Full Text: Progress in China's Human Rights in 2014

In 2014 China officially designated December 4th as the national Constitution Day through legislation with a view to advancing the rule of law, enforcing the implementation of the Constitution, and promoting citizens' democratic rights to civic participation, democratic legislation, consultative democracy, community-level democracy, citizen supervision and freedom of speech.

The mechanisms for people to exercise state power being improved. The people's congress system is the fundamental political system of China. In 2014 the Standing Committee of the NPC exercised its power of supervision in accordance with the law, heard and deliberated 13 work reports from the government, Supreme People' s Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate, checked the implementation of four laws, and held three topical inquiries and four topical investigations. It highlighted legislative priorities, accelerated the pace of legislative work, and improved the mechanisms for and effectiveness of legislation to promote democratic legislation. In 2014 the Standing Committee of the NPC deliberated 20 draft laws, revised 10 laws, enacted two laws, and provided eight legal interpretations.

It stressed appraisal before and in the process of legislation. Suggestions were solicited from the general public, experts and related departments via the Internet, symposiums, discussions, investigations and letters. Take the draft amendment to the Administrative Procedure Law as an example. From August 31 to September 20, 2014 over 2,300 pieces of advice were offered by 1,586 people on the second review draft.

The Standing Committee also improved the post-legislation appraisal mechanism to make appraisal a standardized practice that is done on a regular basis. A sound operation mechanism for the enactment, revision, abolition and interpretation of laws was established step by step.

Multilayer consultative democracy steadily developed. Consultative democracy is a form of democracy unique to China's socialist democratic politics. China' s fine traditional culture provides a profound political and ideological wellspring for this new-type consultative democracy. In 2014, centered on building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, comprehensively deepening reform, governing the country with the rule of law and running the Party with strict discipline, the country gathered strength, explored with consultative democracy in greater width and depth, strengthened the function of democratic supervision, continued to strengthen consultation among political parties, in the people's congresses, governments, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and people's organizations, and at the community level. Efforts were made to build a complete consultation democracy system with proper procedures, and expand channels for citizens to participate in state and social governance in an orderly manner, all of which improved the scientific and democratic level of decision making. Since the Second Session of the 12th CPPCC, the conclusion rate of their proposals has reached 99.8 percent.

Power list system actively promoted. In 2014 the State Council made a series of decisions concerning administrative approval items to be cancelled or delegated to lower levels, canceling and delegating to lower levels over 246 items for administrative approval. This means the current Administration has honored the promise of deducting the administrative approval items by one third ahead of schedule. The State Council also released a list of items for administrative approval by all departments, stipulating that no department should exercise administrative approval beyond the list of 1,235 items so as to minimize the possibilities of officials seeking personal gain through power and improve the procedure of the exercise of power. We have actively implemented the Regulations on the Disclosure of Government Information, gone all out to make government affairs public, promoted e-government and online services to ensure timely and accurate access by ordinary citizens to information, and put the government under public supervision.

More efforts being put in improving Party conduct, upholding integrity and combating corruption. The CPC Central Committee and the Chinese government are unswervingly improving their work practices, adopting zero-tolerance toward corruption and further improving the governance by law. In 2014 the discipline inspection and supervision departments nationwide received a total of 2.72 million tip-off and complaint letters, filed 226,000 cases, concluded 218,000 cases, gave Party and administrative discipline sanctions to 232,000 people, and transferred 12,000 people to judicial organs for suspected crimes; investigated and handled 53,085 cases for violating the "Eight Provisions" of the CPC Central Committee, involving 71,748 people, of whom, 23,646 were given Party and administrative discipline sanctions. We beefed up our efforts to pursue offenders who have fled overseas and recover their ill-gotten gains, strengthened bilateral and multilateral cooperation, launched the "Sky Net" and "Fox Hunt" campaigns, released the Beijing Declaration on Fighting Corruption and established the Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies. These steps have helped the government hunt down over 500 escaped convicts and recover over three billion yuan in illegally diverted funds. In 2014 discipline inspection and supervision departments at all levels retrieved 10.5 billion yuan for the country through rectifying Party conduct and combating corruption; a total of 130,000 units nationwide were audited, and over 250,000 audit reports and files were delivered, resulting in an increase in revenue and decrease in expenditure, and over 400 billion yuan of losses recovered. Over 3,800 pieces of evidence of cases involving violation of laws and regulations were found and submitted to the judiciary for further investigation. All these efforts helped to promote the country' s healthy economic growth, ensure social equity and justice and safeguard the immediate interests of the people.

The construction of core socialist values gathering momentum. China's human rights will not be able to make progress without the construction of core socialist values. They are supplementary to each other. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, core socialist values, namely, prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendship have been advocated, fostered and implemented in all sectors of society. Core socialist values are the common ideals and spiritual pillars of the Chinese people. In 2014 the state renewed its efforts to promote human rights education, and advanced the construction of core socialist values, launching volunteer services and programs inculcating filial piety education, integrity education, thrift education, cultivating and inheriting fine family traditions, school mottoes, entrepreneurship, fine village traditions and festival culture, and publicizing public service advertisements titled "Our Values." We intensified the building of civilized cities, towns, villages, and units, and exhorted Chinese tourists to behave themselves. We presented role models representing the spirit of our time through the online column "365 moral models." Recommendations for role models and good deeds totaled over 40,000 throughout that year, and by the end of 2014 the page featuring this topic on weibo.com at the website Sina was read by more than 170 million people, exerting a positive influence on society. Freedom of speech better protected. In 2014 China published 46.5 billion copies of newspapers, 3.2 billion copies of periodicals, and 8.4 billion copies of books, with 6.12 copies of books per person. By the end of 2014 the population of netizens in China was 650 million, and the Internet penetration rate was 47.9 percent. Of all the netizens, 508 million were smart phone users, an increase of 76.83 million over 2013, registering an increase rate of 17.8 percent. The users of the top three Internet applications instant messaging, search engine and netnews were 588 million, 522 million and 519 million, respectively. The number of online video users was 433 million, microblog users 249 million, and Wechat accounts over eight million, with its active domestic and overseas accounts per month close to 500 million. The public can air opinions, and raise criticisms and suggestions freely through the news media, and discuss problems of this country and society. The government encourages enterprises to provide various Internet services to the public in accordance with the law so as to create a good environment for the public to acquire and exchange information. A cleaner cyber space is becoming an ever important place for the public to get information and make their voices heard. Social organizations playing their roles better. Renewed efforts are being made to promote the direct registration of social organizations, providing more favorable conditions and an institutional guarantee for citizens to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, express their legitimate demands, participate in the management of public affairs and engage in social services through these social organizations. In 2014 the social organizations registered at the Ministry of Civil Affairs totaled 600,000, an increase of 11.1 percent over the previous year; among them, 307,000 were social groups, with year-on-year growth of 7.3 percent; 4,044 were foundations, a year-on-year growth of 15.7 percent; and 289,000 were non-governmental nonprofit units, a year-on-year growth of 15.1 percent. Meanwhile, the government continued to outsource services from social organizations. In 2014 it allocated a budget of 200 million yuan to initiate 448 projects, with supporting funds of 166 million yuan to assist social organizations to serve society, directly benefiting over 2.35 million people and training about 20,000 heads of social organizations.