China Assessment April 2001
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CHINA COUNTRY ASSESSMENT April 2001 Country Information and Policy Unit CONTENTS 1. SCOPE OF DOCUMENT 1.1 - 1.5 2. GEOGRAPHY 2.1 - 2.9 Geographical area 2.1 Population 2.2 Names / Surnames / clan names 2.3 - 2.4 Language 2.5 - 2.9 3. HISTORY 3.1 –3.54 pre-1993: 3.1 - 3.2 1966-76 Cultural Revolution 3.3 - 3.5 1978-89 and economic reform 3.6 - 3.9 1989 Tiananmen Square 3.10 - 3.12 Post-Tiananmen 3.13 -3.14 1993-present: 3.15 - 3.33 Crime and corruption 3.15 - 3.24 Criminal activity 3.25 - 3.28 Government leadership 3.29 Economic reform 3.30 - 3.34 Currency 3.35 1999: Anniversaries 3.36 - 3.37 International relations 3.38 - 3.39 "One country, two systems" issues 3.40 - 3.54 Relations with Taiwan 3.40 - 3.43 Hong Kong: 3.44 - 3.46 Elections 3.47 Dissidence 3.48 -3.50 Mainland born children 3.51 Vietnamese boat people 3.52 Macao 3.53 - 3.54 IV: INSTRUMENTS OF THE STATE 4.1 - 4.49 Government and the Constitution 4.1 - 4.20 Political structure 4.4 General overview 4.6 - 4.10 Village committees 4.11 - 4.19 Neighbourhood committees 4.20 Legal framework 4.21 Criminal Law 4.23 Criminal Procedure Law 4.25 State Compensation Law 4.25 Regulation changes 4.28 Appeals 4.29 Land law 4.34 Security situation 4.37 - 4.33 Shelter and investigation 4.38 Re-education through labour 4.39 Police 4.40 - 4.46 Armed Forces, Military conscription and desertion 4.47 - 4.49 5. HUMAN RIGHTS: SPECIFIC GROUPS 5.1- 5.249 Overview of human rights. 5.1 - 5.6 Registration of societies 5.7 - 5.20 Political dissenters 5.24 - 5.30 Dissident organisations 5.31 -5.41 Religious freedom 5.42 - 5.46 Christians 5.47 - 5. General 5.47 Protestant Christians 5.51 - 5.55 Catholic Christians 5.56 - 5.47 Sects 5.48 - 5.61 Falun Gong 5.64 - 5.109 Overview 5.64 Nature of the movement 5.65 - 5.79 Organisation of the movement 5.80 - 5.89 Organisation of the movement in Fujian Province 5.90 - 5.91 Membership 5.92 - 5.96 Key events in the history of the Falun Gong movement 5.97 - 5.98 Chinese authorities' ban 5.99 - 5.118 Demonstrations and protests 5.119 - 5.100 Detentions, trials and sentences 5.123 - 5.108 Key Development 1: the Hong Kong Issue 5.143 - 5.153 Key Development 2: The Beijing Immolations 5.154 - 5.172 Protest outside China 5.173 Deaths in custody 5.176 - 5.177 Falun Gong ban's effect on other groups 5.179 Zhong Gong 5.180 Other qigong groups 5.184 Other unregistered religious organisations 5.189 - 5.190 Asylum cases 5.191 Views of commentators on future developments 5.193 - 5.194 Muslims 5.195 - 5.196 Buddhists 5.197 - 5.204 Ethnic minorities 5.205 - 5. Tibetans 5.206 - 5.209 Uighur 5.210 - 5.219 Mongols 5.221 Women: 5.223 - Abduction 5.225 Marriage 5.227 Divorce 5.229 ACWF 5.230 Children 5.231 - 5.242 Orphanages and child welfare system 5.233 - 5.241 Educational system 5.242 Homosexuals 5.243 - 5.245 Healthcare and medical issues 5.246 - 5.247 People with disabilities 5.248 AIDS and HIV 5.249 6. HUMAN RIGHTS: OTHER ISSUES 6.1- 6.133 Penal conditions: 6.1 - 6.2 Torture 6.3 - 6.5 Death penalty 6.6 Organ removal 6.7 One child policy 6.8 - 6.40 Policy 6.8 - 6.11 Implementation 6.12 - 6.16 Actual implementation and practice 6.17 - 6.37 Female infanticide 6.27 Other social problems associated with policy 6.31 "Black children" 6.37 Population Census 6.38 Freedom of speech and press 6.41 - 6. Freedom of assembly: 6.48 - 6.49 Trades unions 6.50 - 6.52 Freedom of movement: 6.53 - 6.78 Hukou System "Iron rice bowl" 6.53 - 6.54 Floating population 6.55 - 6.56 Hukou (residency status documentation) 6.57 - 6.78 Emigration: 6.79 - 6.133 General information on Chinese emigration patterns 6.79 - 6.86 Legal emigration 6.87 - 6. Illegal emigration 6.90 - 6.133 Dover deaths 6.90 - 6.79 Pacific coast cases 6.95 - 6.84 People smugglers (Snakeheads) 6.100 -6.93 Snakehead / officials collusion 6.109 Chinese authorities' approach 6.110 - 6.97 Fraudulent documentation 6.113 Routes used 6.118 People smugglers and Fujian province 6.120 Returnees 6.121 - 6.133 ANNEX A: PROMINENT PEOPLE, POLITICAL DISSIDENTS, POLITICAL DISSIDENT GROUPS ANNEX B: CHRONOLOGY ANNEX C: GLOSSARY OF CHINESE TERMS ANNEX D: GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH TERMS AND ACRONYMS ANNEX E: BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. SCOPE OF DOCUMENT 1.1 This assessment has been produced by the Country Information & Policy Unit, Immigration & Nationality Directorate, Home Office, from information obtained from a variety of sources. 