Note: The Chinese Special Administrative Regions (SAR) of Hong Kong and Macau are dealt with separately, as is Tibet, referred to as the Tibetan Administrative Region (TAR) to reflect the current political situation.
China is the most populated country in the world and one in every six inhabitants on the planet is Chinese. China will carry out its first census of 21st century in November 2010. At the end of 2009, 46 % of the population was living in urban areas.

China is quite a young society. 21% of the population is under the age of 15, 72% between the ages of 15 and 65 and only 8% is over the age of 65. The annual population growth rate is 0.6%, which means 38 million births every year. The average birth rate is 13.7, which gives a fertility rate of 1.8 children per woman. The mortality rate is also low at 7 , but infantile mortality rises to. The migratory balance is slightly negative, at -0.39. The life expectancy is about 73 years.

It is necessary to mention the important imbalance of sex ratio. There are a considerably greater number of men than women. The government is increasingly alarmed by this and is now using all of its huge propaganda resources to try and stop the slaughter of unborn girls. Following cultural traditions, Chinese families prefer boys to girls therefore they resort to abortion and even infanticide. For decades the authorities have been fighting this custom by punishing the abortion of girls, but even this is practiced in a clandestine manner. Another big cause of the problem is the Chinese governments birth policy that only allows one child per family. The Chinese government is considering revising this rule.

Political System: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the paramount source of power in the Peoples Republic of China. Power is centralised in the Partys 24-member Politburo and further in its 9-member Politburo Standing Committee.
The government consists of the President as head of state, the Premier as head of government, the 35-member State Council as a Cabinet and the 2,985-seat National Peoples Congress. The Congress meets annually for about 2 weeks, and at other times its power is exercised by its permanent Standing Committee.

New political parties are forbidden. Women and minority groups are not formally restricted from participation in politics, but only a few obtain managerial positions. In rural China, although women represent 65% of the rural workforce, they occupy only 1-2% of local managerial positions.

In 2009 the Chinese government continued to impose restrictions put in place for the 2008 Olympics, fearing unrest around a series of "sensitive" anniversaries including the 20th anniversary of the repression in Tiananmen Square, the 50th anniversary of a Massacre in Tibet (March of 1959) as well as the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Officials obstructed civil society organizations, including groups and individuals working with victims of the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake, broadened controls on Uighurs and Tibetans, and tightened restrictions on lawyers and human rights defenders.

Government and CCP officials are reported to influence the judiciary. Legal reforms are under way and, while steps to increase judicial independence have stalled, lawyers, professors and jurists continue this debate. Arbitrary arrest and detention is very frequent, and 4 year sentences of re-education in labour camps are handed down without trial. Amnesty International (August 2010) has warned that proposed reforms of China's application of the death penalty, which different estimates put at between 3,000 and 10,000 annually, may not result in significantly fewer executions. Reflecting growing concern over the rising number of public protests across of the country, the Peoples Supreme Court announced a program in September 2009 to train judges. This program aims to teach judges how to handle cases related to rising protests and so-called "mass cases," claiming that "hostile forces are gaining strength both at home and abroad and menacing national security and social stability."

The UN Committee against Torture remains deeply concerned about the continued allegations of routine and widespread use of torture and ill-treatment of suspects in police custody, especially to extract confessions or information to be used in criminal proceedings. The Committee urges China to take immediate steps to prevent acts of torture and ill-treatment throughout the country.
China suffers from widespread corruption. The country was ranked 72nd of 179 countries in Transparency Internationals Corruption Perception Index. Means of corruption include graft, bribery, embezzlement, backdoor deals, nepotism, patronage, and statistical falsification. Some disciplinary action against party officials has been taken.

Freedom of speech and of the press are guaranteed in law but restricted in practice. Many journalists remain in prison. Media content is controlled, and speeches and academic discussions remain circumscribed. Internet essayists and journalists are targeted, resulting in a high degree of self-censorship. Regulations require all web sites to re-register or close pseudonyms to be re-registered using real names, and Internet service providers to record information and track users and their viewing habits. Yahoo has been accused of providing information to Chinese authorities, including access to private e-mail accounts, which was used in the prosecution of a journalist. In 2010 concerns were expressed about privacy after Chinese officials requested photo identification and signatures of an Internet service providers customers. China maintains the world's most extensive Internet monitoring and filtering system. There is no national freedom of information law. Foreign correspondents in China also continue to face restrictions and are barred from visiting Tibet freely.

