevented by the one-child policy as of 2011, while some demographers challenge that number, putting the figure at perhaps half that level, according to CNN. Zhai clarified that the 400 million estimate referred not just to the one-child policy, but includes births prevented by predecessor policies implemented one decade before, stating that "there are many different numbers out there but it doesn't change the basic fact that the policy prevented a really large number of births".[17]

This claim is disputed by Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, and Cai Yong from the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[17] Wang argues that "Thailand and China have had almost identical fertility trajectories since the mid 1980s", and "Thailand does not have a one-child policy".[17] China's Health Ministry has also disclosed that at least 336 million abortions were performed on account of the policy.[224] According to a report by the US embassy, scholarship published by Chinese scholars and their presentations at the October 1997 Beijing conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population seemed to suggest that market-based incentives or increasing voluntariness is not morally better but that it is, in the end, more effective.[225] In 1988, Zeng Yi and Professor T. Paul Schultz of Yale University discussed the effect of the transformation to the market on Chinese fertility, arguing that the introduction of the contract responsibility system in agriculture during the early 1980s weakened family planning controls during that period.[226] Zeng contended that the "big cooking pot" system of the People's Communes had insulated people from the costs of having many children. By the late 1980s, economic costs and incentives created by the contract system were already reducing the number of children farmers wanted.

A long-term experiment in a county in Shanxi, in which the family planning law was suspended, suggested that families would not have many more children even if the law were abolished.[63] A 2003 review of the policy-making process behind the adoption of the one-child policy shows that less intrusive options, including those that emphasized delay and spacing of births, were known but not fully considered by China's political leaders.[16]

Unequal enforcement

Corrupted government officials and especially wealthy individuals have often been able to violate the policy in spite of fines.[227] Filmmaker Zhang Yimou had three children and was subsequently fined 7.48 million yuan ($1.2 million).[228] For example, between 2000 and 2005, as many as 1,968 officials in Hunan province were found to be violating the policy, according to the provincial family planning commission; also exposed by the commission were 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and 6 senior intellectuals.[227] Some of the offending officials did not face penalties,[227] although the government did respond by raising fines and calling on local officials to "expose the celebrities and high-income people who violate the family planning policy and have more than one child".[227] Also, people who lived in the rural areas of China were allowed to have two children without punishment, although the family is required to wait a couple of years before having another child.[229]

Human rights violations

Further information: Human rights in China

The one-child policy had been challenged for violating a human right to determine the size of one's own proper family. According to a 1968 proclamation of the International Conference on Human Rights, "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children."[230][231] According to the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph in 2001, a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations was set for Huaiji County, Guangdong in one year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. According to the article local officials were being pressured into purchasing portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages. The article also reported that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort, usually by an injection of saline solution.[232] A 1993 book by social scientist and anti-abortion political activist Steven W. Mosher reported that women in their ninth month of pregnancy, or already in labour, were having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth.[233]

According to a 2005 news report by Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent John Taylor, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an abortion or sterilization in 2002 but ineffectively enforced the measure.[234] In 2012, Feng Jianmei, a villager from Shaanxi province, was forced into an abortion by local officials after her family refused to pay the fine for having a second child. Chinese authorities later apologized and two officials were fired, while five others were sanctioned.[235] In the past, China promoted eugenics as part of its population-planning policies, but the government backed away from such policies, as evidenced by China's ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which compels the nation to significantly reform its genetic testing laws.[236]

Recent [when?] research has also emphasized the necessity of understanding a myriad of complex social relations that affect the meaning of informed consent in China.[237] Furthermore, in 2003, China revised its marriage registration regulations and couples no longer have to submit to a premarital physical or genetic examination before being granted a marriage license.[238] The United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) support for family planning in China, which had been associated in the United States with the one-child policy, led the U.S. Congress to pull out of the UNFPA during the Reagan administration,[239] and again under George W. Bush's presidency, citing human rights abuses[240] and stating that the right to "found a family" was protected under the Preamble in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[241] Barack Obama resumed U.S. government financial support for the UNFPA shortly after taking office in 2009, intending to "work collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries".[242][243]

Effect on infanticide rates

Sex-selective abortion, abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in China. Nevertheless, the US Department of State,[244] the Parliament of the United Kingdom,[245] and the human rights organization Amnesty International[246] have all declared that infanticide still exists.[247][248] A writer for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs wrote, "The 'one-child' policy has also led to what Amartya Sen first called 'Missing Women', or the 100 million girls 'missing' from the populations of China (and other developing countries) as a result of female infanticide, abandonment, and neglect".[249] The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered the following summary as to the long-term effects of sex-selective abortion and abandonment of female infants: Multiple research studies have also found that sex-selective abortion – where a woman undergoes an ultrasound to determine the sex of her baby, and then aborts it if it's a girl – was widespread for years, particularly for second or subsequent children. Millions of female fetuses have been aborted since the 1970s. China outlawed sex selective abortions in 2005, but the law is tough to enforce because of the difficulty of proving why a couple decided to have an abortion. The abandonment, and killing, of baby girls has also been reported, though recent research studies say it has become rare, in part due to strict criminal prohibitions.[48]

Anthropologist G. William Skinner at the University of California, Davis and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua have claimed that infanticide was fairly common in China before the 1990s.[250]

Gender inequality in China

In 2023, China ranked 41st out of 172 countries[1] on the United Nations Development Programme's Gender Inequality Index (GII). Among the GII components, China's maternal mortality ratio was 23 out of 100,000 live births. In its education inequality, 68.3% of women age 25 and older had completed secondary education, compared to 77.9% of men. Women's labour force participation rate was 54.6% (compared to 75.6% percent for men), and women held 26.5 percent of seats in the National People's Congress.[2] Part of a series on

Women in society

Before the Chinese Communist Revolution

Before the Chinese Communist Revolution, women were generally restricted to the traditional gender roles of wives, concubines, or prostitutes.[3] Female oppression stemmed partly from Confucian beliefs about gender roles in society (such as filial piety), ideas which remain influential.[4] Confucian discourses of filial piety presented the father-son relationship as the model of top-down relationships which reinforced patriarchal dominance in the family and hierarchical structures in lineage groups and communities.[5]: 74 Wives were expected to be subservient to their husbands, kowtowing to their husbands.[3] Concubines had less choice than married women, and were kept as mistresses by men for sexual services or to produce children.[3] Prostitution frequently resulted from women being sold into brothels by their parents.[3] Legal during the Qing dynasty, there were few laws regulating prostitution;[6] as a result, prostitutes were similar to slaves and lacked legal rights.[6]

Marriage was defined loosely and encompassed wives, concubines, and slaves.[6] Men were free to pursue sex from women in any of these three categories of "extended family".[6] Women were prohibited from having sex with family slaves, a crime punishable by decapitation.[6] Men were frequently polygamous (allowed one wife and an unlimited number of concubines), but women were permitted only one husband.[6] This relationship between men and women in the household illustrated the power held by men in the family and their greater freedom compared with women.[3][6] Women, for example, would generally lose social standing due to an extramarital affair.[6] However, Qing laws punished both parties equally for premarital sex.[6]

Foot binding

Main article: Foot binding

A noted repressive practice was foot binding.[4] Foot binding originated during the Song dynasty, and was practiced by the wealthiest members of society in the 11th century. Over time, the practice increased and spread to the peasantry.[3] Foot binding was intended to differentiate between upper and lower classes; it was considered attractive,[7] with bound feet known as "golden lotuses".[8] It aimed to limit the growth of girls' feet, and began at age three. Foot binding eventually resulted in the arch of the foot becoming so angled that a woman was in constant pain and had limited ability to walk.[3] Foot binding subordinated women to men in a number of respects. It was an essential component of marriage eligibility, since women often bound their feet to increase their chance of finding a better marriage partner.[9] Men used foot binding to force women to be dependent; due to pain associated with walking, women were limited to household activities.[3][10] Women with bound feet had considerable difficulty carrying out simple tasks (such as standing up from a chair without assistance) and a lower functional reach than women with normal feet.[11] Foot binding encouraged the sexual objectification of women, since it fulfilled men's sexual desires and fantasies.[10] It reinforced the ideology that women were useful only in sexualized, sedentary roles to satisfy men's desires.[10]

Foot binding was such an established part of Chinese culture that the Emperor K'ang Hsi was unable to suppress the practice in 1650.[12] Widespread anti-foot binding sentiment began during the late 19th century, and gained in popularity until the practice was outlawed in 1912.[9] In 1997, the feet of 38 percent of Beijing women over 80 years of age and 18 percent of women aged 70–79 were deformed by foot binding.[11]

Women's education

The purpose of women's education was to reinforce their subordinate status and ensure that they obeyed rules made by men. Women were taught social norms which restricted their rights and behavior.[13] Only middle-class and wealthier women would receive an education, indicating a family's superiority. Women were educated at home by teachers who followed social norms. In the Eastern Han dynasty, four books were used for women's education («女四書» – Nü sishu) including: «女誡» – Nǚjiè by Ban Zhao, «女誡» – Nǚ Lúnyǔ by Song Ruoxin, «內訓» – Nèixùn or Nüxun by Empress Renxiaowen, and «女范捷錄» – Nǚfàn Jiélù by Ms. Liu, mother of Wang Xiang.[14] These books reinforced norms which harmed women and restricted their daily activities. Even more recently, textbooks in China are still being used to reaffirm stereotypes and gender inequality.[15] The three obediences and four virtues which were adopted by many women are part of Nüjie. The three obediences were "obey father before marriage", "obey husband during marriage" and "obey sons during widowhood", illustrating the subordination of women to men throughout their lives. The four virtues were "female virtues", "female words", "female appearance" and "female work", designed to fulfill the needs of men and society. Women's desires and needs were trivialized, and education became a tool to maintain male control of women.[16]

A woman's personality was also restricted by this education. Women were taught to be weak and subordinate, respecting the men who dominated them. The physical differences between men and women as well were emphasized; men were seen as yang, and women were seen as yin. Yin and yang are the opposite of each other, and women were not allowed to physically interact with men outside of marriage. Women (as yin) were considered a negative element, reinforcing their inferior status, and were sometimes forbidden from leaving their room to demonstrate their loyalty. Obedience to men and elder relatives was the essential element of women's education. Women were powerless to resist, since society would not accept women who challenged men. As a socializing agent, women's education played an important role in shaping their image and maintaining their subordinate status for many dynasties.[17]

May Fourth Movement

May Fourth Movement discourses challenged the traditional ideas about women, contrasting the idea of the "new woman" with that of the "traditional woman".[18]: 149 The "new woman" reflected a secular world view, opposition to arranged marriage, and opposition to patriarchy.[18]: 149 The idea of the "new woman" emphasised the urban and modern.[18]: 149 May Fourth Movement discourses framed "traditional women" as rural, uneducated, and submitting to "feudal superstition".[18]: 144 May Fourth literature often depicted rural mothers as participants in imposing arranged marriages and other feudal social constructs on their daughters.[18]: 149

Mao era

During the planned-economy era of (1949–1978, also known as the Mao Zedong era), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to make Chinese women legally and socially equal to men.[19] The Communist government attempted to challenge Confucian beliefs,[20] and one of its main goals was to improve the social position of women by promoting their entry into the labour force.[20] The constitution of the People's Republic of China, which was enacted in 1954, stated that women and men should have equal rights. To promote gender equality, the CCP promoted the slogan "Women hold up half the sky" to illustrate the importance of women to China's economic success.[21] The CCP and the government implemented policies ensuring equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for men and women.[22]

In practice, however, wage inequality still existed during this era due to occupational and industrial segregation by gender.[23] Enterprises typically divided their jobs into two groups (primary and secondary); men were more likely to be given primary jobs, and women secondary jobs.[22] While women were entering the labour market, they were still expected to look after their homes and families. As a result, women were said to bear "a double burden" of work during the Mao era.[24]

State feminism

State feminism refers to the state's support of women's equality in the public and work sectors through legislation, often progressive state laws to ensure gender equality.[25] This state-supported feminism promoted employment opportunities for women in the public sector and provided benefits such as maternity leave and day care to female workers. State feminism also enforced laws prohibiting polygamy, the buying and selling of women, arranged marriage and prostitution.[25] Yang stated in her article, "From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference", that state feminism during the Mao era liberated "women from the traditional kinship patriarchy, but although women were catapulted into the public sphere of labour and politics, the feminist agenda was forgotten with the decline of gender salience and women's transformation into state subjects in a new masculine state order".[25] According to Lisa Rofel, an American anthropologist studying feminism and gender studies, "The status of unfortunate widows (and their daughters) of poor families changed dramatically from 'broken shoes' to 'labour models' after 1949".[26] Although state feminism provided some legal protection to women, it did not achieve gender equality. Gail Hershatter agreed: "The communist revolution didn't change the work women did.

Women had always worked. What the revolution changed is the work environment and the social interpretation of working outside of familial context."[27]

Post-Mao era

Economic reforms and labour market

Changing employment policy was a major part of China's reforms after the Mao era.[28] Under Mao China formed the Tong Bao Tong Pei employment system, a centralised system which created government-guaranteed jobs.[28] Due to widespread unemployment after the Cultural Revolution, the CCP and the government phased out guaranteed employment and reformed the employment system as part of larger economic changes.[28] Reform took place in three stages.[28] During the first stage (1978–1991), the existing framework was adapted: maintaining planned employment as the primary form of employment and adding a two-track system permitting government and private-sector employment.[28] In the second stage (1992–2001), additional reforms continued to promote the market-oriented employment system while maintaining a degree of planned employment.[28] In the third stage (after 2001), the reform process was accelerated to generate a market-oriented employment system in which private-sector employment was primary.[28]

Market reforms took China away from central economic planning and towards a system based on capitalist market mechanisms.[29] Although women gained significantly greater opportunities for work under the economic reform, they have borne a disproportionate share of its costs.[30][31] China's market-oriented economic reforms undermined workplace gender equality by using migrant women as a cheap, flexible labour force.[31] Migrant women make up a large proportion of factory workers, maids, and domestic workers, jobs which are prone to exploitation due to a lack of public scrutiny.[31] However, migrant women are essential to the success of China's free-market economy; without their inexpensive labour, the country could not compete successfully in the global manufacturing market.[31] Lacking strict government regulations protecting women's rights (partially due to the degree of corruption in China), gender inequality in the labor market continues to be an issue plaguing the country's free market system.[29][31] Since the economic reforms, the average real earnings of male professional workers have grown by 350 percent. [citation needed] Although women have gained working opportunities, the unparalleled growth in male salaries have widened the gender wage gap. The greatest (and broadest) increases in the wage gap occurred during the late 1990s, as the labour market shifted from an administratively-regulated wage system to a market-oriented one.[32][33]

Education

In China, there is a strong male preference in relation to patriarchal norms.[34] Male preference in society creates an inequality of women participating in the education system.[34] Due to a higher rate of men in the education system, the average is that men acquire "1.3 years of education more than women".[34] This is caused because in Chinese society there is higher pressure on men to do better in their education, which will then lead them to better and higher paying jobs that can support their family.[34] This, however, leaves women at a disadvantage in regards to obtaining and having the motivation to pursue education.[34] Gender norms in China create these certain pressures and attitudes to reasons why men have access to better and higher education than women.[35]

There is also a significant amount of gender inequality in school. Textbooks are a main component of reinforcing and creating gender inequality in China.[36] Within Chinese textbooks, gender stereotypes are promoted, especially in pictures.[36] In younger grades, many pictures in Chinese textbooks include gender stereotypes, such as women pictured doing household chores, while men are pictured working at their jobs.[36] Women are also portrayed as taking care of the house duties and children, while men are portrayed as firemen or police officers at work.[36] Although there have been recent developments of more women participating in STEM, they are still largely underrepresented, unlike their male counterparts.[37] This is mostly due to lower motivation in women to acquire these positions because of gender stereotypes and discrimination in the education system and workforce.[37]

One-child policy and gender disparity

Main article: One-child policy

This section has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (August 2023) This section needs expansion. You can help by adding missing information. (August 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Female workers in a Chinese silk factory Introduced in 1979, the policy set a limit on the number of children parents could have. Because parents preferred sons, the incidence of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide substantially increased.[38]

This has led to male overpopulation in China; in 2005, men under age 20 outnumbered women by more than 32 million.[38] In 2015, the one-child policy was abolished, and a two-child policy was introduced.[39] Couples were encourage to have a second child, and the policy led to 5.4 million extra birth in China. Then in 2021, a three-child policy was introduced due to urgent needs to repopulate China. Families were told that they will be given better benefits and opportunities if they were to help contributed in repopulating the country. In Chinese history, there has been a strong preference for sons, which is influenced by the patriarchal family structures.[34] The preference for sons stems from various factors. Firstly, sons traditionally are responsible for providing financial support and care for parents, whereas daughters assume this role only when a son is absent.[34] Secondly, men in Chinese society historically have made more money, inherited property, and continued the family line, leading women to be less preferred.[34] The one-child policy is a primary factor in what started the preference for sons and gender disparity in China.[34]

Gender disparity in China has been a complex and multifaceted issue with various dimensions, including demographics, social norms, and economic factors.[40] A key aspects to be considered is the skewed sex ratio which led to female infanticide and sex-selective abortions. The imbalanced sex ratio has created a demographic challenge with a surplus of men, commonly referred to as the "Missing women" phenomenon. This surplus of men is expected to have social implications, including difficulties in finding spouses for a portion of the male population. Gender disparities are also present in economic opportunities and the workforce. While women make up a significant portion of the workforce, they often face challenges in career advancement and are underrepresented in leadership positions. Additionally, there is a persistent gender pay gap. Traditional gender roles and cultural expectations can contribute to gender disparities as well.[41] In some cases, there are expectations for women to prioritize family responsibilities over their careers, which can impact their professional advancement.[42] Although access for education has been improving for girls, challenges remain.[43] In some areas, there may still be disparities in educational opportunities and resources between boys and girls.[44]

Workplace inequality

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (September 2014)

Wage inequality

China's social structure is patriarchal, which has led to wage inequality between men and women. This is largely due to gender attitudes towards women in the workplace.[45] Cultural norms in China have a long history of preferring men over women, which also correlates into the workplace. The cultural norms rely heavily on men working to provide and take care of the family, therefore they are often hired and paid at a higher rate than women in China.[45] Women's traditional gender role in China focused on staying at home and taking care of the house and family, while the men go and provide at work.[45] These attitudes on women's gender role are still persistent in China today, and negatively affect the amount of jobs, work hours, and pay that women are offered, although China's state council along with country programmes have started to take actions to shift this structure into a more equal state.[45][46][47][48] Due to China's recent economic growth, there has been an increase in jobs, but a decline in women in the workforce.[49] In the 1980s, women in the workplace made up about half of the force, but by 2017, the percentage dropped by almost 20 percent.[49] The pattern of decrease is still prevalent today, due to discrimination, social norms, and traditional values implemented in the workplace.[49]

Gender-based wage stratification has become a major issue in post-reform China. A 2013 study found that women are paid 75.4 percent of what men are paid (an average of RMB 399 per month, compared to RMB 529 per month for men).[50] According to the report, there is evidence of a significant increase in the gender wage gap in China's urban labor market during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The report highlights that there is a substantial difference between the wages of men and women, with a gap of 32%.[51] These statistics are in line with previous findings; a 1990 wage survey found that women earned 77.4 percent of male income in urban areas (RMB 149.6, compared to RMB 193.2 for men) and 81.4 percent of male income in rural areas (an annual average of RMB 1,235 for women and RMB 1,518 for men).[52]

These findings indicate that the income gap has not been closing in China, and wage inequality may be on the rise.[50] Two-thirds of this differential has been attributed to unequal pay for the same work.[50] Part of the difference results from higher-quality skills acquired by men through better educational opportunities, managerial positions, and previous work experience. Since women have limited opportunity to develop the education or skills necessary to obtain higher-level jobs, they are often paid less for their work;[50] female entrepreneurs are denied access to the networking opportunities of their male counterparts.[29] A number of factors have contributed to the rise in wage inequality in China.[53]

Educational background and profession have been identified as two main factors of an increased gender wage gap,[53] and regional impacts have been recognized as a major cause of the increasing wage inequality.[53] Women in the workplace still face discrimination, and are discouraged from applying for managerial and highly-paid jobs. The high end of most sectors is still male-dominated, and business events often include the sexual objectification of women. In Chinese business culture, deals and partnerships are made through evenings of banqueting, going to KTV bars and drinking.[29] Female hostesses (and sometimes prostitutes) play an important role in the success of these gatherings, highlighting the businessmen's masculinity.[29] Due to the sexualized nature of these events, female entrepreneurs are frequently discouraged from (or uncomfortable attending) these networking evenings.[29] As a result, businesswomen have less access to the networks of government officials, business partners, and underworld organizations which are crucial to entrepreneurial success in China.[29]

