Annual Report 2016
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA ANNUAL REPORT 2016 ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION OCTOBER 6, 2016 Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov VerDate Mar 15 2010 10:00 Oct 06, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6011 Sfmt 5011 U:\DOCS\AR16 NEW\21471.TXT DEIDRE 2016 ANNUAL REPORT VerDate Mar 15 2010 10:00 Oct 06, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 6019 Sfmt 6019 U:\DOCS\AR16 NEW\21471.TXT DEIDRE CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA ANNUAL REPORT 2016 ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION OCTOBER 6, 2016 Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 21–471 PDF WASHINGTON : 2016 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate Mar 15 2010 10:00 Oct 06, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 U:\DOCS\AR16 NEW\21471.TXT DEIDRE CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS House Senate CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Cochairman Chairman JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma ROBERT PITTENGER, North Carolina TOM COTTON, Arkansas TRENT FRANKS, Arizona STEVE DAINES, Montana RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois BEN SASSE, Nebraska DIANE BLACK, Tennessee DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio GARY PETERS, Michigan MICHAEL M. HONDA, California TED LIEU, California EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS CHRISTOPHER P. LU, Department of Labor SARAH SEWALL, Department of State DANIEL R. RUSSEL, Department of State TOM MALINOWSKI, Department of State PAUL B. PROTIC, Staff Director ELYSE B. ANDERSON, Deputy Staff Director (II) VerDate Mar 15 2010 10:00 Oct 06, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 0486 Sfmt 0486 U:\DOCS\AR16 NEW\21471.TXT DEIDRE C O N T E N T S Page I. Executive Summary ............................................................................................. 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1 Overview ............................................................................................................ 5 Recommendations to Congress and the Administration ............................... 10 Specific Findings and Recommendations ........................................................ 16 Political Prisoner Database ............................................................................. 56 II. Human Rights ..................................................................................................... 61 Freedom of Expression ..................................................................................... 61 Worker Rights ................................................................................................... 79 Criminal Justice ............................................................................................... 99 Freedom of Religion .......................................................................................... 121 Ethnic Minority Rights .................................................................................... 142 Population Control ........................................................................................... 147 Freedom of Residence and Movement ............................................................ 169 Status of Women .............................................................................................. 178 Human Trafficking ........................................................................................... 186 North Korean Refugees in China .................................................................... 197 Public Health .................................................................................................... 203 The Environment .............................................................................................. 211 III. Development of the Rule of Law ...................................................................... 223 Civil Society ...................................................................................................... 223 Institutions of Democratic Governance .......................................................... 235 Commercial Rule of Law .................................................................................. 252 Access to Justice ............................................................................................... 268 IV. Xinjiang .............................................................................................................. 282 V. Tibet ..................................................................................................................... 298 VI. Developments in Hong Kong and Macau ........................................................ 328 (III) VerDate Mar 15 2010 10:00 Oct 06, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 U:\DOCS\AR16 NEW\21471.TXT DEIDRE VerDate Mar 15 2010 10:00 Oct 06, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 U:\DOCS\AR16 NEW\21471.TXT DEIDRE 1 I. Executive Summary INTRODUCTION December 2016 will mark 15 years since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). At that time, the Chinese gov- ernment made commitments that were important not only for Chi- na’s commercial development in the international marketplace, but also for its development of the rule of law domestically. China— now ranking as the world’s second largest economy—has benefited greatly from the international rules-based system in driving its eco- nomic transformation and growth, but the Chinese Communist Party has continued to reject the notion that the rule of law should supersede the Party’s role in guiding the functions of the state, im- peding China’s ability to honor its WTO obligations. As such, China has largely failed to implement the substantive legal reforms an- ticipated 15 years ago and has persisted in violating international human rights standards and its own domestic laws with lasting harm to both U.S. interests and the Chinese people. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (Commis- sion), established by the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000, which also extended Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China, is mandated to monitor human rights and rule of law devel- opments in China. Since October 2002, the Commission has issued an Annual Report each year, providing a summary of key develop- ments over a range of issues, identifying new trends, and high- lighting cases of political prisoners and rights advocates. As the Commission’s 15th Annual Report demonstrates, it serves the need to monitor the Chinese government’s repression of the Chinese peo- ple and continues to be a vital source of accurate information. During the Commission’s 2016 reporting year, the Chinese Com- munist Party and government further restricted the limited space for peaceful expression, religious activity, and assembly with harsh consequences for rights advocates, lawyers, and civil society, and continued to implement the world’s most sophisticated system of Internet control and press censorship, affecting both domestic and foreign journalists. For the first time since 2012, the Chinese gov- ernment expelled a foreign journalist, in this case, for criticizing the government’s ethnic policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autono- mous Region (XUAR). The government routinely denied medical treatment to imprisoned activists, targeted family members and as- sociates of rights advocates, including those overseas, with harass- ment and retribution, and became more brazen in exerting its extraterritorial reach. The government also continued harsh secu- rity measures that disregarded the protection of human rights in ethnic minority regions including Tibetan autonomous areas and the XUAR. Underscoring the severity of conditions in China, 12 countries, led by the United States, expressed serious concerns about human rights abuses in China at the March 2016 gathering of the UN Human Rights Council, the first such collective state- ment on China in the history of the Council. The group specifically noted ‘‘arrests and ongoing detention of rights activists, civil society leaders, and lawyers’’ as well as ‘‘unexplained recent disappear- ances and apparent coerced returns of Chinese and foreign citizens from outside mainland China.’’ VerDate Mar 15 2010 10:00 Oct 06, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 9902 Sfmt 9902 U:\DOCS\AR16 NEW\21471.TXT DEIDRE Executive Summary 2 Legislative and policy developments during this past year in- cluded further reforms to the household registration (hukou) sys- tem and passage, after years of advocacy, of the PRC Anti-Domes- tic Violence Law and the PRC Charity Law. Yet these efforts were overshadowed by the apparent distrust and sometimes hostility with which the Chinese government continues to view its citizens and by the lackluster implementation and enforcement of laws and regulations meant to protect China’s most vulnerable citizens and stem the degradation of its polluted physical environment. Faced with a rapidly aging population, a shrinking labor pool, and high levels of public dissatisfaction, central Party authorities announced in October 2015 a decision to adopt