Recent attacks on freedom of expression and opinion include: mobilizing police and judicial forces to threaten, harass, monitor, and imprison the signatories of the Charter 08, a document containing proposals for constitutional reform, judicial independence, and freedom of expression and protection of human rights in China. The document signed by more than two thousand Chinese citizens, was conceived and written taking as an example Charter 77 where, in January 1977, more than two hundred Czech and Slovak intellectuals formed a loose, informal, and open association of people united by the will to strive individually and collectively for human and civil rights in their country and throughout the world. The Chinese document calls not for ameliorative reform of the current political system but for an end to some of its essential features, including one-party rule, and their replacement with a system based on human rights and democracy. The citizens who have signed the document include not only well-known dissidents and intellectuals, but also middle-level officials and rural leaders. They chose 10 December 2008, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as the day on which to express their political ideas and to outline their vision of a constitutional, democratic China.
China's economy is the second largest in the world after that of the United States. China has now overtaken Germany as the worlds leading merchandise exporter, accounting for almost 10% of world exports, and is second to the United States on the import side. (WTO Secretariat 2009)

Rural residents are flocking to cities where per-capita incomes triple rural incomes. In March of 2010, Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, have announced the reform of the system known as hukou that limited internal migration. Chinese citizens have residence permits, normally of their native locality, that designate if their residence is rural or urban. This limits the possibilities to move to another place. The system was made flexible so that the factories that bloomed after the implantation of the economic reforms could employ sufficient numbers of workers. But in spite of the relaxation, administrative authorization is still necessary to change a rural hukou to an urban one and temporary residence permits do not allow equal access to social benefits (education, health). Some 150 million economic migrants lack official residence status and therefore access to social services, including education.
Political dissidents are housed with patients in 20 high-security psychiatric hospitals for the criminally insane, where inmates are reportedly medicated and subjected to electric shock treatment against their will. Political and trade union activists and Falun Gong members are among those in such facilities.
China is a source and a destination country for women and children trafficked for sexual and labour exploitation.

A Shanghai university has offered the first undergraduate course on gay and lesbian studies. The city saw the country's first gay pride festival in June 2009, followed by a seven-day LGBT-themed film festival. Though homosexual conduct is no longer criminalized in China, the police can still shut down pubs or meeting places. After a series of police raids on gay men's meeting places in public parks, about 100 gay men held a protest in People's Park in Guangzhou on 25th August 2009. Police questioned protest leaders for several hours in the park's public security house. This protest in defence of gay rights has been hailed as a milestone in LGBT rights organizing in China.

A contagious disease law bans employment discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B. Those infected are now allowed to work as civil servants, but discrimination remains widespread, so that HIV-positive patients are sometimes refused medical treatment. At the end of 2009, the estimated number of people living with HIV in China was 740,000 (2010 China UNGASS). Women accounted for 30.5% of these cases. Overall, China is still experiencing a low-prevalence epidemic, with some key regions experiencing high prevalence epidemics. However, the epidemic has already started to spread from high-risk populations to the general population. The impact of HIV and AIDS on education cannot be ignored, particularly their impact on the demand and supply of education. This includes decreased performance and increased teachers absenteeism due to illness, the loss of experienced teachers due to AIDS-related diseases and increased stigma and discrimination against teachers and students living with HIV. Chinese security forces continue to pressure HIV/AIDS activist organizations to maintain low public profiles. Chinese police forced prominent HIV/AIDS activist Wan Yanhai to leave Beijing and travel to the northern city of Changchun in the days leading up to the 4th June Tiananmen anniversary to avoid what they described as "possible conflict."

A new anti-drug law went into effect in 2008 but fails to address ongoing abuses against injecting drug users (IDUs) that contribute to HIV/AIDS transmission. The law prohibits the use of China's notorious "re-education through labour" (RTL) system to confine IDUs but replaces it with ill-defined "community rehabilitation," prompting fears that abuses will continue under a new name.

Transparency in the health sector has improved since the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak. However, some academics are unable to publish results of independent research into contagious diseases.

