CHINA:
The truth about its human rights record
By Frank Ching, Rider Books
Reviewed: 19 July 2008
In this short and accessible book, Frank Ching has provided a timely reality check. Many who seek good relations with China are uneasy about how to reconcile China’s economic and cultural strengths with its persistent disregard for a range of individual human rights that we claim to support.
This book offers a sober and thorough review of the broad environment of rights and restrictions that constrain the daily lives of all China’s citizens and of non-Chinese who interact with them.
Frank Ching is an American journalist of Chinese family who has been reporting on China for thirty years. He recognizes where improvements have been made to human rights in China over time, but the overall picture remains bleak.
The heart of the matter is that the Communist Party refuses to allow any limitation to its monopoly of power. “The basic problem with China’s legal system is that there is no culture of the rule of law”. The system remains heavily biased against the individual and in favour of anyone holding state authority, from internet censor or police constable upwards.
The Communist Party’s obsession with monopoly of power also motivates restriction of religious freedoms. Nominal freedom of religion in the Constitution is hemmed in by legal requirements for any religion to “promote unity” and to be subject to the guidance of the state. Ching’s up to date report makes clear that without changes in fundamental attitudes by those holding ultimate power, China is likely to remain near the bottom of the world’s human rights tables.
Richard Thwaites is a former Australian Broadcasting correspondent in China.
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