深度调研报告、政策简报与数据分析 — 基于一手证据的人权记录。
(Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders—December 9, 2025) On International Human Rights Day, December 10, CHRD calls on the Chinese government to end its practice of long-term imprisonment of human rights defenders (HRDs). Authorities impose prison sentences of 10 years or longer to silence peaceful dissent, and to try to ensure that these people and their struggles are forgotten.
(Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders—October 9, 2025) The proposed revisions to the Prison Law entrench the Chinese government’s disdain for its international human rights obligations, especially around the prohibition of torture, and enshrine vague “national security” restrictions limiting freedom of expression and other rights.
（人权捍卫者 – 2025年3月5日）非政府组织「人权捍卫者」（CHRD）今天发布的报告指出，在过去六年中，一共有1,545位因和平表达意见或行使人权遭中国当局羁押的良心犯被判刑入狱。
(Chinese Human Rights Defenders, March 5, 2025) Between 2019 and 2024, Chinese authorities arbitrarily detained thousands and convicted 1,545 prisoners of conscience for peacefully exercising or advocating for human rights. They were sentenced and imprisoned on charges that stem from laws that are not in conformity with the Chinese government’s domestic and international human rights obligations. Their cases proceeded through the full criminal justice system, with police, prosecutors, and courts arbitrarily depriving them of their liberty in violation of their human rights.
中国当局使用“株连”或“连坐”来惩罚包括儿童在内的人权捍卫者的家庭。这类惩罚没有任何法律依据，但对中国及海外侨民社区的人们带来了严重的后果。
(Chinese Human Rights Defenders, April 15, 2024) CHRD releases its annual report on the situation of human rights defenders (2023), “If I Disobey, My Family Will Suffer: Collective punishment of human rights defenders’ families in China.”
As United Nations Member States prepare for China’s January 2024 UPR, they should firmly and clearly focus on the goal of making positive changes inside the country at a time when rights are under severe attack.
(Chinese Human Rights Defenders— July 31, 2023) Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has claimed to champion women’s equality. Chairman Mao Zedong famously proclaimed that “women hold up half the sky,” and the first PRC Constitution––adopted in 1954–– provided that “Women in the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of life: political, economic, cultural, social and familial” (Art. 48). While women in China have made significant strides toward the goal of achieving equal rights with men, since Xi Jinping’s ascendancy as China’s top leader in 2012, they have faced increasing risks when engaging in any activity, including speech, aimed at promoting and defending women’s rights, as well as other human rights.
(Chinese Human Rights Defenders— March 22, 2023) The Hui are the second largest minority group in China, with a population of 11.4 million.1 Although this is greater than the population of Portugal, the Hui are an unfamiliar group to most outside of China. Yet over centuries, they have persisted in maintaining distinct communities and practices centered around Islam while residing throughout nearly every region of China. A few ethnically distinct Muslim groups in China are also classified as Hui by the Chinese government.
(Chinese Human Rights Defenders— March 15, 2023) This year marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which recognizes the key role of human rights defenders (HRDs) in the realization of human rights and provides that each State has a responsibility and duty “to protect, promote and implement all human rights and fundamental freedoms” (art. 2(1)). While the Chinese government violates the Declaration in its unceasing persecution of human rights defenders, HRDs nonetheless continue to fight to promote and advocate for human rights in China.
This report addresses the questions how the Chinese government has been doing in protecting economic, social, and cultural rights in the past few years. The report examines the structural defects that underpin the problems in protection of these rights. And the report sheds light on the systematic failures that many Chinese human rights defenders have documented in the government’s failures to protect these human rights.
Throughout 2021, the Chinese state continued to tighten control over nearly all facets of society, often under the pretense of controlling the spread of COVID-19 and protecting national security. As in consecutive years past, government authorities took harsh reprisal measures against human rights defenders in China, Hong Kong, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and areas populated by Tibetans.
During the year 2020, while the world was battling the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese authorities used the exceptional period to further tighten its grip over mainland society while abandoning its pledge to respect a high-degree of autonomy in Hong Kong, says CHRD in its 2020 annual report on the situation of human rights defenders, “Defending Human Rights in the Time of COVID-19.” Despite the heavily constricted space, as CHRD’s new report details, in many cases, Chinese human rights defenders continued to speak out – and bravely push for their rights and freedoms, even in the face of unrelenting persecution.
(Chinese Human Rights Defenders—April 1, 2020) The Chinese government must release detained citizen journalists and outspoken critics, and end the new crackdown on free expression online since the start of COVID-19 outbreak. Under the guise of fighting the novel coronavirus, authorities in China have escalated suppression online by blocking independent reporting, information sharing, and critical comments on government responses. Aggressive cyber policing and invasive online surveillance have played a key role in the initial government cover-up of the outbreak and hampering vital information flow, contributing to significant delay of emergency responses and loss of life.
In 2019, human rights defenders in China and its peripheral regions braved cruel punishment in challenging the Chinese government’s human rights abuses and draconian laws. They refused to back down from the rising totalitarian rule of President Xi Jinping.