1.2 The assessment has been prepared for background purposes for those involved in the asylum determination process. The information it contains is not exhaustive, nor is it intended to catalogue all human rights violations. It concentrates on the issues most commonly raised in asylum claims made in the United Kingdom. It represents the current assessment by the Immigration & Nationality Directorate of the general socio-political and human rights situation in the country. 1.3 The assessment is sourced throughout. It is intended to be used by caseworkers as a signpost to the source material, which has been made available to them. The vast majority of the source material is readily available in the public domain. 1.4 It is intended to revise the assessment on a 6-monthly basis while the country remains within the top 35 asylum producing countries in the United Kingdom. 1.5 The assessment will be placed on the Internet at the Home Office website (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ind/). An electronic copy of the assessment has been made available to the following organisations: Amnesty International UK Immigration Advisory Service Immigration Appellate Authority Immigration Law Practitioners' Association Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants JUSTICE Medical Foundation for the care of Victims of Torture Refugee Council Refugee Legal Centre UN High Commissioner for Refugees 2. GEOGRAPHY Geographical Area 2.1. The People's Republic of China (PRC) covers 9,571,300 sq km of eastern Asia, with Mongolia and Russia to the north; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakstan to the north-west; Afghanistan and Pakistan to the west; India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam to the south; and Korea in the north-east. It has a long coastline on the Pacific Ocean. There are 4 municipalities - Beijing (Peking) (the capital), Shanghai, Tianjin (Tientsin) and Chongqing - and 22 provinces, of which the largest (by population) are Henan (Honan), Sichuan (Szechwan), Shandong (Shantung), Jiansu (Kiangsu) and Guangdong (Kwangtung). There are 5 autonomous regions - Guangxi Zhuang (Kwangsi Chuang), Nei Monggol (Inner Mongolia), Xinjiang Uygur (Singkiang Uighur), Ningxia Hui (Ninghsia Hui) and Xizang (Tibet) - as well as, from 1 July 1997, the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong, and from 20 December 1999, the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Macau. [1a] Population 2.2. The total population was estimated in 1998 at 1.251 billion. The official population growth rate is 0.93%, with an average life expectancy of 70 years. Han Chinese make up 91.9% of the population. [2f] In January 2001, Surnames and clan names 2.3. One website of unknown provenance gives the following. Surnames, according to Chinese tradition, follow the maternal line. They denote family or close village ties, and so marriages were not permitted between individuals with the same surname. Clan-names are different from surnames, recalling gifts of territories or titles to nobles by the emperor. The clan-name indicates the ancestral home of a person. [16b] 2.4. According to recent statistics (unspecified) the surname Zhang is the most prolific surname with over 100 million individuals with the surname. Zhang and the other top 9 surnames account for 40% of the Chinese population (in 1977 statistics). The next 10 most popular surnames account for a further 10%, and the following 10, a further 10%. An additional 15 surnames mean that a total of 45 surnames account for about 70% of the population. The remaining 30% are comparatively rare. [16b] Languages 2.5. The principal language is putonghua (Standard Chinese/Northern Chinese/Mandarin). Local dialects are spoken in the south and south-east. The Tibetans, Uygurs, Mongols and other groups have their own languages. Putonghua is taught in the schools throughout China, but local dialects are commonly spoken. For example, Fuzhou (capital of Fujian province) has its own dialect, quite different from the national language, and different again from the dialect in southern Fujian. Cantonese, and subdialects of Cantonese, is commonly spoken in Guangdong province. 2.6. The main official language, Modern Standard Chinese, is based on the main dialect of Chinese, Mandarin Chinese. Known as Putonghua - "the common tongue, i.e. used by everyone", also known as Hanyu - "the language of the Han people", it is spoken by 890 million people worldwide, and understood by the majority of PRC's 2.1 billion population. [20a] 2.7. The number of languages listed in one source for China is 206; 205 living languages, and 1 extinct. [20a] Apart from other indigenous languages, Chinese itself is divided into different dialects. The dialects are mutually unintelligible to different dialect speakers, differing mainly in pronunciation and vocabulary, with few grammatical differences.