China has regressed with respect to the rule of law, according to the 2025 annual report by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which was released on Dec. 10 and highlights the Chinese Communist Party’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 [Chinese Communist Party (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.”
In 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.
Worst Offender
China continues to rank among the worst human rights offenders in various reports. Reporters Without Borders ranked China 178 out of 180 countries and territories and the leading jailer of journalists in its 2025 press freedom reports. Freedom House scored China zero out of four regarding “free and independent media.”
The commission saw an increase in both dissent and suppression in recent years. It cited a China Dissent Monitor report that found that there were 937 dissent events between July 2024 and September 2024, a 27 percent year-on-year increase from the same period in 2023. The regime created central and local branches of the Central Society Work Department in 2023 to further control society and eliminate “illegal social organizations.” In 2025, it tightened rules on banning these organizations.
The commission reported that it observed a “coordinated campaign, led by the United Front Work Department” to tighten “governance of religion” in 2025. This included suppressing ethnic minority Muslim groups, asserting Party authority over the Catholic Church in China despite an agreement with the Vatican, arresting Protestant house church leaders en masse, and directing “considerable resources and attention” to the CCP’s continued persecution of Falun Gong.
Under the CCP, the criminal justice system is a “political instrument,” according to the report. Dissidents can be arbitrarily detained in “black jails” such as psychiatric facilities without formal legal process and be subjected to torture and other mistreatment.
Influence Operations, Overseas Oppression
The commission reported an increase in the regime’s digital activities in realms of censorship and global influence campaigns. For instance, U.S.-based OpenAI found accounts that “appear to originate in China” using artificial intelligence to write articles criticizing the United States and denouncing a critic of the regime.
The regime’s regulations require embedding “core values of socialism” into its AI models, raising concerns about how Chinese AI and software can expand the regime’s censorship model.
Beijing is also building out physical infrastructure by way of satellite expansion, which has raised concerns about the regime’s ability to spread its digital authoritarianism.
Its efforts to suppress critics internationally are “multifaceted,” according to the report, which cites bounties the regime placed on Hong Kong activists, as well as passport cancellations, harassment, hacks, and diplomatic pressure for extradition of dissidents.
The commission stated that several pieces of legislation addressing transnational repression have already been introduced, and recommended that the government produce a threat assessment of CCP transnational repression and whether there are statutory gaps.
It also recommended an interagency hub be formed to address the CCP’s malign influence on civil society and institutions.
Long History of Broken Agreements
In addition to Chinese laws that outline several human rights protections, Beijing has signed onto several international human rights and standards agreements that the regime continually violates, according to the report.
In 1979, Beijing ratified the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which requires consular officers to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state. Yet Chinese embassies in the United States have many times been found to be engaging in the CCP’s transnational repression against critics of the regime. They instigated violence against peaceful protesters during the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco and have carried out espionage.
In 1981, the Chinese regime ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, requiring a commitment to reverse laws or regulations that perpetuate racial discrimination. Yet the CCP is currently actively erasing minority cultures by forcing Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongolian children to attend “colonial boarding schools” that teach a CCP-centric curriculum and penalize the use of native languages and cultural customs.
In 1984, Beijing ratified the Sino-British Joint Declaration, meant to guarantee Hong Kong “a high degree of autonomy” with independent executive, legislative, and judicial powers. In recent years, the world witnessed the CCP cracking down on protesters in Hong Kong and passing vaguely worded national security laws that give the CCP sweeping power to target dissenters.
In 1988, the regime ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture, but regular reports from human rights lawyers and religious prisoners show that the regime is continuing to torture political and religious prisoners such as Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners, who have been found to be targets of forced organ harvesting by the regime.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice based on the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. It was introduced to the public in China in the early 1990s and banned by the regime in 1999. The commission recommended passing bills that would prohibit U.S. public funds from paying for medical care related to organ transplants obtained in China and sanction perpetrators of organ harvesting.
In 1996, the Chinese regime ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which Beijing has violated by building and militarizing artificial islands in contested territory in the South China Sea and increasing maritime aggression against Philippine vessels.
In 2001, Beijing ratified the U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which includes agreements safeguarding fair labor practices. However, the only labor union in China is one led by the CCP, and the regime typically treats strikes as criminal offenses. Multiple investigations in recent years have also uncovered regime-imposed slave labor, including the exploitation of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.
An Environmental Justice Foundation investigation has found Chinese fishing ships that use the forced labor of North Korean workers and the Brazilian government has accused Chinese company BYD of employing at least 163 workers in “slave-like conditions” and withholding workers’ passports and salaries. The report also states that Chinese workers are subjected to “excessive overtime practices,” including coffee farm workers in Yunnan Province, China, who supply coffee to Starbucks and Nestle.
The covenant also protects parents’ freedom to choose schools to “ensure the religious and moral education of their children,” which the CCP continues to violate.
In 2022, the regime ratified the Forced Labor Convention, but the commission found that systemic forced labor practices involving Uyghurs and Turkic minorities have expanded in the Xinjiang region in the past year. The U.S. government considers the CCP’s persecution of the Uyghur minority to be a genocide, and has enacted laws to prohibit the entry of goods made with forced labor in response.
The commission recommended strengthening existing mechanisms and expediting the blacklisting of companies using forced labor and mandating transparency in supply chains. The vast majority of Chinese cotton is produced in the Xinjiang region, and U.S. lawmakers have pressed for better disclosures and due diligence from Chinese fashion retailers.
Seafood caught or processed with forced labor, mainly that of North Korean workers on Chinese vessels, has been found in the U.S. market, according to investigations. Lawmakers have introduced a bill to prohibit Chinese origin seafood involving forced labor, and the commission recommended that agencies prohibit all procurement of such seafood.
Eva Fu contributed to this report.
We had a problem loading this article. Please enable javascript or use a different browser. If the issue persists, please visit our help center.