Children are guaranteed 9 years of compulsory education. The School Life expectancy (expected number of years of formal schooling from Primary to Tertiary, age 7-11) was 11.4 in 2009. But in economically disadvantaged rural areas, many children do not attend school for this length of time. Because the central government has reduced subsidies for primary education and because public schools are not allowed to charge tuition fees, other fees are charged under different titles. Poor and migrant families have difficulty sending their children to school. The campaign for universal primary school attendance has increased enrolment, so 98.6% of children nationwide are reported to be in a primary school. The proportion of girls in school is lower in rural and minority areas than in the cities. According to UNESCOs 2010 EFA Global Monitoring report 1.7% of primary students repeat grades.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education reports that the government needs to improve the provision of education for many children of migrant workers. The Special Rapporteur recommended a ban on the practice of having children carry out manual labour in schools to raise funds. The teaching of Islam to children in elementary and middle school is prohibited in some areas, while in other areas children study Arabic and the Koran without restriction. More than 150,000 homeless street children live in cities and survive by begging. An estimated 1.7 million children have been abandoned.

The Pearl River Delta in the province of Guangdong is the largest manufacturing centre in the country, employing over 60 million rural migrant workers alone. Due to lack of sexual and reproductive health education, young migrant workers faced increased risk of unexpected pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. To make HIV education mainstream and to mitigate the impact of the virus, the International Labour Organization -ILO worked with the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security with financial support from the U.S. Department of Labour, to integrate HIV prevention into the core curriculum of vocational schools. In Zhaoqing Vocational School in Guangdong, young migrants aged 14 to 19 receive training on HIV prevention in addition to core technical skills. It is also one of the first schools of its kind in the country to include information on sexuality, reproductive health and HIV in its core curriculum. This model has now been scaled up nationally with technical assistance from the ILO.

A 3 year programme begins at age 4. Over 20 million children are reported to participate in ECE. According to the UNESCO ISCED 2009 report, 45% of students are girls. The Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) is 47%. The Gender Parity Index GER 2008 was 0.99.

Shortage of teachers: The latest data from the government (January 2010) indicate that there are some 1,300 nursery schools licensed by the government in Beijing. About 150 more will be added in the near future in the capital city. But every year only 200 university students graduate with at least an associate's degree in preschool education.

Compulsory education begins at age 6. Primary education begins at age 7 and lasts for 5 years. The GER is 112%. 47% of primary students are girls. Of the students who enrol in Grade 1, 99% reach the final grade of primary school. There are 5,747,325 primary teachers (53% female), of whom 97% are trained. The pupil/teacher ratio (PTR) is 17: 1.

Secondary education begins at age 12 and lasts for 6 years. Compulsory education ends at age 14. 48% of secondary students are girls. 2% of lower secondary and 37% of upper secondary students study in technical vocational programmes. The GER is 101% in lower secondary, dropping to 45% in upper secondary. There are 5,323,042 secondary teachers (43% female), 3,448,768 in lower secondary and 1,874,274 in upper secondary schools. The PTR is 20: 1 in lower secondary and 17: 1 in upper secondary education.

Lower middle school students receive a basic academic education including a foreign language, Chinese language and maths. After they graduate, they take a test to determine whether they should follow a vocational/technical path or another basic extension of traditional school in which students learn science and the humanities while preparing for university.

The gap in education levels between men and women are narrowing, but men constitute a disproportionate percentage of tertiary students. Women account for 50% of students in tertiary institutions: 44.2% of postgraduate students and 31.4% of doctoral students. Women with advanced degrees report discrimination in hiring as the system becomes increasingly competitive and market-driven. There are 29,295,841 students in tertiary institutions, giving a GER of 24%. At the same time, 343,126 Chinese students study abroad, mainly in the USA (87,943), Japan (76,130), the UK (47,738), Australia (28,309) and Germany (25,284).

Students mobility: China is the country which sends the largest number of students abroad, around 500,000 in 2008. Enrolment in tertiary education grew 18.9 per cent compared with an increase of 15.3% in student mobility. While at the beginning the majority of international students from China were studying in the United States, now this ratio has been reduced, even though the absolute number of Chinese students abroad has experienced sustained growth in recent years. Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and the UK are the countries which have benefited most from this change. (UNESCO Global Education Digest 2009)

At present, China has more than 83 million people with various types of disabilities. The number of orphans and children in especially difficult conditions, due to parents' divorce, death or long working hours, is increasing in China, while the public also has been increasingly concerned about the psychological recovery of children after natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. Children who suffer from psychological trauma or physical injury during childhood as a result of unfortunate circumstances have become a socially vulnerable group. There are approximately 712,000 orphans in China, according to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

There is little information on the academic success or failure (absolute and comparative) of children and young people with disabilities. The majority of children in orphanages are girls; boys in orphanages are usually disabled. The system is unable to provide adequately for orphaned or abandoned children, particularly if they have serious medical problems. Parents who keep children with disabilities at home have difficulty getting them adequate medical care and education. Almost one-quarter of people with disabilities live in extreme poverty. The law protects the rights of people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination, but conditions for the disabled do not comply with legislation. The 2007-08 Special Olympics and Paralympics has raised the profile and plight of people with disabilities, and efforts are being made to change their situation.