A main factor in the Hong Kong gender wage gap is age. More men achieve superior positions in a job because women leave the job market earlier to take care of their family. Men remain in the job market longer, allowing for more raises and better jobs. Women in their 30s earn 11 per cent less on average than their male counterparts, and the gap increases with age; women over 60 earn an average of HK$322,000, about half the HK$618,000 earned by men.[54] Although the wage gap has narrowed, there is room for improvement. Gender-based wage inequality will be a major factor in pay decisions because of inclusion and diversity (I&D) programs; thirteen percent of Asia-Pacific employers have I&D programs.[55]

As of 2023, Chinese women earn US$11,000 less than men based on 2021 purchasing power parity, representing a 41 percent gap.[56] As of 2025, the World Economic Forum ranks China 31st out of 148 countries in wage inequality, ranking ahead of the United States at 40th, the United Kingdom at 54th, Japan at 93rd and South Korea at 94th.[56]

Occupational segregation

Feminization of informal sector employment and devaluation of female-dominated occupations are two new labor-market trends since China's economic reforms.[57] A survey of seven provinces and eleven cities found that gender segregation increased in forty-four out of fifty-one examined occupations between 1985 and 2000,[57] and women were restricted from entering a larger number of professional occupations based on their gender.[57] They were barred from more white-collar jobs than blue-collar ones, demonstrating the difficulty women have in obtaining higher-level jobs.[58] One impact of gendered jobs is lower wages for women, illustrated by the lower average incomes of female-dominated enterprises compared to male-dominated ones. During the early 1990s, an increase in the number of female employees in the sales and service industries was accompanied by a reduction in the average income of these sectors. Data from the same time period indicates an inverse relationship between the proportion of women employed at an institution and the average wage of the institution's employees.[59]

Beauty economy

The "beauty economy" refers to companies using attractive young women to increase profits.[29] The women used to promote goods and services are generally known as pink-collar workers.[29] These women can be found at car shows and company booths at conventions, and in publishing, insurance, and real-estate development.[29] The beauty economy is a marked shift from Mao-era attitudes in which sexuality was subdued to promote gender equality.[60] In 21st-century China, sexuality is promoted in capitalist endeavors.[60] Although many women involved in the beauty economy hold relatively-mundane jobs, others are involved in legally-complicated endeavors as "grey women": mistresses and hostesses who cater to a rich clientele.[29] These women are selling their sexuality (sometimes including their bodies) as a consumable good in the capitalist economy.[29] The close relationship between hypersexualized grey women and the business world has made extramarital affairs common amongst Chinese businessmen.[29]

This highly publicized trend has created a new market for aging wives of products to remain youthful and (ideally) keep their husbands faithful.[60] In 2004, China had the world's eighth-largest cosmetics market in the world and Asia's second-largest.[60] The beauty economy has set high standards for physical appearance, encouraging women to consume youth-preserving products and promoting ageism.[60]

Unemployment

During the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms of the late 1990s, women were laid off in greater numbers and received larger pay cuts than men.[21] Female-dominated industries, such as textiles and other light industry, were affected greatly by the reforms and many women lost their jobs;[22] employees in secondary jobs were laid off in greater numbers than those in primary jobs. Since women occupied a high proportion of secondary jobs, they were the first to be laid off during the economic downturn; women were also forced to retire at a younger age than men. The government-mandated retirement age for women was generally five years younger than that for men, but internal retirement ages (determined by individual enterprises) were even lower for women. Enterprises which laid off the most workers had performed poorly and were unable to survive in the new market economy; they also employed a larger proportion of women than men. When the companies went under, larger numbers of women than men were unemployed.[22]

Hiring discrimination

During the market-oriented reforms, there was widespread evidence of employment discrimination in hiring.[22] Sexism in recruitment takes two forms: explicit and hidden.[22] Explicit gender discrimination refers to directly stated restrictions on women in the recruitment process, and hidden discrimination occurs primarily in the preferential hiring of men. Contemporary China has three general types of gender-based hiring discrimination. Gender restrictions on careers and jobs create an environment where women are only welcomed into careers which match traditional female roles: primarily domestic, secretarial, or factory work.[31] Gender discrimination also affects women of reproductive age, who are frequently passed over due to a potential future loss of productivity resulting from pregnancy.[21] Ageism affects many women, especially those working in the service industry (where youth is a key component of workplace success).[29] In this sector, women over age 30 are frequently denied jobs.[22] Female job-seekers over age 40 are especially subject to ageism in most industries, despite being past child-bearing age.[22] The age limit for men is more relaxed, usually 40 or 45 years of age.[22] Although laws are in place to prevent hiring discrimination, there is little enforcement.[31]

Impact of foreign direct investment on wages

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has significantly impacted employment in China. The number of employees hired by foreign direct investment enterprises in the country's urban areas increased steadily from 1985 to 2005; between 2002 and 2005, the number of employees hired by FDI enterprises in urban China increased by 5.95 million.[61] FDI is mainly driven by China's low cost of labor. A considerable number of foreign-invested enterprises are based in labor-intensive industries such as the garment industry, electronics manufacturing, and the food and beverage processing industry.[61] FDI has disproportionately affected women, who frequently hold low-skill, low-paying factory jobs funded by foreign investment.[62] A 2000 study found that 62.1 percent of FDI-employed workers were female.[63]

Wages by gender have been inconsistently affected by FDI, with pay equality in FDI industries increasing in 1995 and decreasing in 2005.[64] This shift may be caused by increased FDI investment in production, resulting in additional low-paying factory jobs which are predominantly filled by women.[64]

Confucianism and gender

Main article: Confucianism § Women in Confucian thought

Confucianism provided a framework which judged individuals by their faithfulness and adherence to social norms dictated by ancient customs.[65] Men were evaluated according to how well they fulfilled their social positions as husbands, fathers, sons or servants. Correspondingly, women were valued based on their conduct as wives, mothers and daughters.[65] Mainly assigned household activities, women were considered less important and therefore inferior.[65] During the late 12th century, neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi advocated the "three bonds" between ruler and subject, father and son, and husband and wife.[4] Husbands were granted power over their wives through the Confucian emphasis on sexual differentiation as key to maintaining societal harmony.[4] While husbands ruled the "external world", women operated in the "internal world" by running the household; however, women lacked power in society.[4] Although women held executive power in the household, their influence rarely rivaled that of men in the public sphere.[4] Confucian values indicated, and reinforced, a clear hierarchy.[20] Women were subordinate to men—particularly young women, who were on the lowest level of this hierarchy.[20]

In Confucian Chinese culture, women's identities were often oppressed; the deeply-rooted Confucian teachings which shaped Chinese culture and values reinforced a patriarchal family unit that devalued women. A daughter was seen as a temporary member of her father's side of the family, since she would leave the family at marriage. This notion of family abandonment is reflected in Magarey Wolf's statement in "Uterine Families and the Women's Community" that "when a young woman marries, her formal ties with the household of her father are severed ... that she, like the water, may never return".[66] In Chinese Confucian society, a woman's identity is subordinated and she is barely recognized as a person.[67][68] Confucian conceptions of filial piety has been focused on preserving the traditional role of the father as the primary leader and decision maker of the family. In the hierarchy of traditional Chinese cultural family life, the father and sons take prominence over the mother and daughters. [citation needed] A cliché of classical texts, which is repeated throughout the tradition, is the familiar notion that men govern the outer world, while women govern the home.

Mencius outlined the three subordinations. A woman was to be subordinate to her father in youth, her husband in maturity, and her son in old age.[69] Familial relationships are prefixed, and family lifestyles and behaviors are constrained by social norms.[70] In the Han dynasty, the female historian Ban Zhao wrote the Lessons for Women, advice on how women should behave. She outlines the four virtues women must abide by: proper virtue, proper speech, proper countenance, proper merit. The "three subordinations and the four virtues" is a common four-character phrase throughout the imperial period. [citation needed] As for the historical development of Chinese patriarchy, women's status was highest in the Tang dynasty, when women played sports (polo) and were generally freer in fashion and conduct. Between the Tang and Song dynasties, a fad for little feet arose, and from the Song dynasty onwards foot binding became more and more common for the elite. In the Ming dynasty, a tradition of virtuous widowhood developed.

Widows, even if widowed at a young age, would be expected not to remarry. Their virtuous names might be displayed on the arch at the entrance of the village. [citation needed]

Influence in contemporary China

For Chinese women, discovering personhood and kinship is challenging because Confucian culture can be an obstacle. Confucianism highlights the ideal of "men manage outside; women manage inside" (Chinese: 男主外，女主内; pinyin: nán zhǔ wài, nǚ zhǔ nèi), reflecting female subordination by encouraging women to remain in the household while their husbands are the breadwinners in the outside world.[71] According to Wang's 2012 article, "Goodbye Career, Hello Housekeeping", "80 percent of husbands in China hope their wives will become full-time homemakers" to stabilize their marriage and take care of their families.[72] Under the Confucian influence, it has been the norm for women to quit their outside job to fulfill their obligations as wives while men remain in control outside the household and remain in their profession. It is rare in Chinese society to challenge the idea of women sacrificing their professional career, because Chinese society has a "relative[ly] ambiguous boundary between public and private spheres".[73] This ambiguity may be a vital obstacle to gender equality. A women's sense of self in Chinese society includes her husband, her inner circle and her family by marriage, broadening (and complicating) her definition of personhood. Women's dedication and sacrifices are justified by a societal norms and a Confucian culture which increase female subordination. According to Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, "Sacrificing the family for one's own interests, or the lineage for the interests of one's household, is in reality a formula, with this formula, it is impossible to prove that someone is acting selfishly".[74] Men are in an advantageous position, since this differential mode of association legitimizes women's sacrifice of their professional career as a normal social pattern for the benefit of the family; a husband's preference for his wife to stay home while he keeps his career is not seen as selfishness. Male selfishness is justified by the differential mode of association which "drives out social consciousness".[74]

Wives who sacrifice their "lineage for the sake of [their] family, [they are actually projected as] performing a public duty".[73] Features of patriarchy in 20th and 21st century China are a combination of contemporary problems found even in the West and traditional Chinese issues. Men hold most of the major positions of power within the country, especially in the political and military spheres. However, with the decline of traditional practices through the 20th century, women have come to enjoy virtually equal economic power. This is especially true in the cities, where the social stigma of being a working woman is virtually nonexistent, although skepticism of unmarried, career-minded women is increasing.[75] Although both genders face strong pressure to be married, women who remain unmarried past the age of 25 are shamed by state media with the label "leftover women".[76]

In addition, foot binding and arranged marriages have been virtually eradicated.[77] There is also the issue of forced abortions in China, especially for sex selection purposes; authorities have been accused of giving the women virtually no control over their bodies in this area.[78] Traditional norms regarding favoring the grandmother on the father's side persisted until after the Chinese Communist Party's victory in the Chinese Civil War.[79] This traditional preference for the paternal grandmother was reflected in the word referring to the paternal grandmother (zumu) and the maternal grandmother (waizumu, meaning "outside grandmother").[79] The paternal grandmother would be the one who was expected to live with grandchildren and assist in their care and raising.[80] Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, paternal and maternal grandmothers enjoy equal status.[80]

Family pressure and marriage

Main article: Chinese kinship

Women face significant pressures from their families during their mid- to late twenties to quit working and get married. In rural northwestern China, some mothers still consider education less important for their daughters since they are expected to marry and leave home.[81] There is an insignificant gender gap in educational investments in rural northwestern China, however, indicating progress in educational gender equality.[81] Although work can be a way for women to postpone marriage, failure to marry is socially unacceptable for Chinese women.[31] Fewer Chinese women remain working past marriage, and those who do often struggle to balance work and familial expectations.[24] By relinquishing income generation to their husbands and staying home, many Chinese women lose autonomy and authority. Societal adherence to strict Confucian values about filial piety and women's obedience to men, intended to create hierarchies in the home which produce harmony in society, produces a patrilineal, patriarchal system which discourages gender equality.[82] Marriage pressures stem from Confucian values which promote the necessity for women to marry to continue the family lineage by bearing a son.[82]

Family pressure has been, and continues to be, a main driving force of Chinese marriages. Although society has progressed from traditional values, heterosexual marriages remain the most socially-accepted form of union. This leads to struggles for LGBTQ marriages to be accepted, leading to contract or cooperative marriages (hezuo hunyin or xingshi hunyin).[83] Cooperative marriages are an extreme form of heterosexual pretence, typically consensual relationships between a lesbian (lala) and a gay man. Cooperative marriages are the result of strong family pressure to conform to societal expectations of a heterosexual marriage, underpinning the inequality of same-sex marriages.[84]

Further examples of family pressure in Chinese society are flash marriages. A flash (or blitz) marriage is a union between partners who have known each other for less than a month. This form of union has become increasingly popular in China due to economic and social factors. Men and women perceive happiness as a result of stability in contemporary China, particularly in the relationship and family spheres.[85] However, financial stability and successful careers have also become predominant aspirations amongst young professionals.[85] Young professionals (particularly women) are often still expected to marry at a relatively-young age, and if they fail to do so they are known as sheng nu (leftover women).[85]

Strong family pressure reinforces this ideology, and the focus on career development often leads to less time for individual personal lives (resulting in flash marriages).[85] Historically, in China, early marriage was accepted. Child marriage mainly impacted women under the age of 18 up until 1950, when laws were created to prohibit them.[86] Child marriages created room for gender inequality because many of the children who married were women and not men.[86] One main reason for child marriage was to marry the woman off so that their family would no longer need to actively provide for her; instead the woman's husband would take over that role.[86] After laws were created in criminalizing child marriages, the nation funded campaigns to promote marriages after the age of 18, in order also to encourage the limitation of population growth.[86] One of the policies required women and men to marry later in life, the ideal age for women being 25 years old.[86] The age requirement for women to marry was still lower than that of men's, even with the requirement, which contributed to marriage inequality even after child marriages were prohibited.[86] In the modern day, child marriages are actively rising in China, which is affecting women more than men, creating a gender gap in child marriages.[86]

This growth happened between the years of 2000–2010, with 2.85 percent rise of women being married before the age of 18.[86] The revival of patriarchy has not always provided privileges for men. Ordinary men surviving in Chinese society have always faced a crisis of masculinity caused by popular wedding norms. Men are asked to take on the role of financial providers, including the material dimension of buying houses and cars. The different experiences of gender and power relations have led to a constant rise in misogynistic voices.[87]

"Surplus women"

Main article: Sheng nu

Women who resist family pressure and do not marry by their late twenties risk being stigmatized as sheng nu (剩女, leftover women).[88][89] Due to the prevalence of marriage in China, these unmarried women are often seen by potential employers as overly particular or otherwise flawed.[24] The "surplus women" perception promotes gender inequality in the workplace by characterizing unmarried women as inferior.[24] Older women frequently struggle to find jobs, due to discrimination against their marital status.[24] Woman viewing matchmaking ads in China In response to the surplus-women issue, many urban parents pursue partners for their older unmarried daughters in matchmaking corners.[24] These corners are essentially marriage markets; parents place their daughter or son's name and personal information on a card for others to see as they look for a potential match.[24] Although the success rate for matchmaking corners is low and parents are ashamed of resorting to them, many desperate parents continue to visit the corners on their children's behalf.[24] A frequent complaint from parents of daughters is a lack of quality men nationwide, despite a surplus of men.[24]

Matchmaking corners illustrate the importance of marriage and the lengths to which parents will go to ensure that their daughters do not become "surplus women".[24] Due to parental anxiety, women are pressured to marry young (even a flash marriage, at the cost of career and independence) before they see themselves as too old to find a quality husband.[89]

Gendered social mobility

Hukou system

Main article: Hukou system

Originally developed during the Communist era to inhibit mobility between the countryside and the cities (increasing government control), the Hukou system (household registration system) remains influential.[31] Under this system, families are registered in a specific region and can only use schools and healthcare in that region.[31] Since hukou is tied to the maternal line, the system disproportionately affects social mobility for women.[90] Although rural women can travel to cities for work, these migrants have no access to healthcare (due to their rural registration) and limited ability to marry and bear children in the city.[31] When migrant women have children in the cities, their children have no access to education unless they return home or they pay out of pocket.[31] Many migrant women are forced to return to the countryside to have children, sacrificing their urban jobs and temporarily separated from their husbands.[31]

Families with urban registration have significant advantages over those with rural registration.[90] School-age children from urban families with parental incomes, education, and jobs similar to rural families generally receive two additional years of schooling at higher-accredited and better-funded schools.[90] Since hukou is passed through the maternal line, the system prevents rural women from giving their children social mobility and perpetuates gender and rural-urban inequality.[31]

Family role and job mobility

Studies of gender differences in contemporary China indicate that family concerns affect men's and women's job mobility differently labeled the “motherhood penalty”.[91] Women tend to exit employment early because of demands created by marriage and family.[92] Household tasks that are routine such as cleaning and cooking take up significant amounts of time, but are not given the same value as flexible home maintenance tasks which are traditionally taken on by men.[93] Thus, men are given tasks that can be shaped around their work schedule, while women take on routine labor that is more likely to interfere with their career.[93] The strong urban-rural divide of China's economy places restrictions on job mobility, with increasing mobility skewed towards men.[94] A study of unemployment duration among urban Chinese women indicated that married women have a higher layoff rate, longer unemployment periods and less opportunity to be re-employed than married men.[95]

The Chinese social welfare system is lacking which places the burden of caring for aging parents and young children.[96] This domestic labor along with state policy and employment contracts caps a woman's career despite earning more than their husbands.[91] Women are expected to retire five years before men in the same career field, thus they are less likely to receive promotions because their expected useful life is 15 years less than a man with the same education and experience.[96] An urban study of job changes noted employer discrimination against, and fewer career opportunities for, married women (who, it is believed, have lower productivity and commitment to work due to family obligations).[97] Some workplace contracts place restrictions on marriage and pregnancy throughout the duration of employment.[96]

However, in comparison to Western economies, young women in China maintain a high employment rate, which is protected by the PRC Law on Protecting Women's Rights and Interests (1992).[96] The financial dependence for married women in China on their husbands creates a social phenomenon where women are happier if their husbands are better off socially and economically.[91] Women who earn more than their husbands are less happy because Chinese society perceives men as the breadwinner and women as the manager of the domestic sphere.[91] Many women seek a work-family balance by choosing family-friendly jobs ("female-typical" jobs, with lower pay and less opportunity for career advancement) to fulfill their expected responsibilities from work and family.[98]

Access to assets

The traditional Chinese family is patriarchal. This view regulates gender roles and divisions of labor in the family, and affects resource allocation in the family and any family business. Men usually control valuable resources and assets such as land, property, and credit, and can accumulate capital and start a business more easily than women. In a family business, women are usually unpaid labor and entrepreneurial rights and opportunities are reserved for men.[99] Women are expected to be family caregivers. In contemporary China, women are also expected to financially contribute to the family (especially in rural China, where economic development is relatively low). In many rural families, men and women will migrate to urban areas to support their rural family. A study of migrant workers in southern China found that women usually spend less and send a larger proportion of their wages back to their rural family than men do.[100]

Housing

In relation to gender inequality in marriage, housing has also promoted inequality in regards to owning, buying, and division of duties. Recently, housing prices in China are rapidly rising, leading to housing inequality and gender gaps for homeownership.[101] In marriages in China, more traditional values are being reported amongst younger generations, which is a reason why men instead of women own the houses.[101] The traditional values include the belief that men are responsible for providing for the family and owning property, especially in marital agreements.[101] These traditional values affect women by having them negotiate their own power, and leads to inequality in the housing market and marriage.[101]

On the other hand, homeownership is also affecting the rates of marriage. Rising house prices are making it harder for couples in China to get married earlier, due to the belief that it is required to have a home set up in order for marriage to take place.[102] This belief causes puts more pressure on the men in China to acquire a house and have it ready for a wife.[102] Along with gender inequality in home ownership and marriage, there is also gender inequalities in regards to time allocation of duties around the house. Due to urbanization and changes within the workforce, allocation of duties at home have shifted.[103] Also, there has been a shift in ideals in which women prefer equal rights and opportunities, while men prefer more traditional values.[104] In recent years, more women have been joining the workforce, leading to men having more duties at home.[103] Even though men are having to fulfill more duties at home, this is not always equal across all of China.[103] Instead, a lot of women are having to fulfill duties at work and go home to fill more household duties, meanwhile men do not, leading to an allocation of unequal time in regards to gender.[103]

Extracurricular self-development

Institutions and activities for self-improvement have emerged in China, particularly in urban centers. These training activities may foster skills relevant to the job market or focus on self-realization. Many women in China participate in such activities, particularly those related to emotional well-being and psychotherapy.[105] However, access to these activities is limited by gender. Women often consider their self-improvement as limited to their lives before marriage, since after marriage (unlike men) their main role is caring for children or parents.[106] Patriarchy in China refers to the history and prevalence of male dominance in Chinese society and culture, although patriarchy is not exclusive to Chinese culture and exists all over the world.

