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Jayasree
17 March 2026 |
The Human Rights Watch Report 2026 covers the human rights situation in China regarding expression, freedom of religion, human rights defenders, women’s and girls’ rights, sexual orientation and gender identity, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang.
The following are four major takeaways of the report on China.
1. Suppression of dissent through legislations
According to the report, the rate of incarceration of citizens accused of harbouring pro-democratic, anti-authoritarian or perceived separatist sentiments has been steadily increasing. The government released a draft on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, which legitimises the pre-existing repression of minorities and intensifies ideological controls within nations and abroad. The National Security Law (2020) and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (2024) were invoked to criminalise peaceful expression under the pretext of ensuring national security.
The prison rules were amended to exert the regulatory control of prison authorities. The disbandment of the last-surviving political oppositions and the centralised parliamentary control by the party ensured legalised violence legitimised by the passing of hegemonic laws. The government has also repressed overseas activists. The nationalist notions of China are the One China Policy and allegiance to the ruling government. The ideological security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is equated to the security of the entire country. The government prioritises strengthening the ideological homogeneity of the country to avoid infiltration of critical ideologies and civilian disharmony. This lawfare utilises vague legal definitions of “subversion” and “soft resistance” to categorise peaceful expressions by civilians as secessionist or foreign collusion. This legalises their violations of human rights.
2. Promotion of patriarchal norms and gender discrimination in employment
Gender discrimination in employment sectors remains widespread, making the workplace hostile for women. Chinese labour unions calling on companies to stop requiring female job applicants to disclose marital and childbearing status is reported as “a step forward.” However, it does not help curb sexism on a fundamental level, given the growing repression of feminist discourse in China.
The fertility rates have been reported to be one of the lowest in the world, prompting the government to promote heterosexual gender norms and censorship of discourse challenging prevailing norms. The internet regulatory authorities have cracked down on people, accusing them of propagating gender polarisation, extreme feminism and the idea of not marrying or having children.
According to the report, the government does not correlate fertility rates with deteriorating socio-political realities or with women's rights, but rather with the normalisation of the discourse around them. It promotes heteronormativity to ensure the next generation of labourers and “loyal subjects” and represses LGBTQ legitimacy, given the rejection of a proposal for a same-sex partnerships bill by the Legislative Council in 2025.
3. Forced assimilation of the Uyghurs and the Tibetans
The condition of the Uyghur Muslims is lacking progress ever since the UN report on Xinjiang confirmed the Chinese government's wide-ranging crimes against humanity in the region since 2016. The ethnic minority Uyghurs have faced consistent state-sanctioned Islamophobia, cultural repression and criminalisation. The international scrutiny for the international crimes against the Uyghurs has led to the apparent aim of whitewashing of public image since 2022. The Chinese government has permitted select Uyghurs in the diaspora to make restricted visits to Xinjiang for the purpose of participation in propaganda activities. President Xi Jinping's attendance at the 70th anniversary celebration of the founding of Xinjiang as an “autonomous region” exhibits the government's diplomatic manoeuvring of showcasing perceptions of normalcy whilst publicly reinstating the officials to maintain “people's line of defence" against terrorism and instability.
The normalcy in their treatment and portrayal of their treatment by the government masks the forceful assimilation of the group as loyal subjects, stripping them of their supposed “extremism”—Islamic identity. This forced ethnic unity prevents political resistance and diverse identities that would threaten the state-controlled civil harmony.
In Tibet, the Chinese government has passed legislation forcing the Tibetans to assimilate by cultural repression, such as harassment and detention of Tibetan educators and the shutting down of schools promoting Tibetan language and culture. The law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress is employed as a civil code to curb the rights of religious minorities.
Xi Jinping's visit to the region in August solidified the aim to replace Tibetan Buddhism with a socialist society. The administrative actions carried out for the same include a security crackdown, arrests, restrictions on several monasteries, provoked suicide and the suspicious disappearance of monks. The CCP government seeks to dismantle Tibet's religious, linguistic and cultural identity. These administrative measures seek to repress the autonomy of Tibet and incorporate the region under CCP-approved identity and ideologies.
4. Increasing censorship and shrinking academic freedom
According to the HRW report, the Chinese government controls all major media of information, standing as a regime with one of the most stringent surveillance and censorship systems in the world. The ideas/discourse on pro-democracy, recognition of Taiwanese autonomy, autocracy of the government, and rights of freedom (including social, political, gender, and sexual orientation) are legally suppressed with detainment, forced disappearance, and imprisonment. The government justifies the punishments for inciting secessionism, foreign collusion, and soft resistance. The original and translated works of Tibetan, Chinese and Taiwanese artists and writers have been banned. Stories, plays, and movies with LGBTQ themes have been either censored, altered or banned. This weighs on the transnational exchange of arts and ideas.
Academic freedom in China has declined. The Education Bureau reportedly instructed university management to ensure that no faculty member would attend a conference on Hong Kong Studies hosted by Taiwan's Academia Sinica. This may give the impression of an unfavourable educational destination for countries worldwide. A major Chinese company has reportedly exported some of China's “Great Firewall” internet censorship and surveillance technologies to countries such as Pakistan and Myanmar.
Jayasree is an undergraduate student at the Department of Political Science, Madras Christian College, Chennai.
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