In May 2010 hosted by the Beijing Union University, an International Conference of Special Education Research Cooperation in the Pacific has attracted researchers from America, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, as well as 300 staff members from special needs schools, government agencies and NGOs.

The law does not provide for the granting of refugee status. Little information is available on the education rights of refugees.

In 2009, the Cambodian government, under Chinese pressure, forcibly repatriated a group of Uighurs, including two young children, in breach of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. China's record of torture, disappearance, and arbitrary detention of Uighurs, as well as the politicized nature of judicial proceedings in past cases of forced repatriation, raise serious concerns that these individuals were currently at risk of torture and ill-treatment. (Human Rights Watch Asia Report January 2010)

The government cooperates with the UNHCR on issues concerning the resettlement of ethnic minorities from Vietnam and Laos. However, the government denied the UNHCR permission to operate along Chinas north-eastern border with North Korea. Because North Koreans are considered to be economic migrants, not refugees, North Korean children in China are in an extremely vulnerable position. They have few if any opportunities for education and are subject to deportation.

Minorities constitute 9% of the population and 14% of the CCPs National Party Congress, which also has members from 55 recognised minority groups, most reside in traditional areas.
The government recognises 5 main religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism. Regulations restrict Muslims religious activity, teaching and places of worship. Counter-terrorism is used as pretext for repression of Uighur Muslims.

Regulations to improve minority education are now in effect. The 2-track school system that taught either Chinese or the local minority language is changing to a bilingual system that will teach both Chinese and the minority languages or will teach Chinese only. Prior to the adoption of the new policy, children attending Uighur language schools received only 1 hour a day of Chinese language instruction and subsequently required intensive Chinese instruction to handle course work in university. Since Chinese is the main language of government, commerce and higher education, graduates of minority-language schools are at a disadvantage.

Political and social dialogue at colleges, universities and research institutes is controlled. A campaign to clean up web sites on university campuses has been initiated. Foreign and domestic academics have had university conferences cancelled on topics deemed too sensitive, a category broad enough to include corporate social responsibility, political reform and the death penalty. Political attitude is a selection criterion for publicly funded study abroad. Publishing without government approval brings sanctions. Books from minority groups have been destroyed on the grounds that art and literature distort historical fact and advocate ethnic separatism.

At the beginning of 2010 Xiao Han, a law professor at China University of Political Science and Law, the top law school in the country, had his classes cancelled inexplicably. He was known for publicly criticizing the government, including specific laws regarding everything from human rights to forced relocation. It still remains unclear what in particular caused Xiaos classes to be cancelled.

A prominent Chinese academic who was to speak at an academic conference in April 2010 has been barred from leaving China. Professor Cui Weiping, a poet and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, had planned to lecture at Harvard University (USA) and attend a conference sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies. But the director of her school said she had been forbidden to travel.

Legally, Chinese women enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of life including inheritance rights and access to education. However, concern is raised that any progress made is being eroded by a focus on economic reform that relegates gender equality as a lesser priority. Women report discrimination, sexual harassment, unfair dismissal, demotion and wage discrepancies, but they are increasingly using the law to protect their rights. In China, nearly 70 percent of women are in paid work, well above the global average of 53 percent. This statistic runs parallel to higher long-term growth and industrialization experienced by the nation. Protection of womens rights tends to focus on maternity-related benefits and wrongful termination during maternity leave. Women are entitled to 13 weeks of paid maternity leave. But employers hire men to avoid the expense of maternity leave and child care. The percentage of workers laid-off is higher for women. Some companies have lowered the retirement age for women, resulting in reduced pensions.

Urban women are paid only 70% of mens rates of pay, while women in rural areas receive only 60% of male incomes. Female executives and senior professionals earn about 58% and 68% of their male colleagues salaries. Most women in industry occupy low-skilled, low-paid jobs in sectors subject to restructuring and job losses. Women account for 60% of those below the poverty line. Female illiteracy is double that of men among older Chinese people.

Violence against women is a significant problem, and provinces are passing legislation to address the issue. Women in rural areas are particularly vulnerable to abuses including discrimination, unequal access to services and employment, sexual trafficking, and violence.