Patriarchy in China is a historically male-dominated cultural phenomenon. From Confucianism to modern times, patriarchy is deeply rooted in Chinese society. Traditionally, men dominated the family and society, while women were expected to be subservient to their fathers, husbands, and sons. However, over time, Chinese society has undergone tremendous changes, including the elevation of women's status and the gradual dilution of traditional customs. In contemporary China, although men still dominate the political and military spheres, women have begun to gain almost equal economic power. However, some traditional attitudes and practices, such as forced abortions and social pressure on "leftover women" (women who remain unmarried past the age of 25), remain a challenge.

Media

Framing of women's issues

This section has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This section relies on a single source. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Gender inequality in China" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This section needs expansion. You can help by adding missing information. (August 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Much of mainstream media has featured marriage and private life as women's issues, rather than gender discrimination and inequality. A study indicated that "delaying marriage and relationship" was the most-frequently-discussed topic in mainstream media. It has focused on women's personal lives, such as marriage and romantic relationships, while gender issues such as "gender discrimination" and "traditional expectations" have often been ignored.[107]

In 2015, the Feminist Five were arrested for planning on passing out sexual harassment stickers in public. In 2022, the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) posted an article on Weibo, criticizing what they called "Extreme Feminism" and quickly gained widespread attention. Within 3 days, the post gained 602k reposts, 269k comments, and 6.3m likes. The CYLC claimed that extreme feminists have been causing confusion and division about gender opposition online, urging the public to eradicate them to restore a clean online environment.

Nüzhubo

Nüzhubo (female broadcasters) are female performers who stream themselves performing on live-streaming sites, mostly by singing, dancing, video-game commenting, or eating (mukbang). "Livestream viewing has become a mainstream pastime with more than 200 active livestreaming platforms and millions of concurrent viewers every day in contemporary China."[108]: 811 The live-streaming industry in China is dominated by women, and the growth of the industry is built on the popularity of Nüzhubo. Nüzhubo earn a living by receiving virtual gifts from followers, and are subject to "constructions of the male gaze" by media and the public.[108] With fierce competition for viewers and followers, most try to attract viewers (especially male viewers) with their appearance. Some are criticized by local and foreign media for their use of sexual content to increase popularity.[108]

Persecution of Uyghurs in China

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "Xinjiang genocide" redirects here. For the 1750s genocide that also occurred in Xinjiang, see Dzungar genocide.

Persecution of Uyghurs in China

Part of the Xinjiang conflict Detainees listening to speeches in a camp in Lop County, Xinjiang, April 2017 Xinjiang, highlighted red, shown within China Location Xinjiang, China Date 2014–present Target Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic Muslims Attack type Internment, forced abortion, forced sterilization, forced birth control, forced labor, torture, indoctrination, alleged rape (including gang rape) Victims est. ≥1 million detained Perpetrato r Government of China Motive Counterterrorism (official) Sinicization, Islamophobia,[1] and suppression of political dissent

History of the People's Republic of China

E Part of a series on the

History of Xinjiang

Prehistoric and ancient period ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Medieval and early modern period ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Modern period ​ Xinjiang Province, Republic of China ​ (Xinjiang clique ​ 1st East Turkestan Republic ​ 2nd East Turkestan Republic) ​ Xinjiang Province, People's Republic of China ​ Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region ​ (Production and Construction Corps ​ Three Districts Economic Commission ​ List of administrative divisions of Xinjiang ​ Xinjiang conflict ​ V ​ T ​ E Part of a series on

Uyghurs

List of Uyghurs Uyghur language ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Uyghur culture ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Uyghur cuisine ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Persecution of Uyghurs in China

E Part of a series on

Islam in China

History ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Major figures ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Culture ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Cities ​ Regions ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Groups ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Islam portal • China portal ​ V ​ T ​ E Since 2014, the government of China has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights.

In 2014, the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, which involved surveillance and restrictions in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2017, under Xinjiang Party secretary Chen Quanguo,[2] the government incarcerated over an estimated one million Uyghurs without legal process in internment camps officially described as "vocational education and training centers", in the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II.[3][4] China began to wind down the camps in 2019, and some detainees were transferred to the penal system, while others were transferred to forced labor and factory work programs.[5][6] In addition to mass detention, government policies have included suppression of Uyghur religious practices,[7] political indoctrination,[8] forced sterilization,[9] forced contraception,[10][11] and forced abortion.[12][13] An estimated 16,000 mosques have been razed or damaged,[2] and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.[14][15] Since 2017, preferential family planning exemptions previously available to Uyghurs have reportedly been reduced or removed.[16][17] Chinese government statistics reported that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%.[9] In the same period, the national birth rate decreased by 9.7%.[18] According to CNN, Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization.[19] Birth rates in Xinjiang fell a further 24% in 2019, compared to a nationwide decrease of 4.2%.[9] Chen Quanguo was succeeded by Ma Xingrui as Xinjiang Party Secretary in 2021; Ma's tenure led to the end to overt crackdowns and the campaign-style mobilization under Chen and shifted towards a "normalization" phase while contiuning the previous policies facilitating ethnic assimilation.

The Chinese government denies having committed human rights abuses in Xinjiang.[3][20] International reactions have varied, with its actions being described as the forced assimilation of Xinjiang, as ethnocide or cultural genocide,[21][22] or as genocide. Those accusing China of genocide point to intentional acts they say violate Article II of the Genocide Convention,[23][24][25] which prohibits "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part", a "racial or religious group" including "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and "measures intended to prevent births within the group".[26] At the United Nations, several countries, predominantly North American or European, signed letters condemning China's policies. Whilst other countries, predominantly Asian or African, signed letters supporting the policies as an effort to combat terrorism in the region.[27][28][29] In 2020, a case brought to the International Criminal Court was dismissed because China is not a party to the Rome Statute, meaning the ICC could not investigate them.[30] In 2021, the United States Department of State declared China's actions as genocide,[31][32] and legislatures in several countries have passed non-binding motions doing the same, while other parliaments, condemned the policies as "severe human rights abuses" or crimes against humanity.[33] In a 2022 assessment, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that China's policies and actions in the Xinjiang region may constitute crimes against humanity, though it did not use the term genocide.[34][35][36] In 2026, the OHCHR described China's policies toward the Uyghurs as potentially amounting to "forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity."[37]

Background

See also: Islam in China, History of Xinjiang, and East Turkestan independence movement

Uyghur identity

Main article: Uyghurs

See also: Racism in China

Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group native to Xinjiang. They are distinct from the Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China.[38] Uyghurs are the second-largest predominantly Muslim ethnicity in China, after the Hui, and Sunni Islam is an important aspect of Uyghur identity.[38] The Uyghur language has around 10 million speakers and is shared with other minority groups in the region.[39]

Xinjiang conflict

Main article: Xinjiang conflict

Both Uyghur and the predominantly Han government lay claim to Xinjiang.[40] This prompted an ethnic conflict featuring resistance and sporadic violence as Uyghurs sought greater autonomy.[41] Sinologists Anna Hayes and Michael Clarke have described Xinjiang as undergoing a process of transition as the Chinese government attempts to transform it from a frontier region to an "integral" province of a unitary Chinese state.[42]

Imperial China

Further information: Protectorate of the Western Regions, Protectorate General to Pacify the West, and

Xinjiang under Qing rule Historically, certain Chinese dynasties exerted control over parts of modern-day Xinjiang.[43] The region fully came under Chinese rule as a result of the westward expansion of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty during the 1700s, which also saw the conquests of Tibet and Mongolia.[44] Xinjiang was a peripheral part of the Qing empire and briefly regained independence during the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877).[45] The Uyghur population participated in the Dzungar genocide, resulting in the Qianlong emperor granting them permission to resettle in the former territories of Dzungaria.[46][47]

Republican Era (1912–1949)

The region was semi-autonomous during the Republic of China's Warlord Era (1916–1928), with parts controlled by the Kumul Khanate, the Ma clique and later the warlord Jin Shuren.[48][page needed] In 1933, the breakaway First East Turkestan Republic was established in the Kumul Rebellion,[49] but was conquered the following year by warlord Sheng Shicai with the help of the Soviet Union.[50] In 1944, the Ili Rebellion led to the establishment of the Second East Turkestan Republic, which was dependent on the Soviet Union until it was absorbed into the People's Republic of China in 1949.[51]

People's Republic of China (1949–present)

Present day map of Xinjiang and its internal and external borders From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Chinese government sponsored a mass migration of Han Chinese to Xinjiang and introduced policies designed to suppress cultural identity and religion in the region.[52] During this period, Uyghur independence organizations emerged with some support from the Soviet Union, with the East Turkestan People's Party being the largest in 1968.[53] During the 1970s, the Soviets supported the United Revolutionary Front of East Turkestan (URFET) against the Han Chinese.[54] During the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping, China pursued a new policy of cultural liberalization in Xinjiang and adopted a flexible language policy nationally.[55] Despite a positive response among party officials and minority groups, the Chinese government viewed this policy as unsuccessful and from the mid-1980s its official pluralistic language policy became increasingly subordinate to a covert policy of minority assimilation motivated by geopolitical concerns.[56] Consequently, and in Xinjiang particularly, multilingualism and cultural pluralism were restricted to favor a "monolingual, monocultural model", which in turn helped to embed and strengthen an oppositional Uyghur identity.[57] Attempts by the Chinese state to encourage economic development in the region by exploiting natural resources led to ethnic tension and discontent within Xinjiang over the region's lack of autonomy.[58] In April 1990, the Barin uprising, near Kashgar, was suppressed by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), involving a large number of deaths.[58][2][59] Writing in 1998, political scientist Barry Sautman considered policies designed to reduce inequality between Han Chinese and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang unsuccessful at eliminating conflicts because they were shaped by the "paternalistic and hierarchical approach to ethnic relations adopted by the Chinese government".[60]

In February 1997, a police roundup and execution of suspected "separatists" during Ramadan led to large demonstrations, which led to a PLA crackdown on protesters resulting in at least nine deaths in what became known as the Ghulja incident.[61][62][63] The Ürümqi bus bombings later that month killed nine people and injured 68, with Uyghur exile groups claiming responsibility.[64] In March 1997, a bus bomb killed two people, with responsibility claimed by Uyghur separatists and the Turkey-based "Organisation for East Turkistan Freedom".[65] The July 2009 Ürümqi riots, which resulted in over one hundred deaths, broke out in response to the Shaoguan incident, a violent dispute between Uyghur and Han Chinese factory workers.[66] Following the riots, Uyghur terrorists killed dozens of Han Chinese in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016.[67][68] These included the September 2009 Xinjiang unrest,[69] the 2011 Hotan attack,[70] the 2014 Kunming attack,[71] the April 2014 Ürümqi attack,[72] and the May 2014 Ürümqi attack.[73] The attacks were conducted by Uyghur separatists, with some orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (a UN-designated terrorist organization, formerly called the East Turkistan Islamic Movement).[74]

Government policies

Xinjiang police job advertisements by year Number of "re-education" related government procurement bids in Xinjiang

Initial "Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism"

Main article: Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism

During the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese state began to emphasize weiwen (stability maintenance) which led to an intensification of repression across the country. Some within the Party warned that increased action to combat instability which might not even exist could lead to a spiral of repression and unrest.[2] In April 2010, after the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, Zhang Chunxian replaced the former CCP secretary Wang Lequan, who had been behind religious policies in Xinjiang for 14 years.[75] New policies were implemented by Zhang Chunxian. Following the 2014 Kunming attack that killed 31 people, Xi Jinping told the Politburo "We should unite the people to build a copper and iron wall against terrorism", and "Make terrorists like rats scurrying across the street, with everybody shouting, 'Beat them!'" In April 2014, Xi traveled to Xinjiang and told police in Kashgar that "We must be as harsh as them, and show absolutely no mercy." A suicide bombing occurred in Ürümqi on the last day of his visit.[2]

In 2014, a secret meeting of CCP leadership was held in Beijing to find a solution to the problem, which would become known as the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism.[2] In May 2014, China publicly launched the campaign in Xinjiang in response to growing tensions between the Han Chinese and the Uyghur populations of Xinjiang.[76][77] Following the announcement of the campaign, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping held the Central Symposium on Work in Xinjiang, where he outlined new CCP policies toward Xinjiang and stated that "practice has proved that our party's ruling strategy in Xinjiang is correct and must be maintained in the long run".[78]

Following guidance from Beijing, CCP leadership in Xinjiang commenced a "People's War" against the "Three Evils" of separatism, terrorism, and extremism. They deployed two hundred thousand party cadres to Xinjiang and launched the Civil Servant-Family Pair Up program. Xi was dissatisfied with the initial results of the People's War and replaced Zhang Chunxian with Chen Quanguo in 2016. Following his appointment Chen oversaw the recruitment of tens of thousands of additional police officers and the division of society into three categories: trusted, average, and untrustworthy. He instructed his subordinates to "Take this crackdown as the top project", and "to preempt the enemy, to strike at the outset".[2]

Regulations since 2017

Further information: Xinjiang internment camps

Following a meeting with Xi in Beijing, Chen Quanguo held a rally in Ürümqi with ten thousand troops, helicopters, and armored vehicles. As they paraded, he announced a "smashing, obliterating offensive", and declared that they would "bury the corpses of terrorists and terror gangs in the vast sea of the People's War." He ordered them to "round up everyone who should be rounded up", and by April 2017 mass arrests had begun.[2] New bans and regulations were implemented on 1 April 2017. Abnormally long beards and the wearing of veils in public were both banned. Not watching state-run television or listening to radio broadcasts, refusing to abide by family planning policies, or refusing to allow one's children to attend state-run schools were all prohibited.[79]

In 2017, China's Ministry of Public Security began to procure race-based monitoring systems which could reportedly identify whether or not an individual was Uyghur. Despite its questionable accuracy, this allowed a "Uyghur alarm" to be added to surveillance systems. Enhanced border controls were also implemented with guilt being presumed in the absence of evidence. Zhu Hailun, Communist Party secretary of Kashgar, signed off on a bulletin in 2017 that presumed guilt in persons from Xinjing who had travelled abroad. According to Zhu, "If suspected terrorism cannot be ruled out, then a border control should be implemented to insure the person's arrest".[2]

In 2017, 73% of foreign journalists in China reported being restricted or prohibited from reporting in Xinjiang, up from 42% in 2016.[80] Alleged "re-education" efforts began in 2014 and were expanded in 2017.[81][82] Internment camps were built for the housing of students of the "re-education" programs, most of whom were Uyghurs. Chen ordered that the camps "be managed like the military and defended like a prison".[2] The Chinese government did not acknowledge the camps' existence until 2018 and called them "vocational education and training centers".[81][83] From 2019, the government began referring to them as "vocational training centers". The camps tripled in size from 2018 to 2019 despite the Chinese government stating that most of the detainees had been released.[81]

The use of these centers appears to have ended in 2019 following international pressure.[84] Academic Kerry Brown attributes their closures beginning in late 2019 to the expense required to operate them.[85] Although no comprehensive independent surveys of such centers have been performed as of October 2022, spot checks by journalists have found such sites converted or abandoned.[84] In 2022, a Washington Post reporter checked a dozen sites previously identified as re-education centers and found "[m]ost of them appeared to be empty or converted, with several sites labeled as coronavirus quarantine facilities, teachers' schools and vocational schools."[84]

In December 2021, Chen Quanguo was succeeded as Xinjiang Party Secretary by Ma Xingrui, the governor of Guangdong. Since his accession to the post, Xinjiang has seen relative normalization in some aspects, such as turnstiles between residential areas being removed and two-day breaks in weekends for public officials being restored.[86] Chen's departure led to the end of overt crackdowns and the campaign-style mobilization in Xinjiang, with Ma bringing what Zenz describes as normalizing a "coercive environment".[87]

Propaganda campaign

The Chinese government has engaged in a propaganda campaign to defend its actions in Xinjiang.[88] China initially denied the existence of the Xinjiang internment camps and attempted to cover up their existence.[89] In 2018, after widespread reporting forced it to admit that the Xinjiang internment camps exist, the Chinese government initiated a campaign to portray the camps as humane and to deny that human rights abuses occurred in Xinjiang.[90] In 2020 and 2021, the propaganda campaign expanded due to rising international backlash against government policies,[91] with the Chinese government worrying that it no longer had control of the narrative.[89]

Chinese authorities have responded to allegations of abuse by Uyghur women by mounting character attacks. This included the disclosure of confidential medical and personal information in an attempt to slander witnesses and undermine their testimony.[92] The goal of these attacks appeared to be to silence further criticism, rather than to refute specific claims made by critics.[93] Presentations given by Xinjiang's publicity department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to dispel allegations of abuse are closed to foreign journalists and feature pre-recorded questions as well as pre-recorded monologues from people in Xinjiang, including relatives of witnesses.[92]

Chinese government propaganda attacks have also targeted international journalists covering human rights abuses in Xinjiang.[94][95][96] After providing coverage critical of Chinese government abuses in Xinjiang, BBC News reporter John Sudworth was subjected to a campaign of propaganda and harassment by Chinese state-affiliated and CCP-affiliated media.[94][97][98] The public attacks resulted in Sudworth and his wife Yvonne Murray, who reports for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, fleeing China for Taiwan fearing for their safety.[97][99] The Chinese government has used social media as a part of its propaganda campaign.[100][101] The government purchased Facebook advertisements to spread propaganda designed to incite doubt on the existence and scope of human rights violations occurring within Xinjiang.[102][103][104] Douyin presents its users with Chinese state propaganda pertaining to the human rights abuses in Xinjiang.[101][105][106] Between July 2019 and early August 2019, CCP-owned tabloid the Global Times paid Twitter to promote tweets that denied that the Chinese government was committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang; Twitter later banned advertising from state-controlled media outlets on 19 August after removing large numbers of pro-Beijing bots from the social network.[107][108] In April 2021, the Chinese government released 5 propaganda videos titled, "Xinjiang is a Wonderful Land", and released a musical titled "The Wings of Songs" which portrayed Xinjiang as harmonious and peaceful.[109][110][111] The Wings of Songs portrays "a rural idyll of ethnic cohesion devoid of repression, mass surveillance" and without Islam.[112]

In June 2021, ProPublica documented a Chinese government-backed propaganda campaign on Twitter and YouTube involving more than 5000 videos analysed. The videos showed Uyghurs in Xinjiang denying abuses and scolding foreign officials and multinational corporations who had questioned China's human rights record in the province. Some of the videos' accounts were removed on YouTube as part of YouTube's efforts to combat spam and influence operations.[113] In October 2022, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute documented a number of CCP-backed Uyghur influencers in Xinjiang posting propaganda videos on Chinese and Western social media which pushed back against abuse allegations. Some of the influencers' accounts were suspended on Twitter for alleged inauthenticity.[114]

On 30 October 2023, the Chinese embassy in France posted a photo on X comparing the buildings in Xinjiang, which were standing intact, with buildings in Gaza that had been destroyed in the Gaza war.[115] East Turkestan Government in Exile leader Salih Hudayar and Uyghur lawyer Rayhan Asat criticized the photo as propaganda and argued that China's crackdown was more pervasive than the situation in Gaza.[115][116]

Counter-terrorism justification

China has used the global "war on terror" of the 2000s to frame "separatist" and ethnic unrest as acts of Islamist terrorism to legitimize its policies in Xinjiang.[117] Scholars such as Sean Roberts and David Tobin have described Islamophobia and fear of terrorism as discourses that have been used within China to justify repressive policies targeting Uyghurs, arguing that violence against Uyghurs should be seen in the context of Chinese colonialism, rather than exclusively as a part of an anti-terrorism campaign.[118][119] According to academic David Tobin, since 2012, "Chinese education about Uyghurs tends to frame Uyghur identities as racialised, culturally external existential threats to be defeated by state violence or teaching them to be Chinese."[120]

