China continues to rank among the worst human rights offenders in the world, despite ratifying a number of international human rights agreements.
China has regressed with respect to the rule of law, according to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s 2025 annual report, released on Dec. 10, which highlights the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) long history of breaking promises.
The commission was created in 2000 to monitor human rights and the rule of law in China.
“Broken promises are not an exception; they are a feature of how the CCP deals with the world and with its own people,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), commission cochairmen, said in a statement in the report.
“These broken promises affect Americans,” they stated.
For example, Americans traveling to China for work or study can become subject to exit bans and arbitrary detention, Chinese forced labor can become intertwined with U.S. supply chains, national security laws grant the regime “sweeping access” to U.S. data, and the regime carries out its human rights abuses extraterritorially through transnational repression such as overseas police stations.
The annual report includes dozens of recommendations aimed at curbing long-standing CCP practices that harm the United States and the international community, including several bills that lawmakers have introduced this year.
The chairmen called on the United States and free world allies to reject Beijing’s attempts to incentivize and divide, because otherwise “Americans pay the price—in security, in prosperity, and in credibility,” they said.
“Upholding human dignity helps keep markets fairer, travel safer, technology freer, and alliances stronger,” the chairmen stated. “It reduces the leverage authoritarian states—led by a totalitarian [People’s Republic of China]—wield over people and partners.”
n addition to producing an annual report, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China maintains the Political Prisoner Database. As of June 30, the database contained 11,262 records, which the commission believes is an underreporting of the actual number. They include 2,755 active detentions; the rest of the prisoners are either believed or known to have been released, been executed, died in custody, or escaped.
They include Zhang Zhan, a journalist who reported on the CCP’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as critics of that response who hung banners in public spaces, such as Peng Lifa, Mei Shilin, and Fang Yirong. They also include artists depicting what the regime considers sensitive issues, such as Gao Zhen, whose work depicted the Cultural Revolution, and Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet.
Among them are religious believers who do not promote and practice the CCP’s version of religions, such as Xin Ruoyu, who worked on developing a Christian app that provided users access to hymns and worship music, and Zhao Ying, a woman older than 80 who was sentenced to more than three years in prison for giving people materials about the Falun Gong spiritual group.
