section_path: Government and politics/Sociopolitical issues and human rights
section_name: Sociopolitical issues and human rights
paragraph_text: Sociopolitical issues and human rights
  
  The situation of human rights in China has attracted significant criticism from foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and non-governmental organizations, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights, and excessive use of the death penalty. Since its inception, Freedom House has ranked China as "not free" in its Freedom in the World survey, while Amnesty International has documented significant human rights abuses. The Chinese constitution states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state. China has limited protections regarding LGBT rights.
  
  Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling CCP are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information are amongst the harshest in the world and routinely used to prevent collective action. China also has the most comprehensive and sophisticated Internet censorship regime in the world, with numerous websites being blocked. The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability". China additionally uses a massive surveillance network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, and surveillance of personal technology as a means of social control of persons living in the country.
  
  China is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, where significant numbers of ethnic minorities reside, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression. Since 2017, the Chinese government has been engaged in a harsh crackdown in Xinjiang, with around one million Uyghurs and other ethnic and religion minorities being detained in internment camps aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. According to Western reports, political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and forced labor are common in these facilities. According to a 2020 Foreign Policy report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets the UN definition of genocide, while a separate UN Human Rights Office report said they could potentially meet the definitions for crimes against humanity. The Chinese authorities have also cracked down on dissent in Hong Kong, especially after the passage of a national security law in 2020.
  
  In 2017 and 2020, the Pew Research Center ranked the severity of Chinese government restrictions on religion as being among the world's highest, despite ranking religious-related social hostilities in China as low in severity. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people (0.25% of the population) were living in "conditions of modern slavery ", including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed re-education through labor (laojiao) system was formally abolished in 2013, but it is not clear to what extent its practices have stopped. The much larger reform through labor (laogai) system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps; the Laogai Research Foundation has estimated in June 2008 that there were nearly 1,422 of these facilities, though it cautioned that this number was likely an underestimate.