Arienne Dwyer, professor emerita at University of Kansas, has written that the US war on terror gave China an opportunity to characterise and "conflate" Uyghur nationalism with terrorism, particularity through the use of state-run media. Dwyer argues that the influence of fundamentalist forms of Islam such as Salafism within Xinjiang is overstated by China as it is tempered by Uyghur Sufism.[55] In December 2015, the Associated Press reported that China had effectively expelled Ursula Gauthier, a French journalist, "for questioning the official line equating ethnic violence in the western Muslim region with global terrorism".[121] Gauthier, who was the first foreign journalist forced to leave China since 2012, was subjected to what the AP described as an "abusive and intimidating campaign" by Chinese state media that accused her of "having hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" and that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman accused her of emboldening terrorism.[121]

In August 2018, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination decried the "broad definition of terrorism and vague references to extremism" used by Chinese legislation, noting that there were numerous reports of detention of large numbers of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities on the "pretext of countering terrorism".[122] In 2019, Sam Brownback, Nathan Sales, and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal each said that the Chinese government consistently misused "counterterrorism" as a pretext for cultural suppression and human rights abuses.[123][124] In 2021, Shirzat Bawudun, the former head of the Xinjiang department of justice, and Sattar Sawut, the former head of the Xinjiang education department, were sentenced to death with two years reprieve on terrorism and separatism charges.[125][126] Three other educators and two textbook editors were given lesser sentences.[127]

One of the Uyghur textbook editors, Yalqun Rozi, received a 15-year prison sentence.[128] His son, Kamaltürk Yalqun, speculated that the reason was that the textbooks his father had edited were "rich in Uyghur culture", and that the government is trying to eliminate that culture and to "erase history and write a new narrative".[129]

Human rights abuses

Further information: Human rights in China § Uyghurs

Inside internment camps

Main article: Xinjiang internment camps

Mass detention

Especially since 2016, internment camps have been a part of the Chinese government's strategy to govern Xinjiang[130] through the detention of ethnic minorities en masse.[131] Key contributors to international attention on the Xinjiang internment camps have included researcher Adrian Zenz, a social scientist at European School of Culture and Theology. Zenz authored one of the early estimates of the number of Uyghur detainees in Xinjiang, using accounting figures from a document reportedly leaked by anonymous Chinese public security officials to Istiqlal, a Turkey-based Uighur exile media organization. Zenz's first estimate placed the number of detainees at around 892,000 across 68 counties in spring 2018. Using his own research and reports by Radio Free Asia, Zenz later estimated that figures "anywhere between several hundred thousand and just over one million" were reasonable.[132]

In 2021, CNN published an interview with a former Xinjiang police officer who said that when the police planned to raid a Uyghur village, they would sometimes arrange for the entire village to gather for a meeting with their chief so that the police could show up and arrest everyone. On other occasions the police would go door-to-door with rifles and pull all the residents from their homes overnight. Once the police had arrested people, they would interrogate and beat every man, woman, and child over age 14 until they kneeled on the floor and cried.[133] Researchers and organizations have made various estimates of the number of Xinjiang internment camp detainees. In 2018, United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination vice chairperson Gay McDougall indicated that around 1 million Uyghurs were being held in internment camps.[134] While McDougall did not cite sources for her statement, it was consistent with a report submitted to the committee by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders.[134] Other estimates submitted to the committee were more careful, with Human Rights Watch estimating at least tens of thousands and Amnesty International estimating tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of detainees.[134]

In March 2019, Adrian Zenz told the United Nations that 1.5 million Uyghurs had been detained in camps, saying that the number accounted for the increases in the size and scope of detention in the region and public reporting on the stories of Uyghur exiles with family in internment camps.[135] In July 2019, Zenz wrote in a paper published by the Journal of Political Risk that 1.5 million Uyghurs had been extrajudicially detained, which he described as being "an equivalent to just under one in six adult members of a Turkic and predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang."[136] In November 2019, Zenz estimated that the number of internment camps in Xinjiang had surpassed 1,000.[137] In July 2020, Zenz wrote in Foreign Policy that his estimate had increased since November 2019, estimating that a total of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities had been extrajudicially detained in what he described as "the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust", arguing that the Chinese Government was engaging in policies in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[138] In September 2020, a Chinese government white paper stated that an average of 1.29 million workers went through "vocational training" per year between 2014 and 2019, though it does not specify how many of the people received the training in camps or how many times they went through training. Adrian Zenz stated that this "gives us a possible scope of coercive labor" occurring in Xinjiang.[139]

According to a 2020 study by Joanne Smith Finley, "political re-education involves coercive Sinicization, deaths in the camps through malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, withheld medical care, and violence (beatings); rape of male and female prisoners; and, since the end of 2018, transfers of the most recalcitrant prisoners – usually young, religious males – to high-security prisons in Xinjiang or inner China. Other camp 'graduates' have been sent into securitized forced labour. Those who remain outside the camps have been terrified into religious and cultural self-censorship through the threat of internment."[3] According to Zenz, the mass internments peaked in 2018 and have abated since then, with officials shifting focus towards forced labor programs.[140] In September 2023, Amnesty International said that they were "witnessing more and more arbitrary detention", but that detained individuals were being moved from the camps into the formal prison system.[141] As of April 2024, the Uyghur Human Rights Project estimated that China had imprisoned 449,000 Uyghurs or about one in 17.[142]

Deaths

There have been numerous reports since 2018 of Uyghurs dying in detention, and of former detainees dying as a result of injuries sustained in custody. Human Rights Watch stated that as of April 2021 there had been at least 177 such deaths, and that the Chinese government often refused to acknowledge them.[143] Other deaths have reportedly occurred through starvation and refusal to provide medical care.[3] According to the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, Uyghur religious figures are more likely to die or disappear in custody than other detainees.[144] There have been several reports of mass deaths of prisoners in the internment camps.[145][146] In 2019 Radio Free Asia, a United States government-funded broadcaster, reported that a Chinese police officer who previously served as a camp administrative assistant had confirmed that 150 Uyghurs had died at the No. 1 internment camp in Kuqa County.[147] Former detainee Mihrigul Tursun claimed that nine women had died in one camp during the three months she was held there, which she attributed to the poor conditions they were held in.[148]

American researcher Ethan Gutmann estimated in December 2020 that 5 to 10 percent of detainees had died each year in the camps.[149] Russian-American scholar Gene Bunin[150] created the Xinjiang Victims Database which had documented 12,050 victims in April 2021,[151] and 225 deaths for those serving official prison sentences as of November 2023.[152] The database drew ridicule online after it included photos of Hong Kong actors Andy Lau and Chow Yun-fat in a list of police officers allegedly responsible for the crackdowns.[153][154][155] After it drew attention on social media, the Xinjiang Victims Database[156] responded that the data were sourced from a file cache of an Ürümqi database previously written about in The Intercept, with the police officers occasionally using avatars that were not photos of themselves, including that of Andy Lau, which had not been noticed by the database staff. The photos assigned to police officer profiles also contained a cartoon portrait of police officer Jin Xiaowei, believed to be his likeness,[157] which was also criticized in Chinese media.[158]

In 2021, a former Xinjiang police officer told Sky News that imprisoned Uyghurs were frequently beaten to death by interrogators during his service.[159]

Torture

Mihrigul Tursun, a former detainee of the Xinjiang internment camps Rights groups and others have reported that Uyghurs living in Xinjiang have been subjected to torture by authorities.[160][161][162] A former Chinese police detective, exiled in Europe, revealed to CNN in 2021 details of the systematic torture of Uyghurs in detention camps in Xinjiang, acts in which he had participated, and the fear of his own arrest had he dissented while in China.[133] Mihrigul Tursun, a young Uyghur mother, said that she was "tortured and subjected to other brutal conditions."[163] In 2018, Tursun gave an interview[164][165] during which she described her experience while at the camps; she was drugged, interrogated for days without sleep, subjected to intrusive medical examinations, and strapped in a chair and received electric shocks. It was her third time being sent to a camp since 2015.

Tursun told reporters that she remembered interrogators tell her "Being a Uighur is a crime."[163] Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying stated that Tursun was taken into custody by police on "suspicion of inciting ethnic hatred and discrimination" for a period lasting 20 days and denied that Tursun was ever detained in an internment camp.[165][166][167] Another past detainee, Kayrat Samarkand, described wearing "what they called 'iron clothes,' a suit made of metal that weighed over 50 pounds [23 kg]... It forced my arms and legs into an outstretched position. I couldn't move at all, and my back was in terrible pain...They made people wear this thing to break their spirits. After 12 hours, I became so soft, quiet and lawful."[168]

Waterboarding is reportedly among the forms of torture which have been used as part of the indoctrination process.[169]

Changes in family planning policy

When China's one-child policy was instituted in 1979, the restrictions largely applied to Han Chinese, people from ethnic minorities were generally exempt. In 2017, the Chinese government removed these exemptions such that the same family size limits applied to everyone, regardless of ethnicity.[170][16][17] According to a 2021 ASPI report, since around April 2017, the Chinese government had reduced or removed preferential family planning exemptions previously available to ethnic minorities and pursued campaigns targeting what were described as "illegal births" in Xinjiang. The report found that these measures were associated with a sharp decline in official birth rates in Xinjiang, which fell by almost half (48.74%) in the two years between 2017 and 2019.[17]

Compulsory sterilizations and contraception

In 2019, reports of forced sterilization in Xinjiang began to surface.[171][172][173] Zumrat Dwut, a Uyghur woman, says that she was forcibly sterilized by tubal ligation during her time in a camp before her husband was able to get her out through requests to Pakistani diplomats.[19][174] The Xinjiang regional government denies that she was forcibly sterilized.[19] Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh teacher who later fled China, said that rape and torture were commonplace and that authorities forced detainees to take a medicine that left some individuals sterile or cognitively impaired.[175] In 2020, the Associated Press interviewed seven former detainees from internment camps who said they had been forced to take birth control pills or injected with fluids without explanation, which caused women to stop getting periods. The AP suggested the fluid may have been the hormonal medication Depo-Provera, which is commonly used in Xinjiang hospitals for birth control.[9]

In April 2021, exiled Uyghur doctor Gülgine reported that forced sterilization of ethnic Uyghurs persisted since the 1980s.[176] Since 2014, there was an indication for a sharp increase in sterilization of Uyghur women to ensure that Uyghurs would remain a minority in the region.[176] Gülgine said "On some days there were about 80 surgeries to carry out forced sterilizations". She presented intrauterine devices (IUDs) and remarked that "these devices were inserted into women's wombs" to forcibly cause infertility.[176]

Indoctrination

Former detainee Kayrat Samarkand described his camp routine in an article for NPR in 2018: "In addition to living in cramped quarters, he says inmates had to sing songs praising Chinese leader Xi Jinping before being allowed to eat. He says detainees were forced to memorize a list of what he calls '126 lies' about religion: 'Religion is opium, religion is bad, you must believe in no religion, you must believe in the Communist Party,' he remembers. 'Only [the] Communist Party could lead you to the bright future.'"[168] In 2021, Gulbahar Haitiwaji reported being coerced into denouncing her family after her daughter was photographed at a protest in Paris.[177]

Forced labor

Further information: Xinjiang cotton industry, Slavery in China, and 2021 Xinjiang cotton boycott

According to Quartz, the Xinjiang region is described by the Uyghur Human Rights Project as a 'cotton gulag' where prison labor is used throughout the cotton supply chain.[178] Tahir Hamut, a Uyghur, worked in a labor camp during elementary school when he was a child, and he later worked in a labor camp as an adult, performing tasks such as picking cotton, shoveling gravel, and making bricks. He said: "Everyone is forced to do all types of hard labor or face punishment. Anyone unable to complete their duties will be beaten."[179] BuzzFeed News reported in December 2020 that "[f]orced labor on a vast scale is almost certainly taking place" inside the Xinjiang internment camps, with 135 factory facilities identified within the camps covering over 21 million square feet (2.0 km2) of land.[180] The report noted that "[f]ourteen million square feet of new factories were built in 2018 alone" within the camps and that "former detainees said they were never given a choice about working, and that they earned a pittance or no pay at all".[180]

A Chinese website hosted by Baidu has posted job listings for transferring Uyghur laborers in batches of 50 to 100 people from Xinjiang to elsewhere within China.[181] The 2019 Five Year Plan of the Xinjiang government has an official "labour transfer programme" "to provide more employment opportunities for the surplus rural labour force".[181] These batches of Uyghurs are under "half-military" style management and direct supervision. A seafood processing plant owner said that the Uyghur workforce in his factory had returned home to Xinjiang due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the Uyghurs had been paid and housed properly while at his factory.[181]

As part of forced labor schemes, Uyghurs have been transferred to factories outside of Xinjiang.[182] According to research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, due to the transfer of Uyghurs from Xinjiang to factories within China, Uyghur workforce was present in the factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global companies, including Marks & Spencer, Samsung, and Nike.[183] In response, companies such as Marks & Spencer pledged that it would not happen again by checking supply lines.[citation needed] Samsung said that it would ensure that previous controls ensured good work conditions under its code of conduct.[184] Apple, Esprit, and Fila did not respond.[citation needed]

Posters in Bordeaux, France, accusing Nike of complicity in the Uyghur genocide. The Chinese government is reported to have pressured foreign companies to reject claims of abuses.[185] Apple was asked by the Chinese government to censor Uyghur-related news apps, among others, on its devices sold in China.[186] Companies such as Nike and Adidas were boycotted in China after they criticized the treatment of Uyghurs, which resulted in significant drop in sales.[187]

Medical experiments

Former inmates have said that they were subjected to medical experimentation.[188][189]

Organized mass rape and sexual torture

From 2019 to 2021, BBC News and other sources reported accounts of organized mass rape and sexual torture carried out by Chinese authorities in the internment camps.[190][191][192] Multiple women who were formerly detained in the Xinjiang internment camps have publicly made accusations of systemic sexual abuse, including rape, gang rape, and sexual torture, such as forced vaginal and anal penetrations with electric batons,[193] and rubbing chili pepper paste on genitals.[194][144] Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who was forced to work in the camps, told the BBC that employees of the internment camp in which she was detained conducted rapes en masse, saying that camp guards "picked the girls and young women they wanted and took them away".[195] She also told the BBC of an organized gang rape, in which a woman around age 21 was forced to make a confession in front of a crowd of 100 other women detained in the camps, before being raped by multiple policemen in front of the assembled crowd.[195] In 2018, a Globe and Mail interview with Sauytbay indicated that she did not personally see violence at the camp, but did witness malnourishment and a complete lack of freedom.[196] Tursunay Ziawudun, a woman who was detained in the internment camps for a period of nine months, told the BBC that women were removed from their cells every night to be raped by Chinese men in masks and that she was subjected to three separate instances of gang rape while detained.[195] In an earlier interview, Ziawudun reported that while she "wasn't beaten or abused" while in the camps, she was instead subjected to long interrogations, forced to watch propaganda, had her hair cut, was under constant surveillance, and kept in cold conditions with poor food, leading to her developing anemia.[197] Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, has stated that Chinese police sexually abused detainees during electric shock tortures, saying that "there were four kinds of electric shock... the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick".[195]

Chinese government officials deny all allegations that there have been any human rights abuses within the internment camps.[195] Reuters reported in March 2021 that Chinese government officials also disclosed personal medical information of women witnesses in an effort to discredit them.[198] In February 2021, the BBC released an extensive report which alleged that systematic sexual abuse was taking place within the camps.[199] The gang rapes and sexual torture were alleged to be part of a systemic rape culture which included both policemen and those from outside the camps who pay for time with the prettiest girls.[191] CNN reported in February 2021 about a worker and several former female inmates which survived the camps; they provided details about murder, torture and rape in the camps, which they described as routinely occurring.[200]

Outside internment camps

IUDs and birth control

China performs regular pregnancy checks on minority women within Xinjiang.[9] Some CCP officials have spoken about the "demographic imbalance" in southern Xinjiang; Liu Yilei, deputy secretary-general of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps CCP Committee, said that the "proportion of the Han population in southern Xinjiang is too low, less than 15 percent. The problem of demographic imbalance is southern Xinjiang's core issue."[201] Zenz reported that 80% of "new" Chinese IUD placements (defined in his study as total IUD placements minus IUD removals) in 2018 occurred in Xinjiang, despite the region constituting only 1.8% of the country's population.[202][203][204] Assessing Zenz's analysis, Xinjiang University Professor Lin Fangfei argued that the appropriate measure is that 8.7% of IUD operations were performed in Xinjiang, adding that the Uyghur population growth was bigger than the Han population growth in the region.[205][206] Zenz reported that birth rates in counties whose majority population consists of ethnic minorities began to fall in 2015, "the very year that the government began to single out the link between population growth and 'religious extremism'".[207] Prior to the recent drops in birth rates, the Uyghur population had had a growth rate 2.6 times that of the Han between 2005 and 2015.[208] According to Zenz's analysis of Chinese government documents, the Chinese government had planned to sterilize between 14% and 34% of childbearing-age married women in two predominantly Uyghur counties in 2019, while seeking to sterilize 80% of childbearing-age women in four rural prefectures in Xinjiang's south that are primarily inhabited by ethnic minorities.[202]

According to a fax provided to CNN by the Xinjiang regional government, birth rates in Xinjiang fell by 32.68% from 2017 to 2018.[19] In 2019, the birth rates fell by 24% year over year, a significantly greater drop than the 4.2% decline in births experienced across the entire People's Republic of China.[9][19][209] According to Zenz, population growth rates in the two largest Uyghur prefectures in Xinjiang, Kashgar and Hotan, fell by 84% between 2015 and 2018.[11][210] According to Adrian Zenz, Chinese government documents mandate that birth control violations of Uyghurs are punishable by extrajudicial internment.[211] Official records from Karakax County between 2017 and 2019 leaked to the Financial Times showed that the most common reason for detaining Uyghurs in camps was violation of family planning policies, with the second most common reason being for practising Islam. A 2018 Karakax government report said it had implemented "maximally strict family planning policies".[212]

In 2020, an Associated Press investigation reported that forced birth control in Xinjiang was "far more widespread and systematic than previously known", and that Chinese authorities had forced IUD insertions, sterilization and abortions upon "hundreds of thousands" of Uyghur and other minority women.[9] Many women stated that they were forced to receive contraceptive implants.[13][194] The full scale of forced sterilization in Xinjiang is unknown, partly because of the Chinese government's failure to collect or share data, as well as the reluctance of victims to come forward due to stigma.[213] The measures have been compared to China's past one-child policy targeting its Han population.[25][214] According to CNN, regional authorities do not dispute the decrease in birth rates but deny that genocide and forced sterilization is occurring; Xinjiang authorities maintain that the decrease in birth rates is due to "the comprehensive implementation of the family planning policy."[19] The Chinese Embassy in the United States said the policy was positive and empowering for Uyghur women, writing that, "in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent." Twitter removed the tweet for violating its policies.[92][215]

Forced cohabitation, co-sleeping, rape, and abortion

Further information: Civil Servant-Family Pair Up

Beginning in 2018,[216] over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to assimilation, as well as to watch for frowned-upon religious and cultural practices.[217] The "Pair Up and Become Family" program assigned Han Chinese men to monitor the homes of Uyghurs and sleep in the same beds as Uyghur women.[218] According to Radio Free Asia, these Han Chinese government workers were trained to call themselves "relatives" and forcibly engaged in co-habitation of Uyghur homes for the purpose of promoting "ethnic unity".[217] Radio Free Asia reports that these men "regularly sleep in the same beds as the wives of men detained in the region's internment camps."[219] Chinese officials maintained that co-sleeping is acceptable, provided that a distance of one meter is maintained between the women and the "relative" assigned to the Uyghur home.[219] Uyghur activists state that no such restraint takes place, citing pregnancy and forced marriage numbers, and name the program a campaign of "mass rape disguised as 'marriage'."[citation needed] Human Rights Watch has condemned the program as a "deeply invasive forced assimilation practice", while the World Uyghur Congress states that it represents the "total annihilation of the safety, security and well-being of family members."[219]

A 37-year-old pregnant woman from the Xinjiang region said that she attempted to give up her Chinese citizenship to live in Kazakhstan but was told by the Chinese government that she needed to come back to China to complete the process. She alleges that officials seized the passports of her and her two children before coercing her into receiving an abortion to prevent her brother from being detained in an internment camp.[220]

