China detains another scholar: rights group

China defends its human rights record

In this story: Charges expected next week Links to broader issues condemned RELATED STORIES, SITES

BEIJING, China -- China is giving itself high marks for human rights in a report card it has issued to itself.

The white paper, released by China's cabinet and covered by state media, says the country's human rights record "maintained positive forward momentum."

But the paper comes as a Hong Kong human rights group says China is holding another ethnic Chinese intellectual who is also a U.S. permanent resident.

Tan Guangguang was detained in December on suspicion of leaking state secrets, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

If confirmed, Tan becomes the latest in a group of at least 20 people, comprising mostly intellectuals, who have been detained in China on that charge.

Beijing suspects that Tan leaked confidential information to a good friend, who worked at an overseas intelligence authority, the rights group said.

The State Security Bureau has picked up at least three ethnic Chinese academics in the past month, including Gao Zhan, whose son Andrew, a U.S. citizen, was separated from his parents and detained for nearly a month.

Charges expected next week

U.S.-based academic Gao Zhan

The bureau has also detained Hong Kong-based academics Li Shaomin and Xu Zerong.

The rights group said Tan was expected to be charged next week.

China's white paper, which covers areas including economic, political and social rights, defends the nation's human rights performance.

In a section titled "Judicial Guarantee for Human Rights", China defends its crackdown on the outlawed Falun Gong Spiritual Movement.

"China punishes criminal offenses in accordance with the law," the paper says.

China also "punished, according to law, a handful of criminals who caused deaths or gathered people to upset the public order by organizing and using the Falun Gong cult, effectively safeguarding social stability".

Links to broader issues condemned

The paper spells out the government's insistence that its human rights record should not be linked to broader issues.

"Politicizing the issue of human rights and attaching human rights conditions to economic aid are themselves violations of human rights conditions," it says.

The official People's Daily.com website, reporting on the white paper, says that China has "improved people's access to subsistence and development."

It also says a drive to eliminate poverty has resulted in a drop in the poverty rate from 30.7 percent in 1978, to about 3 percent today.

"[The move] forms a sharp contrast with the increase of poverty-stricken population in the rest of the world," the website says.

People's Daily.com also says the United Nations Development Program has held up China's aid-the-poor program as an example for other developing countries.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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People's Daily

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