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First issued in 1998, Human Rights Record of the United States is an annual publication by the People's Republic of China's propaganda arm to counter the U.S. Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights. [1]
The 2011 report stated (edited for clarity):
The U.S. State Department report is a political instrument distorting China's human rights issues, ignoring its own human rights issues.
The reports tend to highlight wedge issues in the United States such as poverty, crime, racism and gun violence. Its references are derived from both official and non-credible sources. [2]
CNN's Fareed Zakaria wrote of the 2011 report (edited for clarity):
It weakens valid charges against Guantánamo Bay and CIA detection facilities with statistics that have no bearing on human rights violations. [3]
Human rights in China are poor, as per reviews by international bodies, such as human rights treaty bodies and the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), their supporters, and other proponents claim that existing policies and enforcement measures are sufficient to guard against human rights abuses. However, other countries, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including Human Rights in China and Amnesty International, and citizens, lawyers, and dissidents inside the country, state that the authorities in mainland China regularly sanction or organize such abuses.
The relationship between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States of America (USA) has been complex and at times tense since the establishment of the PRC and the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan in 1949. Since the normalization of relations in the 1970s, the US–China relationship has been marked by numerous perennial disputes including the political status of Taiwan, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and more recently the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. They have significant economic ties and are significantly intertwined, yet they also have a global hegemonic great power rivalry. As of 2025, China and the United States are the world's second-largest and largest economies by nominal GDP, as well as the largest and second-largest economies by GDP (PPP) respectively. Collectively, they account for 44.2% of the global nominal GDP, and 34.7% of global PPP-adjusted GDP.
China is one of the members of the United Nations and is one of five permanent members of its Security Council. One of the victorious Allies of World War II, the Republic of China (ROC) joined the UN as one of its founding member countries in 1945. The subsequent resumption of the Chinese Civil War between the government of Republic of China and the rebel forces of the Chinese Communist Party, led to the latter's victory on the mainland and the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Nearly all of mainland China was soon under its control and the ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization focuses on protecting and expanding rights for LGBTQ individuals, including advocating for same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation, and HIV/AIDS advocacy. The organization has a number of legislative initiatives as well as supporting resources for LGBTQ individuals.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. The headquarters of the Council are at the United Nations Office at Geneva in Switzerland.
Christopher Henry Smith is an American politician serving his 22nd term as the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 4th congressional district. Though it has taken various forms, his district has always been situated in central New Jersey. Currently, the district contains parts of Ocean and Monmouth counties. Smith is a member of the Republican Party, having switched from the Democratic Party in 1978.
Cable News Network International or CNN International is an international television channel and website, owned by CNN Worldwide. CNN International carries news-related programming worldwide; it cooperates with sister network CNN's national and international news bureaus. Unlike its sister channel, CNN, a North American-only subscription service, CNN International is carried on a variety of TV platforms across the world, and broadcast from studios inside and outside the United States, in Atlanta, New York City, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi. In some countries, it is available as a free-to-air network. The service is aimed at the overseas market, similar to BBC News, France 24, CGTN, DW, RT, DD India, NHK World, TRT World or Al Jazeera English.
The United States foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China originated during the Cold War. At that time, the U.S. had a containment policy against communist states. The leaked Pentagon Papers indicated the efforts by the U.S. to contain China through military actions undertaken in the Vietnam War. The containment policy centered around an island chain strategy. President Richard Nixon's China rapprochement signaled a shift in focus to gain leverage in containing the Soviet Union. Formal diplomatic ties between the U.S. and China were established in 1979, and with normalized trade relations since 2000, the U.S. and China have been linked by closer economic ties and more cordial relations. In his first term as U.S. president, Barack Obama said, "We want China to succeed and prosper. It's good for the United States if China continues on the path of development that it's on".
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs (DRL) is a bureau within the United States Department of State. The bureau is under the purview of the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.
Human rights in Chad have been described as "poor"; for example, Freedom House has designated the country as "Not Free." Chad received a score of 7 for political rights and 6 for civil liberties.
Hong Kong–United States relations are bilateral relations between Hong Kong and the United States.
U.S. President Barack Obama's East Asia Strategy (2009–2017), also known as the Pivot to Asia, represented a significant shift in the foreign policy of the United States since the 2010s. It shifted the country's focus away from the Middle Eastern and European sphere and allowed it to invest heavily and build relationships in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, especially countries which are in close proximity to the People's Republic of China (PRC) either economically, geographically or politically to counter its rise as a rival potential superpower.
Child pornography is illegal in most countries, but there is substantial variation in definitions, categories, penalties, and interpretations of laws. Differences include the definition of "child" under the laws, which can vary with the age of sexual consent; the definition of "child pornography" itself, for example on the basis of medium or degree of reality; and which actions are criminal. Laws surrounding fictional child pornography are a major source of variation between jurisdictions; some maintain distinctions in legality between real and fictive pornography depicting minors, while others regulate fictive material under general laws against child pornography.
Michael Richard Pompeo is an American retired politician who served in the first administration of Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018, and as the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC) is a bipartisan body of the United States House of Representatives. Its stated mission is "to promote, defend and advocate internationally recognized human rights norms in a nonpartisan manner, both within and outside of Congress, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other relevant human rights instruments."
Since 2014, the government of the People's Republic 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.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 is a United States federal law that requires various United States government bodies to report on human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China, including the Xinjiang internment camps.
Crimson Contagion was a joint exercise conducted from January to August 2019, in which numerous national, state and local, private and public organizations in the US participated, in order to test the capacity of the federal government and twelve states to respond to a severe pandemic of influenza originating in China.
The United States government applies economic sanctions against certain institutions and key members of the government of the People's Republic of China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), certain companies linked to the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and other affiliates that the U.S. government has accused of aiding in human rights abuses. The U.S. maintained embargoes against China from the inception of the People's Republic of China in 1949 until 1972. An embargo was reimposed by the U.S. following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. From 2020 onward, the U.S. imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against several Chinese government officials and companies, in response to the persecution of Uyghurs in China, human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Tibet, military-civil fusion, support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and fentanyl production.
Xinjiang is the leading producer of cotton in China, accounting for about 20% of the world's cotton production and 80% of China's domestic cotton production. Critics of the industry's practices have alleged widespread human rights abuses, prompting global boycotts. China rejects accusations that any human rights abuses occur either within the Xinjiang cotton industry or within China overall.