Organ harvesting allegations and concerns

See also: Organ harvesting in China

Ethan Gutmann[221] states that organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience became prevalent when members of the Uyghur ethnic group were targeted in security crackdowns and "strike hard campaigns" during the 1990s. According to Gutmann, organ harvesting from Uyghur prisoners dropped off by 1999 with members of the Falun Gong religious group overtaking the Uyghurs as a source of organs.[222][223][224] In the 2010s, concerns about organ harvesting from Uyghurs resurfaced.[225][226] According to a unanimous determination by the China Tribunal in May 2020, China has persecuted and medically tested Uyghurs. Its report expressed concerns that Uyghurs were vulnerable to being subjected to organ harvesting but did not yet have evidence of its occurrence.[227] In November 2020, Gutmann told RFA that a former hospital in Aksu, China, which had been converted into a Xinjiang internment camp, would allow local officials to streamline the organ harvesting process and provide a steady stream of harvested organs from Uyghurs.[228] In a December 2020 Haaretz article, Gutmann stated he believed at least 25,000 people were being killed in Xinjiang for their organs each year, claiming that "fast lanes" had been created for the movement of organs in local airports, and crematoria had recently been built in the province in order to more easily dispose of victims' bodies.[221][229] In 2020, a Chinese woman alleged that Uyghurs were killed to provide halal organs for primarily Saudi customers. She also alleged that in one such instance in 2006, 37 Saudi clients received organs from killed Uyghurs at the Department of Liver Transplantation of Tianjin Taida Hospital. Dr. Enver Tohti, a former oncology surgeon in Xinjiang, thought the allegation was credible.[230][231][232] In June 2021, the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council voiced concerns over having "received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations." The press release stated that UN's human rights experts "were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged 'organ harvesting' targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China."[233]

In July 2025, the Xinjiang Health Commission announced plans to expand the region's organ transplant centers from three to nine by 2030. Human rights experts and medical professionals expressed concerns, noting that Xinjiang's organ donation rate is 0.69 per million people, well below the national average of 4.6.[234][235]

Forced labor

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government imposed forced labor conditions on Uyghurs.[236][237] In January 2020, videos surfaced on Douyin showing large numbers of Uyghurs being placed into airplanes, trains, and busses for transportation to forced factory labor programs.[238] In March 2020, the Chinese government was found to be using the Uyghur minority as forced sweatshop labor. According to a report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from Xinjiang for purposes of forced labor in at least twenty-seven factories around China.[239] According to the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a UK-based charity, corporations such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Amazon, Apple, BMW, Fila, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Nike, North Face, Puma, PVH, Samsung, and Uniqlo sourced from these factories.[11][240] Over 570,000 Uyghurs are forced to pick cotton by hand in Xinjiang.[241][242] According to an archived report from Nankai University, the Chinese forced labor system is designed to reduce Uyghur population density.[243] In total, by 2021, the Chinese government had relocated more than 600,000 Uyghurs to industrial workplaces as a part of their forced labor programs.[238][237] A June 2025 report published by Global Rights Compliance found evidence linking 68 Western and international companies to forced labor in China's critical minerals industry, which is centered in the Xinjiang region.[244] Xinjiang partly relies on forced labor transfer programs, which targets Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim populations, and experts say Uyghurs are forcibly transferred to the mines or face punishment such as imprisonment, income loss, and harassment.[244][245] Global Rights Compliance found 77 critical mineral sector companies operating in Xinjiang and identified 15 companies, including those outside China, actively sourcing from them. Some of the businesses had been flagged by the United Nations as being involved in state-run labor transfer programs. The report traced the XUAR mineral supply chains to various global brands, such as paint, thermos, aerospace, defense, nuclear tool, coffee, and soft drink companies.[245][244] Regarding the report, spokesperson Lin Jian for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China responded that "China's Xinjiang has never forced anyone to transfer employment" and that it was a "complete lie" by "individual anti-China forces".

He further added that individual organizations needed "to stop interfering in China's internal affairs under the guise of human rights and stop undermining Xinjiang's prosperity and stability."[244] Under the tenure of Ma Xingrui, the force labor programs have increasingly been tied to Xinjiang's international trade. Under Ma's tenure from 2021 to 2025, Xinjiang's exports to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union increased by 465%, increasing by 71% from 2024 to 2025 alone.[87]

Outside China

In 2016, there was a brief window of opportunity for Uyghurs with passports to leave China; many did so but had to leave relatives and children without passports behind. Many of these families have not been reunited.[246] China has been accused of coordinating efforts to coerce Uyghurs living overseas into returning to China, using family still in China to pressure members of the diaspora. Chinese officials dismiss the accusations as fabrications.[247] China's robust surveillance system extends overseas, with a special emphasis placed on monitoring the Uyghur diaspora.[248] According to the MIT Technology Review "China's hacking of Uyghurs is so aggressive that it is effectively global, extending far beyond the country's own borders. It targets journalists, dissidents, and anyone who raises Beijing's suspicions of insufficient loyalty."[249]

In March 2021 Facebook reported that hackers based in China had been conducting cyberespionage against members of the Uyghur diaspora.[250][251] Uyghurs in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been detained and deported back to China, sometimes separating families.[252][253] CNN reported in June 2021 that "rights activists fear that even as Western nations take China to task over its treatment of Uyghurs, countries in the Middle East and beyond will increasingly be willing to acquiesce to its crackdown on members of the ethnic group at home and abroad."[252] According to the Associated Press, "Dubai also has a history as a place where Uyghurs are interrogated and deported back to China."[254]

A joint report from the Uyghur Human Rights Project and the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs found 1,546 cases of Uyghurs being detained and deported at the behest of Chinese authorities in 28 countries from 1997 to March 2021.[255] In 2025, reports emerged of Chinese passports containing false information issued by Chinese consulates to Uyghurs living abroad in order to create a pretext for deportation for possessing a "fake" passport.[256] From 2023, China quietly opened the borders of Xinjiang to allow visits from overseas Uyghurs. The policy change quickly became known within the Uyghur diaspora community. According to Zenz and Uyghur activist Muetter Tohti, a U.S. based Uyghur activist had told them that "while Uyghur Americans still concealed their trips in 2024 out of fear of criticism by other community members, by 2025, the practice had become normalized".[257] Since the change in policies, even some formerly openly critical of China's policies have visited Xinjiang and abandoned their activism after they returned. Additionally, some residents of Xinjiang began to be allowed to travel abroad to see relatives. Some overseas Uyghurs who have returned to Xinjiang report being interrogated by the police, and being offered benefits for them and their familues in exchange for information about Uyghur communities abroad or agreeing to make propaganda for Xinjiang. According to Zenz and Tohti, China's "strategy of transnational co-optation is achieving what years of overt threats did not", as many in the Uyghur diaspora are willing to curb their criticism to be allowed to visit Xinjiang, meaning that "protests and advocacy has declined precipitously".[257]

Use of biometric and surveillance

technology

Chinese authorities use biometric technology to track individuals.[216] According to Yahir Imin, Chinese authorities drew his blood, scanned his face, recorded his fingerprints, and documented his voice.[216] China collects genetic material from millions of Uyghurs. China uses facial recognition technology to sort people by ethnicity, and uses DNA to tell if an individual is a Uyghur. China has been accused of creating "technologies used for hunting people."[258] In 2017, security-related construction tripled in Xinjiang. Charles Rollet stated, "projects include not only security cameras but also video analytics hubs, intelligent monitoring systems, big data centers, police checkpoints, and even drones."[259][260] Drone manufacturer DJI began providing surveillance drones to local police in 2017.[261] According to ASPI, the Ministry of Public Security invested billions of dollars in two government plans: the Skynet project (天网工程) and the Sharp Eyes project (雪亮工程).[260] These two projects attempted to use facial recognition to "resolutely achieve no blind spots, no gaps, no blank spots" by 2020.[2] A report by ASPI highlighted Morgan Stanley's claim that, by 2020, 400 million surveillance cameras were to be operating.[260] Chinese companies including SenseTime, CloudWalk, Yitu, Megvii, and Hikvision built algorithms to allow the Chinese government to track the Muslim minority group.[262]

In July 2020, the United States Department of Commerce sanctioned 11 Chinese firms, including two subsidiaries of BGI Group, for violating the human rights of Uyghur Muslims, by exploiting their DNA.[263] BGI Group along with Abu Dhabi-based AI and cloud computing firm Group 42 – accused of espionage in 2019 – were named by the US departments of Homeland Security and State in an October 2020 warning issued to Nevada against the use of the 200,000 COVID-19 test kits donated by UAE under the partnership of G42 and the BGI Group. US intelligence agencies warned foreign powers who were exploiting patients' medical samples to dig into their medical history, genetic traits, and illnesses.[264]

Biometric data

While he was Xinjiang Party secretary, Chen Quanguo launched "Physicals for All", purportedly a medical care program. "Every Xinjiang resident between the ages of twelve and 65" was required to provide DNA samples. Also collected were data on "blood types, fingerprints, voice-prints, iris patterns".[2] Officials in Tumxuk gathered hundreds of blood samples.[258] Tumxuk was named a "major battlefield for Xinjiang's security work" by the state news media.[258] In January 2018, a forensic DNA lab overseen by the Institute of Forensic Science of China was built there.[258] Lab documents showed that it used software created by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts company.[258] This software was used in correspondence to create genetic sequencers, helpful in analyzing DNA. In response, Thermo Fisher declared in February that it would cease sales to the Xinjiang region as a result of "fact-specific assessments".[258]

GPS tracking of cars

Security officials ordered residents in China's northwest region to install GPS tracking devices in their vehicles, allowing authorities to track their movements. Authorities said that it "is necessary to counteract the activities of Islamist extremists and separatists". An announcement from officials in Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture proclaimed that "there is a severe threat from international terrorism, and cars have been used as a key means of transport for terrorists as well as constantly serving as weapons. It is, therefore, necessary to monitor and track all vehicles in the prefecture."[265]

Cultural effects

See also: Islam in China (1911–present) and Islamophobia in China

Mosques

Mosque in Tuyoq, Xinjiang (2005) Mosques, Muslim shrines, and cemeteries in Xinjiang have been the target of systematic destruction.[2][266] In 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) used satellite imagery of approximately 900 religious sites, to estimate that around 16,000 mosques may have been destroyed or damaged as a result of government policies since 2017, with minarets reportedly removed and "decorative features scrubbed away or painted over".[2][267][268] In 2005, Human Rights Watch reported that "information scattered in official sources suggests that retaliation" against mosques not sponsored by the Chinese state was prevalent and that the Xinjiang Party Secretary expressed that Uyghurs "should not have to build new places for religious activities".[269] The Chinese government prohibited minors from participating in religious activities in Xinjiang in a manner that, according to Human Rights Watch, "has no basis in Chinese law".[269]

According to an analysis from The Guardian, over one-third of mosques and religious sites in China suffered "significant structural damage" between 2016 and 2018, with nearly one-sixth of all mosques and shrines completely razed.[270] This included the tomb of Imam Asim, a mud tomb in the Taklamakan Desert, and the Ordam shrine at the mazar of Ali Arslan Khan.[271] According to The Guardian, Uyghur Muslims believe that repeated pilgrimages to these tombs fulfill a Muslim's obligation to complete the Hajj.[270] A 2018 ABC News report stated that there was "systematic repression and imprisonment of the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang", and that the "destruction of cultural and religiously significant Islamic buildings" in the region may have been formed as part of this ongoing repression.[90] In 2019, Bellingcat, in response to allegations made on Twitter regarding the destruction of mosques in China, published a report that stated that Keriya Aitika Mosque appeared to be "razed" based on the images posted on Google Earth, while noting it was unclear at the time whether the Kargilik Mosque had been demolished.[266] In the same year, Indonesian scholar Said Aqil Siradj disputed that Uyghurs faced persecution, saying there was an increasing number of mosques being built and repaired in Xinjiang.[272][273] Id Kah Mosque in Xinjiang is China's largest.[274] Radio Free Asia reported that in 2018, a plaque containing Quranic scriptures, that had long hung outside the front entrance of the mosque, had been removed by the authorities. Turghunjan Alawudun, director of the World Uyghur Congress, said the plaque was removed as "one aspect of the Chinese regime's evil policies meant to eliminate the Islamic faith among Uyghurs... and Uyghurs themselves".[275] Anna Fifield of The Independent wrote in 2020 that Kashgar no longer had any working mosques.[276] The Globe and Mail reported that the only services at the Id Kah mosque, which had been turned into a tourist attraction, were staged to give foreign visitors the impression that religion was being practiced freely and that mosque attendance numbered only in the dozens.[277][278] Indonesian outlet Antara released a video in 2021 documenting that 800 worshipers were in the mosque for Ramadan, but also that there was no iftar ritual due to pandemic restrictions.[279]

Radio Free Asia reported that starting from early 2020, in response to international criticism, Chinese authorities started limited easing of religious restrictions in Xinjiang, reopening some mosques that were closed down.[280] However, the broadcaster said that most Uyghurs had not returned to the mosques, fearful of their experiences in the previous crackdowns, and that Hui Muslims were given greater leeway than Uyghur Muslims.[280] During a visit to Xinjiang in 2023, a Malaysian delegation of reporters and youth association representatives met with Abdureqip Tormurniyaz, the head of the Xinjiang Islamic Institute [zh] in Ürümqi. Abdureqip showed them the mosque at the campus where students would be taught to lead prayers and carry out other Islamic tasks. He added that there were 8 other branches of the institute across Xinjiang with freedom accorded to practice religion and graduates being well-prepared to become imams or religious teachers. Bernama noted that the perception from the visit was in sharp contrast to Western criticism of Uyghurs being religiously persecuted.[281]

Education

Entrance to a school in Turpan, a Uyghur-majority city in Xinjiang, in 2018. The sign at the gate, written in Chinese, reads: "[You are] entering the school grounds. Please speak the national language [i.e. Mandarin Chinese] In 2011, schools in Xinjiang transitioned to what officials called a policy of bilingual education. The primary medium of instruction is Standard Chinese, with only a few hours a week devoted to Uyghur literature. Despite this policy, few Han children are taught to speak Uyghur.[282] Uyghur students are increasingly attending residential schools far from their home communities where they cannot speak Uyghur.[283] According to a 2020 report from Radio Free Asia (RFA), monolingual Chinese language education has been introduced in an influential high school in Kashgar that formerly provided bilingual education.[284]

Sayragul Sauytbay described how she was forced to teach at an internment camp, saying the camp was "cramped and unhygienic" with her detainee students given only basic sustenance. Sauytbay added that authorities forced the detainees to learn Chinese, sit through indoctrination classes, and make public confessions.[175] In 2021, the standard Uyghur language textbooks used in Xinjiang since the early 2000s were outlawed and their authors and editors sentenced to death or life imprisonment on separatism charges. The textbooks had been created and approved by relevant government officials; however, according to the AP in 2021, the Chinese government said that the "2003 and 2009 editions of the textbooks contained 84 passages preaching ethnic separatism, violence, terrorism and religious extremism and that several people were inspired by the books to participate in a bloody anti-government riot in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009".[127]

Detained academics and religious figures

Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti In 2019 the Uyghur Human Rights Project identified 386 Uyghur intellectuals who had been imprisoned, detained, or disappeared since early 2017.[285] Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life in prison in 2014. Amnesty International called his sentence unjustified and deplorable.[286] Rahile Dawut, a prominent Uyghur anthropologist who studied and preserved Islamic shrines, traditional songs, and folklore, disappeared.[287] RFA reported that the Chinese government jailed Uyghur Imam Abduheber Ahmet after he took his son to a religious school not sanctioned by the state.[288] They reported that Ahmet had previously been lauded by China as a "five-star" imam but was sentenced in 2018 to over five years in prison for his action.[288]

Cemeteries

In September 2019, Agence France-Presse (AFP) visited 13 destroyed cemeteries across four cities and witnessed exposed bones remaining in four of them. Through an examination of satellite images, the press agency determined that the grave destruction campaign had been ongoing for more than a decade.[289] According to a previous AFP report, three cemeteries in Xayar County were among dozens of Uyghur cemeteries destroyed in Xinjiang between 2017 and 2019. The unearthed human bones from the cemeteries in Xayar County were discarded.[290][291] In January 2020, a CNN report based on an analysis of Google Maps satellite imagery said that Chinese authorities had destroyed more than 100 graveyards in Xinjiang, primarily Uyghur ones. CNN linked the destruction of the cemeteries to the government's campaign to control the Uyghurs and Muslims more broadly. The Chinese government claimed that the cemetery and tomb destruction were relocations due to lack of maintenance and that the dead were re-interred in new standardized cemeteries.[292][293] This is all part of China's campaign to effectively eradicate any evidence of who we are, to effectively make us like the Han Chinese. ... That's why they're destroying all of these historical sites, these cemeteries, to disconnect us from our history, from our fathers and our ancestors.

— Salih Hudayar, whose great-grandparents' graveyard was demolished[290][291] Among the destroyed cemeteries is Sultanim Cemetery (37°07′02″N 79°56′04″E), the central Uyghur historical graveyard with generations of burials, and the most sacred shrine in Hotan city, which was demolished and converted into a parking lot between 2018 and 2019.[294] China Global Television Network (CGTN), a Chinese state-owned international channel affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, said that the graves were relocated.[295]

Marriage

According to American journalist Leta Hong Fincher, the Chinese government offered Uyghur couples incentives to have fewer children, and for women to marry non-Uyghurs.[296][page needed] According to the outreach coordinator for the U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project,[297] Zubayra Shamseden, the Chinese government "wants to erase Uighur culture and identity by remaking its women."[298] Marriages between Uyghurs and Han are encouraged with government subsidies. In August 2014, local authorities in Cherchen County (Qiemo County) announced, "Incentive Measures Encouraging Uighur-Chinese Intermarriage", including a 10,000 CNY (US$1,450) cash reward per annum for the first five years to such intermarried couples as well as preferential treatment in employment and housing plus free education for the couples, their parents and offspring. County CCP Secretary Zhu Xin remarked:[299] Our advocacy of intermarriage is promoting positive energy ... Only by promoting the establishment of a social structure, and community environment in which all ethnic groups are embedded in each other ... can we boost the great unity, ethnic fusion, and development of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, and finally realize our China dream of the great rejuvenation of our Chinese nation In October 2017, the marriage of a Han man from Henan Province to a Uyghur woman from Lop County was celebrated on the county's social media page:[300] They will let ethnic unity forever bloom in their hearts,​ Let ethnic unity become one's own flesh and blood.

University of Washington anthropologist and China expert Darren Byler said that a social media campaign in 2020 to marry off 100 Uyghur women to Han men indicated that "a certain racialized power dynamic is a part of this process", commenting, "It does seem as though this is an effort to produce greater assimilation and diminish ethnic difference by pulling Uighurs into Han-dominated relationships."[299] According to RFA reports, in March 2017 Salamet Memetimin, an ethnic Uyghur and the Communist Party Secretary for Chaka township's Bekchan village in Qira County, Hotan Prefecture, was relieved of her duties for taking her nikah marriage vows at her home.[301] In interviews with RFA in 2020, residents and officials of Shufu County (Kona Sheher), Kashgar Prefecture (Kashi) stated that it was no longer possible to perform traditional Uyghur nikah marriage rites in the county.[302]

Clothing

A Uyghur woman wearing a hijab in Xinjiang Chinese authorities discourage the wearing of headscarves, veils, and other customary Islamic attire. On 20 May 2014, a protest broke out in Alakaga (Alaqagha, Alahage), Kuqa (Kuchar, Kuche), Aksu Prefecture when 25 women and schoolgirls were detained for wearing headscarves. According to a local official, two died and five were injured when police fired on protesters. Subsequently, a Washington Post team was detained in Alakaga and ultimately deported from the region.[303] Documents leaked from the Xinjiang internment camps have noted that some inmates have been detained for wearing traditional clothing.[304]

Naming

Further information: Naming laws in China

Children's names

RFA reported that in 2015, a list of banned names for children called "Naming Rules for Ethnic Minorities", was promulgated in Hotan, banning potential names including "Islam", "Quran", "Mecca", "Jihad", "Imam", "Saddam", "Hajj", and "Medina". Use of the list was later extended throughout Xinjiang.[305][306] Legislation in 2017 made it illegal to give children names that the Chinese government deemed to "exaggerate religious fervor".[79][305] This prohibition included a ban on naming children "Muhammad".[305]

Village Names

A report by NGOs Human Rights Watch and Uyghur Hjelp found that 630 villages in Xinjiang were renamed to reflect Communist party ideology and remove religious and cultural references. Examples include Aq Meschit ("white mosque") village being renamed to Unity village and Dutar village being renamed to Red Flag village.[307][308] Commenting on the renaming, founder of Uyghur Hjelp, Abduweli Ayup, said that the Chinese government wants to "erase people's historical memory, because those names remind people of who they are".[309] Acting China director at Human Rights Watch, Maya Wang, said that "The Chinese authorities have been changing hundreds of village names in Xinjiang from those rich in meaning for Uyghurs to those that reflect government propaganda [...] These name changes appear part of Chinese government efforts to erase the cultural and religious expressions of Uyghurs."[307]

Classification of abuses

See also: Xinjiang papers, China Cables, and Xinjiang internment camps § International reactions

Special purpose tribunals, scholars, commentators, journalists, governments, politicians, and diplomats from many countries have labeled China's actions variously as genocide, cultural genocide, ethnocide, settler colonialism, and/or crimes against humanity.