People trafficking continue to be a problem, with women and girls forced into prostitution and children sold into forced labour. Internal trafficking to provide brides is increasingly common. Purchasing a bride becomes attractive to some poor rural men because of the imbalance in the male/female sex ratio and the tendency for women to leave rural areas to seek employment. Reports surface fairly regularly of local officials complicity in trafficking.

Pressure to meet birth limitation targets is reported to result in physical coercion, and required birth control methods include sterilisation. A high female suicide rate is a serious problem. Couples that have an unapproved child pay a social compensation fee that can be 10 times a persons annual income. To delay childbearing, the minimum marriage age for women is now 20 and for men 22. Contrary to the worldwide norm, female babies suffer a higher mortality rate than male babies.

China Gender-Related development Index: The UNDP Human Development Index-HDI measures average achievements in a country, but it does not incorporate the degree of gender imbalance in these achievements. The gender-related development index (GDI) measures achievements in the same dimensions using the same indicators as the HDI but captures inequalities in achievement between women and men. The greater the gender disparity in basic human development, the lower is a country's GDI relative to its HDI. China's GDI value, 0.770 should be compared to its HDI value of 0.772. Its GDI value is 99.7% of its HDI value.

A report by the International Trade Union Confederation-ITUC on core labour standards in China, published in May 2010 to coincide with the World Trade Organisations (WTO) review of its trade policies, has found that further measures are needed to comply with the commitments China accepted when it joined the WTO. While national legislation stipulates that no children younger than 16 years old are allowed to work, the report finds that child labour is a serious problem in China. Children are sometimes employed in the worst forms of child labour. Work-study programmes, run under school auspices, frequently result in forced child labour. Forced labour is prohibited but occurs in commercial enterprises. China imposes forced prison labour as a form of re-education through labour, and a similar forced labour system for rehabilitation is in force for drug addicts.

Child kidnapping, the buying and selling of children persist. The government has not adopted a comprehensive policy to combat child labour.

Workers cannot organise or join unions of their choosing. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is the sole legal workers organisation. The ACFTU and the CCP are closely connected. Labour Law also empowers the ACFTU to exercise financial control over all member organizations. The new law on labour contracts (NLCL), effective since 1st January 2008, and various regional directives further facilitate control from the top-level leadership and local ACFTU on member unions and representatives of the workers that do not belong to a trade union.

Collective bargaining: There is currently no national law specifically governing collective bargaining procedures but only regulations on collective contracts. However, a collective contract established in line with the regulations is legally binding.

The ACFTU is now unionizing the private sector. A large rural labour force, including farmers, is not unionised. Many Labour activists continue to be detained. ITUC has condemned several cases of Chinas violations of core labour standards. Forced labour continues to be met with impunity.

Without the right to strike, workers have little capacity to influence negotiations. The ITUC reported cases in which the local ACFTU refused to negotiate on behalf of workers because it had not received permission to do so from the municipal government. Worker protests over job losses, wage or benefit arrears and the imposition of new contracts to allow restructuring are treated as illegal demonstrations. Forced or compulsory labour is prohibited but exists in penal institutions and in re-education labour facilities, where detainees are required to work.

Local governments can set their own minimum wages. Wage arrears are common for workers in both state-owned and private enterprise.

The authorities have responded to the crisis with restrictions on job losses, penalties for non-compensation, tax breaks and other incentives for companies to hire and retain workers, while the ACFTU was focusing its efforts on retraining and recruitment of members in the rural areas and the provision of train tickets for migrants forced to return home. By the start of 2009, some 30 million migrant workers had reportedly returned to their home provinces while sources state the number of job losses, as a result of the economic crisis, to be as high as 40 million.

Teachers strike unreported and censored: On 4th March, 2009 in Yunfu, Guangdong province, around 700 teachers protested over low wages. The protest came after the local authorities decided to increase the salaries of its employees by 1,000 a month while giving no raise to teachers. This meant that the average salary of a government worker would be around three times that of a local teacher. The protest was reported on the internet but later all pictures and reports of the unrest were deleted by censors.

Chinese workers overseas: Reports continue of poor working conditions, including the denial of basic trade union rights and freedom of association in Chinese owned enterprises, including major state owned companies. This is of particular concern in the extractive industry and large construction projects in countries such as in Africa. Chinese workers who complain of poor conditions have faced negative repercussions on their return to China.

The Chinese Special Administrative Regions (SAR) of Hong Kong and Macau are dealt with separately, as is Tibet, referred to as the Tibetan Administrative Region (TAR) to reflect the current political situation.