Ethnocide or cultural genocide

In 2008, Michael E. Clarke, an Australian terrorism scholar, noted that "there has emerged within the Uighur émigré community a tendency to portray the Uighurs as experiencing a form of 'cultural genocide'", citing as an example a 2004 speech by World Uyghur Congress president Erkin Alptekin.[310] In a 2012 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer described the CCP following "policies of Uighur cultural genocide".[311][312] In 2018, UCL human rights scholar Kate Cronin-Furman argued that the Chinese state policies constituted cultural genocide.[313][314] In July 2019, German academic Adrian Zenz wrote in the Journal of Political Risk that the situation in Xinjiang constituted a cultural genocide;[315] his research was later cited by BBC News and other news organizations.[316] James Leibold, a professor at Australia's La Trobe University, called that same month the treatment of Uyghurs by the Chinese government a "cultural genocide", and stated that "in their own words, party officials are 'washing brains' and 'cleansing hearts' to 'cure' those bewitched by extremist thoughts."[317][318][319] The term was used in editorials, such as in The Washington Post, at this point.[320]

Since the release of the Xinjiang papers and the China Cables in November 2019, various journalists and researchers have called the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs an ethnocide or a cultural genocide. In November 2019, Zenz described the classified documents as confirming "that this is a form of cultural genocide".[321] Foreign Policy published an article by Azeem Ibrahim[a] in which he called the Chinese treatment of Uyghurs a "deliberate and calculated campaign of cultural genocide" after the release of the Xinjiang papers and China Cables.[323] In 2020, academic Joanne Smith Finley wrote that scholars, commentators, and lawyers had been increasingly referring to the human rights situation in Xinjiang as a genocide, rather than a cultural genocide.[3] Academic Barry Sautman states that the "contrast between genocidal mass murder and cultural dismantlement led to rejection of including cultural genocide in the Convention."[324]: 25

Genocide

In April 2019, Cornell University anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjö wrote in Inside Higher Ed that mass arrests of ethnic minority academics and intellectuals in Xinjiang indicated that "the Chinese regime's current campaign against the native Uighur, Kazakh and other peoples is already a genocide."[325] Later, in 2020, Fiskejö wrote in academic journal Monde Chinois [fr] that "[t]he evidence for genocide is thus already massive, and must, at the very least, be regarded as sufficient for prosecution under international law... the number of competent authorities around the world concurring that this is indeed genocide are increasing."[326] In June 2020, after an Associated Press investigation found that Uyghurs were being subjected to mass forced sterilizations and forced abortions in Xinjiang, scholars increasingly have referred to the abuses in Xinjiang as a genocide.[3]

In July 2020, Zenz said an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) that he had previously argued that the actions of the Chinese government are a cultural genocide, not a "literal genocide", but that one of the five criteria from the Genocide Convention was satisfied by more recent developments concerning the suppression of birth rates so "we do need to probably call it a genocide".[327] The same month, law professor Ryszard Piotrowicz likewise wrote that the sterilization of Uyghur women and children constituted genocide under the 1948 Convention.[25] Chris Patten, the last colonial governor of British Hong Kong, said that the "birth control campaign" was "arguably something that comes within the terms of the UN views on sorts of genocide".[328]

Although China is not a member of the International Criminal Court, on 6 July 2020 the self-proclaimed East Turkistan Government-in-Exile and the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement filed a complaint with the ICC calling for it to investigate Chinese officials for crimes against Uyghurs including allegations of genocide.[329][330][331] The ICC responded in December 2020 and "asked for more evidence before it will be willing to open an investigation into claims of genocide against Uighur people by China, but has said it will keep the file open for such further evidence to be submitted."[332] An August 2020 Quartz article reported that some scholars hesitate to label the human rights abuses in Xinjiang as a "full-blown genocide", preferring the term "cultural genocide", but that increasingly many experts were calling them "crimes against humanity" or "genocide".[329] In August 2020 the spokesperson for Joe Biden's presidential campaign described China's actions as genocide.[333]

In October 2020, the U.S. Senate introduced a bipartisan resolution designating the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang as genocide.[334] Around the same time, the House of Commons of Canada issued a statement that its Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development was persuaded that the Chinese Communist Party's actions in Xinjiang constitute genocide as laid out in the Genocide Convention.[190] The 2020 annual report by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China referred to the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs as "crimes against humanity and possibly genocide."[335][336] In January 2021, U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo officially declared that China was committing genocide against the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities living in Xinjiang.[337] This declaration, which came in the final hours of the Trump administration, had not been made earlier due to a worry that it could disrupt trade talks between the US and China. On the allegations of crimes against humanity, which Pompeo asserted were ongoing and included the "arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians, forced sterilization, torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained, forced labor and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and freedom of movement."[338]

On 19 January 2021, incoming U.S. president Joe Biden's secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken was asked during his confirmation hearings whether he agreed with Pompeo's conclusion that the CCP had committed genocide against the Uyghurs, he contended "That would be my judgment as well."[339] During her confirmation hearings Joe Biden's nominee to be the US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated that she believed what was currently happening in Xinjiang was a genocide, adding "I lived through and experienced and witnessed a genocide in Rwanda."[340] The US designation was followed by Canada's House of Commons and the Dutch parliament, each passing a non-binding motion in February 2021 to recognize China's actions as genocide.[341][342] In January 2021, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum initially stated that, "[t]here is a reasonable basis to believe that the government of China is committing crimes against humanity."[169][343] In November 2021, the museum revised its stance, stating the "Chinese government may be committing genocide against the Uyghurs."[344]

In February 2021, a legal opinion released by the Essex Court Chambers concluded that "there is a very credible case that acts carried out by the Chinese government against the Uighur people in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region amount to crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, and describes how the minority group has been subject to "enslavement, torture, rape, enforced sterilisation and persecution." "Victims have been "forced to remain in stress positions for an extended period of time, beaten, deprived of food, shackled and blindfolded", it said. The legal team stated that they had seen "prolific credible evidence" of sterilisation procedures carried out on women, including forced abortions, saying the human rights abuses "clearly constitute a form of genocidal conduct".[345][346] The opinion identified three Chinese officials – President Xi, Chen Quanguo and Zhu Hailun – with whom the authors believed there was a "plausible" case that personal responsibility for the genocide lay.[23]

On 13 February 2021, The Economist wrote that while China's treatment and persecution of Uyghurs is "horrific" and a crime against humanity, "genocide" is the wrong word for China's actions due to China not engaging in mass murder.[347] According to a March 2021 New Lines Institute report that was written by over 50 global China, genocide, and international law experts,[144][348][145] the Chinese government breached every article in the Genocide Convention, writing, "China's long-established, publicly and repeatedly declared, specifically targeted, systematically implemented, and fully resourced policy and practice toward the Uyghur group is inseparable from 'the intent to destroy in whole or in part' the Uyghur group as such."[349][350][146] The report cited credible reports of mass deaths under the mass internment drive, while Uighur leaders were selectively sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment. "Uyghurs are suffering from systematic torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, including rape, sexual abuse, and public humiliation, both inside and outside the camps", the report stated. The report argued that these policies are directly orchestrated by the highest levels of state, including Xi and the top officials of the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang.[146] It also reported that the Chinese government gave explicit orders to "eradicate tumours", "wipe them out completely", "destroy them root and branch", "round up everyone", and "show absolutely no mercy", in regards to Uyghurs,[146][145] and that camp guards reportedly follow orders to uphold the system in place until "Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Muslim nationalities, would disappear...until all Muslim nationalities would be extinct".[351] According to the report "Internment camps contain designated "interrogation rooms" where Uyghur detainees are subjected to consistent and brutal torture methods, including beatings with metal prods, electric shocks, and whips."[352]

In April 2021, Human Rights Watch released a report labelling human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang as crimes against humanity. While acknowledging the genocide determinations made by various countries, they also mentioned that they had "not documented the existence of the necessary genocidal intent at this time" but that "nothing in this report precludes such a finding and, if such evidence were to emerge, the acts being committed against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang—a group protected by the 1948 Genocide Convention—could also support a finding of genocide.".[143] In June 2021, the Canadian Anthropology Society issued a statement on Xinjiang in which the organization stated, "expert testimony and witnessing, and irrefutable evidence from the Chinese Government's own satellite imagery, documents, and eyewitness reports, overwhelmingly confirms the scale of the genocide."[353]

In June 2021, The New York Times and ProPublica published their analysis of over 3,000 videos, concluding that after the January 2021 U.S. declaration that China was committing genocide in Xinjiang, the Chinese government started an influence campaign featuring thousands of videos of Chinese citizens denying genocide and abuses in Xinjiang on Twitter and YouTube.[354] In August 2022, the U.S. State Department published a report PRC Efforts to Manipulate Global Public Opinion on Xinjiang on the Chinese government's global efforts "to discredit independent sources that report ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity" in Xinjiang.[355][356] In an article for Ethnic and Racial Studies, David Tobin characterized China's actions as a "genocide by attrition". He wrote that China's actions against the Uyghurs, including sexual abuse, mass internment and physical and mental torture, were calculated to destroy "the foundations of [Uyghur] life, language, religion, and inter-generational cultural transmission, resolving the “ethnic problem” through social death of Turkic Muslims".[357]

The Uyghur Tribunal, a "people's tribunal" based in the United Kingdom, began to hold hearings in June 2021 to examine evidence in order to evaluate whether China's abuses against Uyghurs constitute genocide under the Genocide Convention.[358][359][360] The tribunal was chaired by Geoffrey Nice, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milošević and chair of the previous China Tribunal, who announced the creation of the tribunal in September 2020.[358][361][362][363] On 9 December 2021, the tribunal concluded that China has committed genocide against the Uyghurs via birth control and sterilization measures.[364] The tribunal also found evidence of crimes against humanity, torture and sexual abuse.[364] The tribunal's final determination does not legally bind any government to take action.[360][365] Academics Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung wrote that their research found no evidence that Xi Jinping advocates genocide against Uyghurs.[366] Tsang and Cheung conclude that China's policies subordinate identity based on culture, religion, or minority language in an effort to establish a national identity based on Han heritage, language, and Xi Jinping Thought.[366]

Crimes against humanity

In June 2019, the China Tribunal, an independent judicial investigation into forced organ transplantation in China concluded that crimes against humanity had been committed beyond reasonable doubt against China's Uyghur Muslim and Falun Gong populations.[367][368] The Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at the University of Queensland concluded in November that evidence of atrocities in Xinjiang "likely meets the requirements of the following crimes against humanity: persecution, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, forced sterilisation, and enslavement" and that "It is arguable that genocidal acts have occurred in Xinjiang, in particular acts of imposing measures to prevent births and forcible transfers."[369] In December, lawyers David Matas and Sarah Teich wrote in Toronto Star that "One distressing present day example [of genocide] is the atrocities faced by the Uighur population in Xinjiang, China."[370]

In 2021 the U.S. State Department's Office of the Legal Advisor concluded that although the situation in Xinjiang amounted to crimes against humanity, there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide.[32] In 2026, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that China's policies toward the Uyghurs contain "coercive elements...so severe that they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity."[37]

Settler colonialism

In addition to other classifications, some academics and researchers have also termed the abuses as part of an ongoing project of Han settler colonialism.[371]

View of discourse

Writing in 2023, academic and former UK diplomat Kerry Brown observes that the clash of labels between western and Chinese discourse on the issue of Xinjiang makes it nearly impossible to reach an empirical or neutral description of China's actions in Xinjiang.[372] According to American academic Darren Byler, discourses about Uyghurs in Xinjiang typically revolve around Uyghurs as either potential terrorists and resisters (from the view of the Chinese state) or objects of pity to be rescued (in western discourses), with little focus on Uyghurs as autonomous actors.[372] China contends that the Gaza war demonstrates the hypocrisy of Western criticisms of China's treatment of Uyghurs.[373] According to this view, if Western countries were genuinely concerned about human rights, they would focus instead on the negative humanitarian impact of Israeli military operations in Gaza.[373] Following a 2024 statement by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken which equated the suffering of Muslims in Xinjiang with the suffering of Muslims in Gaza, the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded, "There is no conflict in Xinjiang, but the conflict is in the Gaza Strip. Muslims in Xinjiang are not suffering from hunger, expulsion, and killing, but the millions of Muslims in the Gaza Strip are suffering from hunger, expulsion, and killing. The US should stop playing double standards on human rights ..."[374]

Xinjiang internment camps

The Xinjiang internment camps, also called re-education camps,[5][6][a] and officially called Vocational Education and Training Centers[b] by the government of China,[1][10] were internment camps operated by the government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Communist Party Provincial Standing Committee. The camps were established in 2017 by the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping.[11] Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs since 2017 as part of a "Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism", a campaign announced in 2014 after the May 2014 Ürümqi attack.[11][12] Operations were led by CCP Politburo member and Xinjiang Party secretary Chen Quanguo.[13][14] The camps were reportedly operated outside the Chinese legal system; many Uyghurs have reportedly been interned without trial and no charges have been levied against them (held in administrative detention).[15][16] Local authorities were reported to be holding hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in these camps as well as members of other ethnic minority groups in China, for the stated purpose of countering extremism and terrorism and promoting social integration.[17][18][19][20][21] In September 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) reported in its Xinjiang Data Project that construction of camps continued despite government claims that their function was winding down.[22] According to researcher Adrian Zenz, mass internments peaked in 2018 and have wound down since then, with officials shifting focus towards forced labor programs.[23][24] In 2019, the Chinese government claimed the centers have been closed.[1] Individuals in the camps have been shifted into the formal penal system,[25] with remaining camps being converted into prisons or factories using forced labor.[26][27][28] Xinjiang internment camps have been described as "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uighurs".[9] The internment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the camps constituted the largest-scale arbitrary detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.[29][9][30][31] In 2020, it was estimated that Chinese authorities may have detained up to 1.8 million[needs update] people, mostly Uyghurs but also including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians, as well as some foreign citizens including Kazakhstanis, in these secretive internment camps located throughout the region.[32][2] There have been comparisons between the Xinjiang camps and the Cultural Revolution.[33][34][35][36]

Background

Main articles: History of Xinjiang and Persecution of Uyghurs in China

See also: Turkic settlement of the Tarim Basin

Xinjiang conflict

Main articles: Xinjiang conflict and History of Xinjiang

Various Chinese dynasties have historically exerted various degrees of control and influence over parts of what is modern-day Xinjiang.[37] The region came under complete Chinese rule as a result of the westward expansion of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, which also conquered Tibet and Mongolia.[38] This conquest, which marked the beginning of Xinjiang under Qing rule, ended circa 1758. While it was nominally declared to be a part of China's core territory, it was generally seen as a distant land unto its own by the imperial court; in 1758, it was designated a penal colony and a site of exile, and as a result, it was governed as a military protectorate, not integrated as a province.[39]

After the 1928 assassination of Yang Zengxin, the governor of the semi-autonomous Kumul Khanate in east Xinjiang under the Republic of China, Jin Shuren succeeded Yang as governor of the Khanate. On the death of the Kamul Khan Maqsud Shah in 1930, Jin entirely abolished the Khanate and took control of the region as its warlord.[40] In 1933, the breakaway First East Turkestan Republic was established in the Kumul Rebellion.[40][41][42] In 1934, the First Turkestan Republic was conquered by warlord Sheng Shicai with the aid of the Soviet Union before Sheng reconciled with the Republic of China in 1942.[43] In 1944, the Ili Rebellion led to the Second East Turkestan Republic with dependency on the Soviet Union for trade, arms, and "tacit consent" for its continued existence before being absorbed into the People's Republic of China in 1949.[44]

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the government sponsored a mass migration of Han people to the region, policies promoting Chinese cultural unity, and policies punishing certain expressions of Uyghur identity.[45][46] During this time, militant Uyghur separatist organizations with potential support from the Soviet Union emerged, with the East Turkestan People's Revolutionary Party being the largest in 1968.[47][48][49] During the 1970s, the United Revolutionary Front of East Turkestan (URFET) was likely formed with Soviet assistance, and its leader later met with U.S. State Department officials in 1996.[50] In 1997, a police roundup and execution of 30 suspected separatists during Ramadan led to large demonstrations in February 1997 that resulted in the Ghulja incident, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) crackdown that led to at least nine deaths.[51] The Ürümqi bus bombings later that month killed nine people and injured 68 with responsibility acknowledged by Uyghur exile groups.[52][41] In March 1997, a bus bomb killed two people with responsibility claimed by Uyghur radicals and the Turkey-based Organisation for East Turkistan Freedom.[53][54][41] In July 2009, riots broke out in Xinjiang in response to a violent dispute between Uyghur and Han workers in a factory and they resulted in over 100 deaths.[55][56] Following the riots, Uyghur radicals killed dozens of Chinese citizens in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016.[57][58] These included the August 2009 syringe attacks,[59] the 2011 bomb-and-knife attack in Hotan,[60] the March 2014 knife attack in the Kunming railway station,[61] the April 2014 bomb-and-knife attack in the Ürümqi railway station,[62] and the May 2014 car-and-bomb attack in an Ürümqi street market.[63] Several of the attacks were orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement) which has been designated a terrorist organization by several countries including Russia,[64] Turkey,[65][66] the United Kingdom,[67] and the United States (until 2020),[68] in addition to the United Nations.[69]

Strategic motivations

As a region on the northwestern periphery of China which is inhabited by ethnic/linguistic/religious minorities, Xinjiang has been said (by Raffi Khatchadourian) to have "never seemed fully within the Communist Party's grasp".[70] Part of Xinjiang was once seized by Czarist Russia and it was also independent for a short period of time. Traditionally, the government of the People's Republic of China has favored an assimilationist policy towards minorities and it has accelerated this policy by encouraging the mass immigration of Han people into minority lands. After the collapse of its rival and neighbor the Soviet Union—another huge multi-national communist state with one dominant ethnicity—the Chinese Communist Party was "convinced that ethnic nationalism had helped tear the former superpower to pieces". In addition, terrorist attacks were committed by Uyghurs in 2009, 2013, and 2014.[70]

Several additional potential motives for the increased repression in Xinjiang have been presented by scholars who have conducted research outside China. First, the repression may simply be the result of increased dissent within the region beginning in circa 2009; second, it may be due to changes in minority policy which promoted assimilation into Han culture; and third, the repression may primarily be spearheaded by Chen Quanguo himself, the result of his personally hardline attitude towards perceived acts of sedition.[71] Victor Shih, a political economist at the University of California, San Diego, said in July 2019 the mass internments were unnecessary because "no active insurgencies" existed, only "isolated terrorist incidents". He suggested that because a great deal of money was spent setting up the camps, the money likely went to associates of the politicians who created them.[72]

China's government has used the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a justification for its actions against the Uyghurs. It claims that its actions in Xinjiang are necessary because Xinjiang is another front in the "global war on terrorism".[73] Specifically, they are trying to rid China of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's three evils. The three evils are "transnational terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism," all three of which the CCP believes the Uyghurs possess. The true reason for the repression of the Uyghurs is quite convoluted but some argue that this is based on the CCP's desire to preserve China's identity and integrity, rather than its desire to condemn terrorism.[74] Zhang Yun, the CCP Secretary of the Xinjiang Justice Department, suggested in 2015 that "a third" of Xinjiang's population were "polluted by religious extremist forces", and needed to be "educated and reformed through concentrated force".[75]

Additionally, some analysts have suggested that the CCP considers Xinjiang a key route in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), however, it considers Xinjiang's local population a potential threat to the initiative's success, or it fears that opening Xinjiang up may also open it up to radicalizing influences from other states which are participating in the BRI.[76] Sean Roberts of George Washington University said the CCP sees Uyghurs' attachment to their traditional lands as a risk to the BRI.[77] Researcher Adrian Zenz has suggested that the initiative is an important reason for the Chinese government's control of Xinjiang.[78] In November 2020, when the US dropped the Turkistan Islamic Party from its terrorist list because it was no longer "in existence", the decision was lauded by some intelligence officials because it removed the pretext for the Chinese government's decision to wage "terrorism eradication" campaigns against the Uyghurs. However, Yue Gang, a military commentator in Beijing stated, "in the wake of the US decision on the ETIM, China might seek to increase its counterterrorism activities." The group continues to be designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council as well as by the governments of other countries.[79][80][81]

Policies from 2009 to 2016

Number of re-education related government procurement bids in Xinjiang, 2016–2018, according to the Jamestown Foundation[82] Both prior to and until shortly after the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, Wang Lequan was the Party Secretary for the Xinjiang region, effectively the highest subnational role; roughly equivalent to a governor in a Western province or state. Wang worked on modernization programs in Xinjiang, including industrialization, development of commerce, roads, railways, hydrocarbon development and pipelines with neighboring Kazakhstan to eastern China. Wang also constrained local culture and religion, replaced the Uyghur language with Standard Mandarin as the medium of education in primary schools, and penalized or banned among government workers (in a region in which the government was a very large employer), the wearing of beards and headscarves, fasting during Ramadan and praying while on the job.[83][84][85] In the 1990s, many Uyghurs in parts of Xinjiang could not speak Mandarin Chinese.[86]

In April 2010, after the Ürümqi riots, Zhang Chunxian replaced Wang Lequan as the Communist Party chief. Zhang Chunxian continued and strengthened Wang's repressive policies. In 2011, Zhang proposed "modern culture leads the development in Xinjiang" as his policy statement and started to implement his modern culture propaganda.[87] In 2012, he first mentioned the phrase "de-extremification" (Chinese: 去极端化) campaigns and started to educate "wild Imams" (野阿訇) and extremists (极端主义者).[88][89][82] In 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative was announced, a massive trade project at the heart of which is Xinjiang.[90] In 2014, Chinese authorities announced a "people's war on terror" and local government introduced new restrictions, including a ban on long beards and wearing the burqa in public.[91][92][93][94][95] In 2014, the concept of "transformation through education" began to be used in contexts outside of Falun Gong through the systematic "de-extremification" campaigns.[96] Under Zhang, the CCP launched its "Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism" in Xinjiang.[97]

In 2019, the World Bank investigated and eventually scaled back a $50 million loan it provided in 2015 suspected of being used partly for detention camps in Xinjiang.[98][99][100] In August 2016, Chen Quanguo, a well-known hardline Party Secretary of Tibet,[101] took charge of the Xinjiang autonomous region. Chen was branded as responsible for a major component of Tibet's "subjugation" by critics.[102] Following Chen's arrival, local authorities recruited over 90,000 police officers in 2016 and 2017 – twice as many as they recruited in the past seven years,[103] and laid out as many as 7,300 heavily guarded check points in the region.[104] The province has come to be known as one of the most heavily policed regions of the world. English-language news reports have labelled the current regime in Xinjiang as the most extensive police state in the world.[105][106][107] Publishing in 2026, academic and commentator Barry Sautman, citing a 2019 article in Xinjiang Daily, claims that many detainees "were allowed weekends at home."[108]: 104 In his book, Sautman asserts that claims of genocide against Uyghurs in China lack evidence, denying charges of forced sterilizations, family separations, boarding schools for Uyghur children, arbitrary detention, torture, mass imprisonment, colonial settlement in Xinjiang, and forced labor.[108] Cornell University anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjö, who compiled the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP),[109] called Sautman's book a "genocide-denialist screed".[110]

Antireligious campaigns

Main articles: Antireligious campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party and Islamophobia in China

As a communist state, China does not have an official state religion, but its government recognizes five different religious denominations, namely Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism.[111] In 2014, Western media outlets reported that it has conducted antireligious campaigns in order to promote atheism.[112] According to The Washington Post, the CCP under Xi Jinping shifted its policies in favor of a so-called "Sinicization" of ethnic and religious minorities.[20] The trend accelerated in 2018 when the National Ethnic Affairs Commission and the State Administration for Religious Affairs were placed under the control of the CCP's United Front Work Department.[113]

Groups that are targeted for surveillance

In 2015, the Chinese state-security apparatus was developing a "Integrated Joint Operations Platform" (IJOP) to analyze information which was collected from its surveillance data. According to an analysis of this software by Human Rights Watch, a member of a minority group might be assessed by the IJOP as falling under one of 36 "person types" that could lead to arrest and internment in a re-education camp. Some of these person types included:

people who have a family member that exhibits some of these traits and so is "insufficiently loyal"[70]

History

E Beginning in 2017, local media outlets generally referred to the facilities as "counter-extremism training centers"[c] and "education and transformation training centers".[d] Most of those facilities were converted from existing schools or other official buildings, although some of them were purpose-built.[114] Assignment to a VETC was generally a consequence in lieau of a criminal charge or prosecution.[108]: 105 The heavily policed region and thousands of check points assisted and accelerated the detention of locals in the camps. In 2017, Xinjiang constituted 21% of all arrests in China despite comprising less than 2% of the national population, eight times more than the previous year.[115][116] The judicial and other government bureaus of many cities and counties started to release a series of procurement and construction bids for those planned camps and facilities.[82] Increasingly, massive detention centers were built up throughout the region and have been used to hold hundreds of thousands of people targeted for their religious practices and ethnicity.[117][12][118][102][119] In October 2018, the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional People's Congress revised the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Regulation on De-extremification, adding provisions such as that "institutions such as vocational skill education training centers should carry out trainings on the common national language, laws and regulations, and vocational skills, and carry out anti-extremist ideological education, and psychological and behavioral correction to promote thought transformation of trainees, and help them return to the society and family". CNN noted that "The updated law all but acknowledges the growing reports of mass detentions inside Xinjiang".[120]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, there were no reports of cases of the coronavirus in Xinjiang prisons or of conditions in the internment camps.[121] After program suspensions due to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, Uyghur workers were reported to have been returned to other parts of Xinjiang and the rest of China to resume work beginning in March 2020.[121][122][123] In September 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) launched its Xinjiang Data Project, which reported that construction of camps continued despite claims that their function was winding down, with 380 camps and detention centers identified.[22][124] According to researcher Adrian Zenz, mass internments peaked in 2018 and have wound down since then, with officials shifting focus towards forced labor programs.[23][24] In 2019, the Chinese government claimed the centers have been closed.[1] Individuals in the camps have been shifted into the formal penal system,[25] with remaining camps being converted into prisons or factories using forced labor.[26][27][28]

Leaks and hacks

The New York Times leak

Main article: Xinjiang papers

On 16 November 2019, The New York Times released an extensive leak of 400 pages of documents, sourced from a member of the Chinese government, in the hope that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping would be held accountable for his actions. The New York Times stated that the leak suggests discontent inside the Communist Party relating to the crackdown in Xinjiang. The anonymous government official who leaked the documents did so with the intent that the disclosure "would prevent party leaders, including Mr. Xi, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions."[11] We must be as harsh as them and show absolutely no mercy. — Xi Jinping on the terror attacks in 2014, (translated from Mandarin Chinese)[11] One document was a manual aimed at communicating messages to Uyghur students who were returning home and would ask about their missing friends or relatives who had been interned in the camps. It said that government staff should acknowledge that the internees had not committed a crime and that "it is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts." Officials were directed to say that even grandparents and family members who seemed too old to carry out violence could not be spared.[11][125] The New York Times stated that speeches obtained show how Xi views risks to the party similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which The New York Times stated Xi "blamed on ideological laxity and spineless leadership."[11] Concerned that violence in the Xinjiang region could damage social stability in the rest of China, Xi stated "social stability will suffer shocks, the general unity of people of every ethnicity will be damaged, and the broad outlook for reform, development and stability will be affected."[11] Xi encouraged officials to study how the US responded following the September 11 attacks.[11] Xi likened Islamic extremism alternately to a virus-like contagion and a dangerously addictive drug, and declared that addressing it would require "a period of painful, interventionary treatment."[11]

The China Daily reported in 2018 that CCP official Wang Yongzhi was removed for "serious disciplinary violations".[11][126] The New York Times obtained a copy of Wang's confession (which the report noted was likely signed under duress) and stated that The New York Times believed he was sacked for being too lenient on Uyghurs, for example his release of 7,000 detainees. Wang had told his superiors that he was concerned that the actions against the Uyghurs would breed discontent and thus result in greater violence in the future. The leaked documents stated, "he ignored the party central leadership's strategy for Xinjiang, and he went as far as brazen defiance. ... He refused, to round up everyone who should be rounded up".[11] The article was discreetly shared on the Chinese platform Sina Weibo, where some netizens expressed sympathy for him.[127][125] In 2017, there were more than 12,000 investigations into party members in Xinjiang for infractions or resistance in the "fight against separatism", which was more than 20 times the figure in the previous year.[11]

ICIJ leak

Main article: China Cables

On 24 November 2019, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published the China Cables, consisting of six documents, an "operations manual" for running the camps and detailed use of predictive policing and artificial intelligence to target people and regulate life inside the camps.[128][129] Shortly after the publication of the China Cables, leaker Asiye Abdulaheb went on to provide Adrian Zenz with the "Karakax list", allegedly a Chinese government spreadsheet that tracks the rationale behind 311 of the internments at a "Vocational Training Internment Camp" in the seat of Karakax County in Xinjiang.[130] The purpose of the list may have been to coordinate judgments on whether an individual should remain in internment; in some entries, the word "agree" was written beside a judgment.[131] Records detail how subjects dress and pray, and how their relatives and acquaintances behave. One subject was interned because she wore a veil years ago; another was interned for clicking on a link to a foreign website; a third was interned for applying for a passport, despite posing "no practical risk" according to the spreadsheet. In general, the subjects on the Karakax list all have relatives living abroad, a category that reportedly leads to "almost certain internment". 149 subjects are documented as violating birth control policies. 116 of the subjects are listed without explanation as "untrustworthy"; for 88 of these, this "untrustworthy" label is the only reason listed for internment. Younger men, in particular, are often listed as "untrustworthy person born in a certain decade". 24 subjects are accused of formal crimes, including six terrorism-related allegations. Most of the subjects have been released, or scheduled for release, following the end of their one-year internment term; however, some of these are recommended for release into "industrial park employment", raising concerns about possible forced labor.[132][133]

Xinjiang Police Files hack

Main article: Xinjiang Police Files

The 'Xinjiang Police Files', a large body of police files derived from data found in a hack of a local computer server,[134] was sent to the German anthropologist Adrian Zenz, who works for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.[135] Zenz has been sanctioned by the Chinese government since 2021. He has been instrumental in exposing the camp system in Xinjiang. The files and some English translations are partly accessible via their special homepage set up by this foundation or via the links to an academic repository in Zenz' article in the Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies.[136] The data was evaluated by journalists from 14 media companies worldwide, including the British BBC, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. In Germany, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Der Spiegel examined and researched the data.[137][138][139][135][140] According to the evaluation of a number of digital forensic scientists and other experts, the Xinjiang Police Files come from the computers of the Chinese authorities. It is the largest data leak on Chinese state-run re-education camps that has been made public outside of China to date.[139]

In May 2022, the BBC published summaries of the Xinjiang Police Files.[134] The Xinjiang Police Files were published during the first visit by a UN human rights commissioner to China in 14 years. By combining the photographs of some 5,000 Uyghurs contained in the data with other data in the hack, details of over 2,800 detentions emerged.[134] Other documents in the leak included police protocols for running an internment camp.[141]

Camp facilities

In urban areas, most of the camps were converted from existing vocational schools, CCP schools, ordinary schools or other official buildings, while in suburban or rural areas the majority of camps were specially built for the purposes of re-education.[142] These camps were guarded by armed forces or special police and equipped with prison-like gates, surrounding walls, security fences, surveillance systems, watchtowers, guard rooms, and facilities for armed police.[143][144][145][146] The Xinjiang Zhongtai Group is running some of the reeducation camps and uses reallocated workers in their facilities.[147] While there is no public, verifiable data for the number of camps, there have been various attempts to document suspected camps based on satellite imagery and government documents. On 15 May 2017, Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank, released a list of 73 government bids related to re-education facilities.[82] On 1 November 2018, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) reported on suspected camps in 28 locations.[148] On 29 November 2018, Reuters and Earthrise Media reported 39 suspected camps.[149] The East Turkistan National Awakening Movement reported an even larger numbers of camps.[150][151] In November 2019, researcher Adrian Zenz estimated that the number of internment camps in Xinjiang had surpassed 1,000.[152]

In a 2018 report from US government-funded Radio Free Asia, Awat County (Awati) was said to have three re-education camps. An RFA listener provided a copy of a "confidentiality agreement" requiring re-education camp detainees to not discuss the workings of the camps, and said local residents were instructed to tell members of re-education camp inspection teams visiting No. 2 Re-education Camp that there was only one camp in the county.[153] The RFA listener also said the No. 2 Re-education Camp had transferred thousands of detainees and removed barbed wire from the perimeter of the camp walls.[153] Satellite analysis by Spain-based GMV showed that internment facilities in Xinjiang underwent significant expansion during 2017 and 2018. Using publicly available satellite imagery, GMV assessed 101 suspected sites linked to the region's re-education camp system, identifying 44 as highly likely to have been security facilities based on features such as perimeter fencing and watchtowers. The analysis revealed a sharp increase in both the number and scale of new constructions beginning in 2017, with a continued trend in 2018 toward larger facilities, despite a slight decline in the number of new projects. Overall, the secure area of the 44 sites expanded by approximately 440 hectares since 2003, reflecting a substantial increase in infrastructure associated with the detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.[154]

Boarding schools for the children of detainees

The detention of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities has allegedly left many children without their parents. The Chinese government has allegedly held these children at a variety of institutions and schools colloquially known as "boarding schools", although not all are residential institutions, that serve as de facto orphanages.[155][156][157] In September 2018, the Associated Press reported that thousands of boarding schools were being built.[156] According to the Chinese Ministry of Education children as young as eight are enrolled in these schools.[158] According to Adrian Zenz and BBC in 2019, children of detained parents in boarding schools were penalized for failing to speak Mandarin Chinese and prevented from exercising their religion.[159][160][161][162] In a paper published in the Journal of Political Risk, Zenz calls the effort a "systematic campaign of social re-engineering and cultural genocide".[163] Human Rights Watch said that the children detained at child welfare facilities and boarding schools were held without parental consent or access.[164][165] In December 2019, The New York Times reported that approximately 497,000 elementary and junior high school students were enrolled in these boarding schools. They also reported that students are only allowed to see family members once every two weeks and that they were forbidden from speaking the Uyghur language.[158]

Locations

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by editing the page to add missing items, with references to reliable sources.

External image

Interactive map by Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Camp locations identified by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and ASPI Numerous locations have been identified as re-education camps. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, whose funding is primarily from the Australian Government with overseas funding primarily from the US State Department and Department of Defense, had identified more than 380 "suspected detention facilities".[166][167]

Lop County No. 4 Vocational Skills Education and Training Center Information reasonably indicates that this "re-education" internment camp, which is often called a Vocational Skills Education and Training Center, is providing prison labor to nearby manufacturing entities in Xinjiang. CBP identified forced labor indicators including highly coercive/unfree recruitment, work and life under duress, and restriction of movement.​ (statement of the US Department of Homeland Security[172][173])

Yutian county vocational training centre in Yutian County (Keriya), Hotan Prefecture, among the largest of the camps[177]

Camp detainees

The mass internment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the camps has become the largest-scale arbitrary detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.[29][9][30][31] Many media outlets have reported that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, as well as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic minorities, have been held in the camps.[178][179][180] Radio Free Asia, a news service funded by the US government, estimated in January 2018 that 120,000 members of the Uyghurs were being held in political re-education camps in Kashgar prefecture alone at the time.[181] In 2018, local government authorities in Qira County expected to have almost 12,000 detainees in vocational camps and detention centres and some projects related to the centres outstripped budgetary limits.[182] Reports of Uyghurs living or studying abroad being detained upon return to Xinjiang are common, which is thought to be connected to the re-education camps. Many living abroad have gone for years without being able to contact their family members still in Xinjiang, who may be detainees.[183][184]: 1:23 Uyghur political figure Rebiya Kadeer, who has been in exile since 2005, has had as many as 30 relatives detained or disappeared, including her sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, and siblings, according to Amnesty International.[185][186] It is unclear when they were taken away.[187][188] In February 2021, two of Kadeer's granddaughters appeared in a video on Twitter denying abuses and telling her not to be "fooled again by those bad foreigners".[189]

On 13 July 2018, Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national and former employee of the Chinese state, appeared in a court in the city of Zharkent, Kazakhstan for being accused of illegally crossing the border between the two countries. During the trial she talked about her forced work at a re-education camp for 2,500 ethnic Kazakhs.[190][191] Her lawyer argued that if she is extradited to China, she would face the death penalty for exposing re-education camps in Kazakh court.[192][191] Her testimony for the re-education camps have become the focus of a court case in Kazakhstan,[193] which was also testing the country's ties with Beijing.[194][195] On 1 August 2018, Sauytbay was released with a six-month suspended sentence and directed to regularly check-in with police. She applied for asylum in Kazakhstan to avoid deportation to China.[196][197][198] Kazakhstan refused her application. On 2 June 2019 she flew to Sweden where she was subsequently granted political asylum.[199][200] According to a Radio Free Asia interview with an officer at the Onsu County police station, as of August 2018, 30,000 persons, or about one in six Uyghurs in the county (approximately 16% of the overall population of the county), were detained in re-education camps.[201]

Russian-American Gene Bunin created the Xinjiang Victims Database to collect public testimonies on people detained in the camps, and its content had been referenced in articles by Al Jazeera,[202] RFA,[203][204] Foreign Policy,[205] the Uyghur Human Rights Project,[206] Amnesty[207] and Human Rights Watch.[208] On 14 January 2023, the database included photos of Hong Kong actors Andy Lau and Chow Yun-fat in a list of police officers responsible for rounding up "thousands of documented victims", which aroused suspicion on Twitter about the database's authenticity.[209][210] When the BBC was invited to the camps in June 2019, officials there told them the detainees were "almost criminals" who could choose "between a judicial hearing or education in the de-extremification facilities".[211]

The Globe and Mail reported in September 2019 that some Han people and Christian Uyghurs in Xinjiang who had disputes with local authorities or expressed politically unwelcome thoughts had also been sent to the camps.[212] Victor Shih, a political economist at the University of California, San Diego, said in July 2019 the mass internments were unnecessary because "no active insurgencies" existed, only "isolated terrorist incidents". He suggested that because a great deal of money was spent setting up the camps, the money likely went to associates of the politicians who created them.[72] Anonymous drone footage posted on YouTube in September 2019 showed kneeling blindfolded inmates that an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said may have been an inmate transfer at a train station near Korla and may have been from a re-education camp.[213][214] Anar Sabit, an ethnic Kazakh from Kuytun living in Canada who was imprisoned in 2017 after returning home following the death of her father, was detained for having gone abroad. She found other minorities were interned for offenses such as using forbidden technology (WhatsApp, a V.P.N.), travelling abroad, but that even a Uyghur working for the Communist party as a propagandist could be interned for the offense of having been booked in a hotel by an airline with others who were under suspicion.[70]

According to an anonymous Uyghur local government employee quoted in an article by US government-sponsored Radio Free Asia, during Ramadan 2020 (23 April to 23 May), residents of Makit County (Maigaiti), Kashgar Prefecture were told they could face punishment for religious fasting including being sent to a re-education camp.[215]

Research and estimates

According to a 2019 report by Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), there were two key studies that had independently estimated that around one million people had been detained in Xinjiang.[216] Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, has been primarily cited in the early estimates. Zenz's analysis uses accounting figures derived from documents that were reportedly leaked by anonymous Chinese public security officials to Istiqlal, a Turkey-based Uyghur exile media organization. Using Radio Free Asia reports and his own research, Zenz estimated the total internment figures to be "anywhere between several hundred thousand and just over one million" in 2018.[216] Writing in the Journal of Political Risk in July 2019, Zenz estimated an upper speculative limit to the number of people detained in Xinjiang re-education camps at 1.5 million.[217]

The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), a US-based organisation, later published their estimate of one million detained Uyghurs. Reportedly, they had based their estimate on the interviews with eight ethnic Uyghur individuals who came from eight different villages in southern Xinjiang between mid-2017 and mid-2018.[216] According to an official report by the Chinese government, 1.3 million people received "vocational training" sessions annually between 2014 and 2019.[218][219] According to the Chinese ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye in December 2019, all of the "trainees" in the centers have graduated and have gradually returned to their jobs or found new jobs with government assistance.[220] Cheng also called reports that one million Uyghurs had been detained in Xinjiang "fake news" and that "what has been done in Xinjiang has no ...

difference with what the other countries, including western countries, [do] to fight against terrorists."[220][221]

Conditions in the camps

The camps, officially known as Vocational Education and Training Centers, were informally called as "schools", and described by some officials as "hospitals" where inmates were treated for the "disease" of "extremist ideology". According to internment officials quoted in Xinjiang Daily, (a Communist Party-run newspaper) while "requirements for our students" are "strict ... we have a gentle attitude, and put our hearts into treating them". Being in one "is actually like staying at a boarding school."[70] The newspaper quoted a former inmate as stating during his internment he had realized he had been "increasingly drifting away from 'home,'" under the influence of extremism. "With the government's help and education, I've returned. ... "our lives are improving every day. No matter who you are, first and foremost you are a Chinese citizen.'"[70] Waterboarding, mass rape, and sexual abuse were reported to be among the forms of torture used as part of the indoctrination process at the camps.[9][222] Kayrat Samarkand, a Kazakh citizen who migrated from Xinjiang, was detained in one of the internment camps in the region for three months for visiting neighboring Kazakhstan. On 15 February 2018, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov sent a diplomatic note to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the same day as Kayrat Samarkand was freed from custody.[223] After his release, Samarkand said that he faced endless brainwashing and humiliation, and that he was forced to study communist propaganda for hours every day and chant slogans giving thanks and wishing for a long life to Xi Jinping.[224][better source needed] Mihrigul Tursun, a Uyghur woman detained in China, after escaping one of these camps, talked of beatings and torture. After moving to Egypt, she traveled to China in 2015 to spend time with her family and was immediately detained and separated from her infant children. When Tursun was released three months later, one of the triplets had died and the other two had developed health problems. Tursun said the children had been operated on. She was arrested for the second time about two years later. Several months later, she was detained the third time and spent three months in a cramped prison cell with 60 other women, having to sleep in turns, use the toilet in front of security cameras and sing songs praising the Chinese Communist Party.[225]

Tursun said she and other inmates were forced to take unknown medication, including pills that made them faint and a white liquid that caused bleeding in some women and loss of menstruation in others. Tursun said nine women from her cell died during her three months there. One day, Tursun recalled, she was led into a room and placed in a high chair, and her legs and arms were locked in place. "The authorities put a helmet-like thing on my head, and each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake violently and I would feel the pain in my veins," Tursun said in a statement read by a translator. "I don't remember the rest. White foam came out of my mouth, and I began to lose consciousness," Tursun said. "The last word I heard them saying is that you being an Uyghur is a crime." She was eventually released so that she could take her children to Egypt, but she was ordered to return to China. Once in Cairo, Tursun contacted U.S. authorities and, in September, went to the United States and settled in Virginia.[226] China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying has stated that Tursun was taken into custody by police on "suspicion of inciting ethnic hatred and discrimination" for a period lasting 20 days, but denies that Tursun was detained in a re-education camp.[227][228][229] Former inmates say that they were required to learn to sing the national anthem of China and communist songs. Punishments, like being placed in handcuffs for hours, waterboarding, or being strapped to "tiger chair" (a metal contraption) for long periods of time, were allegedly used on those who fail to follow.[230][231] Anar Sabit, a cooperative inmate who had a relatively minor offense of foreign travel, described her confinement in the women's section as prison-like and marked by bureaucratic rigidity but said that she was not beaten or tortured .[70] Before and after her internment, Sabit said that she experienced what Chinese sometimes call gui da qiang, or 'ghost walls' "that confuse and entrap travelers".[70] After her release from internment, she said that she remains a "focus person" in her hometown of Kuytun where she lives with her uncle's family. She described the town as resembling an "open air prison" due to the careful monitoring by cameras, sensors, police, and the neighborhood residential committee, and that she feels shunned by almost all friends and family and worries that she will endanger anyone who helps her.[70] After Sabit moved out of her uncle's house, Sabit lived in the dormitory of the neighborhood residential committee who she said threatened to return her to the internment camp for speaking out of turn.[70]

According to detainees, they were also forced to drink alcohol and eat pork, which are forbidden in Islam.[232][230] Some reportedly received unknown medicines while others attempted suicide.[233] There have also been deaths reported due to unspecified causes.[168][234][235][236][237][238][239][excessive citations] Detainees have alleged widespread sexual abuse, including forced abortions, forced use of contraceptive devices and compulsory sterilization.[240][241][242] It has been reported that Han officials have been assigned to reside in the homes of Uyghurs who have been in the camps.[243][244] Rushan Abbas of the Campaign for Uyghurs argues that the actions of the Chinese government amount to genocide according to United Nations definitions which are laid out in the Genocide Convention.[245]

According to Time, Sarsenbek Akaruli, 45, a veterinarian and trader from Ili, Xinjiang, was arrested in Xinjiang on 2 November 2017. As of November 2019, he is still in a detention camp. According to his wife Gulnur Kosdaulet, Akaruli was put in the camp after police found the banned messaging app WhatsApp on his cell phone. Kosdaulet, a citizen of neighboring Kazakhstan, has traveled to Xinjiang on four occasions to search for her husband but could not get help from friends in the Chinese Communist Party. Kosdaulet said of her friends, "Nobody wanted to risk being recorded on security cameras talking to me in case they ended up in the camps themselves."[246]

In May to June 2017, a woman native to Maralbexi County (Bachu) named Mailikemu Maimati (also spelled Mamiti) was detained in the county's re-education camp according to her husband Mirza Imran Baig. He said that after her release, she and their young son were not given their passports by Chinese authorities.[174] In July 2017, Gulzira Auelkhan, a 42-year-old woman who returned from Kazakhstan to Xinjiang to care for her ailing father, was detained upon arrival without any stated reason. For over 15 months, she was "ferried" across five different prison camps and interrogated at least 19 times. Tortured by electric batons, she was forced to learn mandarin and subsequently sent to a labor camp where she was overworked for over two months, underpaid for her labor, and then given an injection which was described as a "flu shot" which impacted her period cycles and made her lethargic.[247]

According to Time, former prisoner Bakitali Nur, 47, native of Khorgos, Xinjiang on the Sino-Kazakh border, was arrested because authorities were suspicious of his frequent trips abroad. He reported spending a year in a cell with seven other prisoners. The prisoners sat on stools seventeen hours a day, were not allowed to talk or move and were under constant surveillance. Movement carried the punishment of being put into stress positions for hours. After release, he was forced to make daily self-criticisms, report on his plans and work for negligible payment in government factories. In May 2019, he escaped to Kazakhstan. Nur summarized his experience in jail and under constant monitoring after his release saying, "The entire system is designed to suppress us."[246]

According to Radio Free Asia, Ghalipjan, a 35 year old Uyghur man from Shanshan/Pichan County who was married and had a five-year-old son, died in a re-education camp on 21 August 2018. Authorities reported his death was due to heart attack, but the head of the Ayagh neighborhood committee said that he was beaten to death by a police officer. His family was not allowed to carry out Islamic funeral rites.[248] According to the Xinjiang Police Files, Chen Quanguo issued a shooting order for detainees attempting to escape in 2018.[134][249] In June 2018, President of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) Dolkun Isa was told that his mother Ayhan Memet, 78, had died two months earlier while in detention at a "political re-education camp".[184]: 1:45 [168] The WUC president was unsure if she had been incarcerated in one of the many "political re-education camps".[168]

According to a 2018 report in The New York Times, Abdusalam Muhemet, 41, who ran a restaurant in Hotan before fleeing China in 2018, said he spent seven months in prison and more than two months in a camp in Hotan in 2015 without ever being criminally charged. Muhemet said that on most days, the inmates at the camp would assemble to hear long lectures by officials who warned them not to embrace Islamic radicalism, support Uyghur independence or defy the Communist Party.[250] In an interview with Radio Free Asia, an officer at the Kuqa (Kuchar, Kuche) County Police Department reported that from June to December 2018, 150 people at the No. 1 Internment Camp in the Yengisher district of Kuqa county had died, corroborating earlier reports attributed to Himit Qari, former area police chief.[251][252] In August 2020, the BBC released texts and a video smuggled out of a re-education camp by Merdan Ghappar, a former model of Uyghur heritage. Mergan had been allowed access to personal effects, and used a phone to take videos of the camp he is interned in.[253]

In a January 2021 article co-authored for The Guardian, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman living in exile in France, described her experience of detention in a Chinese "re-education" camp in Xinjiang. After returning to China in 2016 under the pretext of signing retirement papers, she was arrested and later held for two years in a facility in Baijiantan, Karamay. Her testimony details the systematic dehumanization, indoctrination, and physical abuse she endured, including forced confessions, mass surveillance, military-style drills, and ideological reprogramming. Haitiwaji recounts being subjected to relentless brainwashing, denial of religious and cultural identity, and suspected forced sterilization. She asserts that the camps aim not just to punish but to erase Uyghur identity. Though eventually declared innocent and released in 2019, she described herself and fellow survivors as “shadows” whose souls were "dead" from the psychological trauma endured.[254] While under detention, Gulbahar was forced to make false confessions. During one of her interrogations, an officer described her daughter, Gulhumar, as a "terrorist" because she had posed in front of the Place du Trocadéro in Paris with an East Turkistan flag. According to her, there were almost 200 women detained at the Baijiantan camp.[254]

In February 2021, the BBC issued further eyewitness accounts of mass rape and torture in the camps.[222] Sayragul Sauytbay told the BBC as a teacher forced to work in the camps that "rape was common" and the guards "picked the girls and young women they wanted and took them away".[222] She also described a woman who was brought to make a forced confession in front of 100 other detainees while the police took turns to rape her as she cried out for help.[222] In 2018, a Globe and Mail interview with Sauytbay found that she did not personally see violence at the camp, but did witness hunger and a complete lack of freedom.[255] Tursunay Ziawudun, a Uyghur who fled to Kazakhstan and then the US, told the BBC that she was raped three times in the camps and kicked in the abdomen during interrogations.[222] In a 2020 interview with BuzzFeed News, Ziawudun reported that she "wasn't beaten or abused" while inside, but was instead subjected to long interrogations, forced to watch propaganda, kept in cold conditions with poor food, and had her hair cut.[256]

Forced labor

Adrian Zenz reported that the re-education camps also function as forced labor camps in which Uyghurs and Kazakhs produce various products for export, especially those made from cotton grown in Xinjiang.[257][258][259][260] The growing of cotton is central to the industry of the region as "43 percent of Xinjiang's exports are apparel, footwear, or textiles". In 2018, 84% of China's cotton was produced in the Xinjiang province.[261] Since cotton is grown and processed into textiles in Xinjiang, a November 2019 article from The Diplomat said that "the risk of forced labor exists at multiple steps in the creation of a product".[262] Academics Zhun Xu and Fangfei Lin write that the conclusion of forced labor in cotton production in Xinjiang is insufficiently supported.[263] They cite the historic significance of Uyghur agricultural workers as a long-standing labor force for manual cotton harvesting and staffing companies' widespread recruitment of Uyghur workers due to lower travel costs.[263] In their view, "[T]he labor demand of Uyghur seasonal cotton pickers in south Xinjiang is largely decided by its relatively low degree of agricultural capitalization, not due to the 'special treatment' towards labor migrants of a certain ethnic minority."[263]

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported that from 2017 to 2019 more than 80,000 Uyghurs were shipped elsewhere in China for factory jobs that "strongly suggest forced labour".[264] Conditions of these factories were consistent with the stipulations of forced labor as defined by the International Labour Organization.[170][265] In a May 2025 report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) documented the transfer of at least 11,000 individuals from Xinjiang to factories across nine Chinese provinces, including the cities of Tianjin and Chongqing, over the past decade. Official figures suggest the actual number is significantly higher, with Jiangsu province alone reporting 39,000 Xinjiang migrant workers in 2023, and one county transferring over 10,000 people in the first quarter of that year. According to state media, more than 100,000 such transfers have occurred since the program began in 2006.[266]

In 2018, the Financial Times reported that the Yutian / Keriya county vocational training centre, among the largest of the Xinjiang re-education camps, had opened a forced labour facility including eight factories spanning shoemaking, mobile phone assembly and tea packaging, giving a base monthly salary of CN¥1,500. Between 2016 and 2018, the centre expanded 269 percent in total area.[177] In 2021, former supplier for Nike, Esquel Group, sued the United States Government for listing it on a sanction list for forced labor allegations in Xinjiang. It was later removed from the sanction list due to lack of evidence provided by the US Commerce department.[267]

In October 2021, the CBC in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Project Italy along with The Guardian reported on the export of tomato products from Xinjiang and tied to forced labor by the Uyghurs. The report identified tomato products being exported to other countries such as Italy to be repackaged for sale in other markets such as Canada.[268][269] In June 2021, human rights reports indicated that costs of solar modules had been depressed in recent years due to Chinese forced labor practices in the solar module and wind turbine exports industry.[270][271][272][273][274] Globally, China dominated manufacturing, installation and exports in the field.[275][276] The practice of forced labor was blamed for the bankruptcy of firms in the US and German solar industries, multiple times, over the decade 2010–2020.[277][278] In one report, upon declaring a bankruptcy, the cost of raw materials for manufacturing panels was suggested to be 30% of the total manufacturing costs. It was argued that China do not pay labor costs.[279]

A June 2025 report by Global Rights Compliance said that 15 companies involved in the extraction and processing of critical minerals directly used state-imposed forced labor in Xinjiang and that there were an additional 68 downstream customers. The report warned that significant portions of the world economy may be exposed to products involving forced labor practices. Radio Free Asia stated that the report was based on "analyses of state media, shipping records, and marketing and corporate annual reports.[280][281]

Notable detainees

Mihrigul Tursun (former detainee)[284]

Responses from China

Prior to October 2018, when international media had asked about the re-education camps, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that they have not heard of this situation.[285] After initially denying the existence of the camps[286] the Chinese government has maintained that its actions in Xinjiang are justifiable responses to the threats of extremism and terrorism.[287]

On 12 August 2018, a Chinese state-run tabloid, Global Times, defended the crackdown in Xinjiang after a U.N. anti-discrimination committee raised concerns over China's treatment of Uyghurs. According to the Global Times, China prevented Xinjiang from becoming 'China's Syria' or 'China's Libya', and local authorities' policies saved countless lives and avoided a 'great tragedy'.[288][289]

On 13 August 2018, at a UN meeting in Geneva, the delegation from China told the United Nations Human Rights Committee that "There is no such thing as re-education centers in Xinjiang and it is completely untrue that China put 1 million Uyghurs into re-education camps".[290][291][292] A Chinese delegation said that "Xinjiang citizens, including the Uyghurs, enjoy equal freedom and rights." They said that "Some minor offenders of religious extremism or separatism have been taken to 'vocational education' and employment training centers with a view to assisting in their rehabilitation".[293]

On 14 August 2018, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said "anti-China forces had made false accusations against China for political purposes and a few foreign media outlets misrepresented the committee's discussions and were smearing China's anti-terror and crime-fighting measures in Xinjiang" after a UN human rights committee raised concern over reported mass detentions of ethnic Uyghurs.[294][295]

On 21 August 2018, Liu Xiaoming, the Ambassador of China to the United Kingdom, wrote an article in response to a Financial Times report entitled "Crackdown in Xinjiang: Where have all the people gone?".[296] Liu's response said: "The education and training measures taken by the local government of Xinjiang have not only effectively prevented the infiltration of religious extremism and helped those lost in extremist ideas to find their way back, but also provided them with employment training in order to build a better life."[297]

On 10 September 2018, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang condemned a report about the re-education camps issued by Human Rights Watch. He said: "This organisation has always been full of prejudice and distorting facts about China." Geng also added that: "Xinjiang is enjoying overall social stability, sound economic development and harmonious co-existence of different ethnic groups. The series of measures implemented in Xinjiang are meant to improve stability, development, solidarity and people's livelihood, crack down on ethnic separatist activities and violent and terrorist crimes, safeguard national security, and protect people's life and property."[298][299]

On 11 September 2018, China called for UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to "respect its sovereignty", after she urged China to allow monitors into Xinjiang and expressed concern about the situation there.[300] Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said: "China urges the U.N. human rights high commissioner and office to scrupulously abide by the mission and principles of the U.N. charter, respect China's sovereignty, fairly and objectively carry out its duties, and not listen to one-sided information".[301][300][302]

On 16 October 2018, a CCTV prime-time program aired a 15-minute episode on what was termed as Xinjiang's 'Vocational Skills Educational Training Centers', featuring the Muslim internees. Sinologist Manya Koetse documented that it received a mixture of supportive and critical responses on the Sina Weibo social media platform.[303]

In March 2019, against the background of the US considering imposing sanctions against Chen Quanguo, the CCP committee secretary of Xinjiang and most powerful regional figure, Xinjiang governor Shohrat Zakir denied international claims of concentration camps and re-education camps, instead comparing the institutions to boarding schools.[304]

On 18 March 2019, the Chinese government released a white paper about counter-terrorism and de-radicalization in Xinjiang. The white paper states, "A country under the rule of law, China respects and protects human rights in accordance with the principles of its Constitution." The white paper also contends that Xinjiang has not had violent terrorist cases for more than two consecutive years, extremist penetration has been effectively curbed, and social security has improved significantly.[305]

In September 2020, Xi Jinping acclaimed the success of his policies in Xinjiang in a 2-day conference expected to set the country's policy for the next years.[309] The Chinese government published a white paper defending what it termed its "vocational training centers" and stating that the regional government organised 'employment-oriented training' and labor skills for 1.29 million workers a year from 2014 to 2019.[310]

On 7 January 2021, the US Chinese embassy published a tweet that said: "The minds of (Uighur) women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines," which drew sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as Sam Brownback, the US envoy on international religious freedom.[311] Subsequently, the tweet was deleted and Twitter locked the embassy's account.[312]

In March 2021, following sanctions imposed on several Chinese officials by the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, the Chinese government responded with sanctions on several individuals and groups that had criticized China over the camps, including five European Parliament members (among them Reinhard Butikofer, the head of the European Parliament's delegation to China), German scholar Adrian Zenz, and the non-profit Alliance of Democracies Foundation.[313][314]

In June 2021, ProPublica and The New York Times documented a Chinese government-backed propaganda campaign on Twitter and YouTube involving more than 5000 videos analysed. They showed Uyghurs in Xinjiang denying abuses and scolding foreign officials and multinational corporations who had questioned China's human rights record in the province. Some of the videos' accounts were removed on YouTube as part of the company's efforts to combat spam and influence operations.[189]

In October 2022, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute documented a number of CCP-backed Uyghur influencers in Xinjiang posting propaganda videos on Chinese and Western social media which pushed back against abuse allegations. Some of the influencers' accounts were suspended on Twitter for alleged inauthenticity.[315]

International reactions

Main article: International reactions to the persecution of Uyghurs in China

In 2019, at the United Nations, 54 countries, including China itself, rejected the allegations and supported the Chinese government's policies in Xinjiang.[316] In another letter, 23 countries shared the concerns in the committee's reports and called on China to uphold human rights.[317][318] In September 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) reported in its Xinjiang Data Project that construction of camps continued despite government claims that their function was winding down.[22] In October 2020, it was reported that the total number of countries that denounced China increased to 39, while the total number of countries that defended China decreased to 45. Sixteen countries that defended China in 2019 did not do so in 2020.[319]

Thirty-seven countries have expressed support for China's government for "counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures", including countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Venezuela; meanwhile 22 or 43 countries, depending on sources, have called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur community, [320][321] including countries such as Canada, Germany and Japan.[320][322][323] In January 2021, the United States Department of State declared China's actions as genocide,[324][325] and legislatures in several countries have passed non-binding motions doing the same, including the House of Commons of Canada,[326] the Dutch parliament,[327] the House of Commons of the United Kingdom,[328] the Seimas of Lithuania,[329] and the French National Assembly.[330] Other parliaments, such as those in New Zealand,[331] Belgium,[332] and the Czech Republic condemned the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs as "severe human rights abuses" or crimes against humanity.[333]