Fully Authoritarian
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HRF classifies China as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the sole ruling party and retains absolute control over all branches of government. Incumbent President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping began his third term in March 2023 after successfully abolishing the presidential term limits in 2018 prescribed by the Constitution, without opposition.
Xi’s regime is characterized by his political vision, dubbed the “Chinese Dream,” which centers on making China a global powerhouse and revitalizing its national pride through the strengthening of party discipline. As a result, under his leadership, the regime has dramatically scaled up its repression of dissenting voices, both domestically and overseas. Additionally, part of Xi’s rhetoric is to turn China into a homogenous nation-state, which the regime has endeavored to achieve through the systematic repression of ethnic and religious minorities, including, but not limited to, Uyghurs and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Tibetans, and Christians.
National elections are absent, rendering moot any assessment of electoral competition. The General Secretary of the CCP, appointed from among and by the party’s most powerful elites known as the Politburo Standing Committee, automatically becomes the President of China. The national legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), is indirectly elected by people’s congresses at local levels.
Civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. While repression of dissent has long been a hallmark of the CCP’s leadership, it has escalated under President Xi Jinping, both within and outside the country. His regime has operated large-scale influence operations online and offline to skew China-related narratives in the regime’s favor, often with assistance from regime-affiliated non-state actors such as hired cybertroops, foreign individuals, and even foreign states. Regime retaliation against dissidents is well-documented and is conducted through a variety of means, including imprisonment, surveillance, movement restrictions, and forced psychiatric care. The regime systematically undermines the ability of marginalized groups, particularly Tibetans and Uyghurs, to dissent. Furthermore, the regime operates one of the world’s largest transnational repression networks that enables it to intimidate, censor, and retaliate against thousands of dissidents abroad.
Institutions largely or completely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. All branches of government operate within the framework of the party-state and enjoy no formal separation of powers. Judicial personnel are closely vetted for loyalty. Judges are also restricted in their ability to decide on politically sensitive cases. The regime has carried out sweeping purges of senior officials to reinforce obedience towards the leadership and combat corruption.
National elections are absent, rendering moot any assessment of electoral competition. Elections in China are governed by the Electoral Law of the National People’s Congress and Local People’s Congresses, an instrument that heavily manipulates the electoral process to afford the CCP absolute monopoly power. This law recognizes the NPC as the national legislature, as well as several levels of local people’s congresses. The NPC, which has a maximum membership of 3,000 deputies, is indirectly elected by provincial people’s congresses one level below it. While China recognizes eight minor political parties aside from the CCP, they must support the CCP leadership, and their leaders are vetted by the CCP. All deputies of the NPC must accept CCP supremacy; members belonging to parties other than the CCP are subject to the same indirect election process administered entirely by the CCP, eliminating any room for opposition. The NPC, in turn, elects individuals and approves nominations to all key governmental positions, including the president and vice president, the premier — the constitutional head of government — vice premiers, and ministers.
Since 1993, the offices of the President and the General Secretary of the CCP — the highest rank in the party’s hierarchy — have been held concurrently. Therefore, anyone who helms the CCP automatically assumes China’s top political office. The General Secretary of the CCP is typically appointed from among and by the members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the CCP’s core decision-making organ. The Politburo is also in charge of determining most high-level political, social, and economic agendas.
Direct elections are held at grassroots levels, such as in villages and neighborhoods. Independents often face significant hurdles in registering and campaigning. Voters are given a single candidate or very limited choice, typically one vetted by the ruling party. Election committees in charge of overseeing these elections are formed by the CCP standing committees in localities.
Civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Independent media is virtually absent, and narratives on the regime are heavily manipulated through systematic influence operations and blanket censorship. The regime obstructs civil society work through mass crackdowns and registration laws requiring firm political loyalty. Heavy restrictions on the freedom of assembly render protests a rare occurrence. The regime has systematically persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, including Uyghurs and Tibetans, under the pretext of national security. The regime also operates one of the world’s largest transnational repression networks that enables it to retaliate against thousands of dissidents abroad.
The regime heavily manipulates media coverage in its favor. The Xi administration has mandated the principle of “Party control over the media,” which it considers the cornerstone of Chinese national security. It pushes for four “adherences” applicable to Chinese journalism and public opinion work, which include prioritizing party spirit and “positive propaganda.” All local media outlets must reflect the CCP’s agenda and endorse unequivocal support for the party line. The regime conducts extensive influence operations both online and offline. Between 2023 and early 2025, for example, Meta published at least three reports exposing coordinated inauthentic behavior linked to China, targeting audiences in the U.S., India, and the Tibetan diaspora – particularly in Nepal, India, and Bhutan – across multiple platforms. Extensive research published by think tanks and civil society groups also found that these networks amplified pro-CCP narratives during Taiwan’s 2024 elections, underscoring their role in manipulating public opinion to advance Beijing’s broader geopolitical and ideological agendas. The regime employs the “Great Firewall,” widely regarded as the largest and most sophisticated censorship mechanism, to block access to a wide range of online sites and content through a combination of tactics, including IP blocking, packet filtering, and supplemented by AI-powered surveillance and proprietary content removal. Mainstream search engines and social media platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram, are banned in China and replaced by platforms developed by local companies that must comply with censorship laws, which aid in monitoring and barring access to content prohibited by the regime.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have contributed to heavily manipulating media coverage in favor of the regime. A network of nationalist online trolls known as wu mao (translated to “50 cents”) actively operates in the digital space to attack critical voices and spread pro-regime propaganda. Wu mao are generally considered to be paid by the regime, hired to guide public opinion by posing as ordinary internet users and amplifying large amounts of deceptive content at the regime’s behest. “Wu mao” maintains a significant presence on Chinese social media platforms, but has also infiltrated Western platforms to attack critics overseas. There are indications that wu mao is involved in the escalation of cyber-attacks against activists, particularly those working on the Uyghur, Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong causes. It is increasingly difficult to identify whether pro-regime online commentary is posted by paid actors, volunteers, or average Chinese citizens, due to little differentiation between party ideology and national pride.
The regime has seriously intimidated media, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public, or otherwise seriously and unfairly obstructed their work. The CCP has an extensive record of imprisoning dissidents, including activists, journalists, lawyers, academics, religious and ethnic minorities, internet users, and protesters. Between 1980 and March 2025, China imprisoned at least 49,589 individuals on various politically motivated charges, of whom 7,157 were still detained as of the end of the covered period, according to the Dui Hua Foundation. The most frequently cited offenses in these cases are “picking quarrels and provoking trouble (Article 293 of the Criminal Law), “organizing and using a cult to undermine implementation of the law” (Article 300 of the Criminal Law), which is often weaponized against religious minorities; and endangering state security (ESS) offenses, including inciting splittism, espionage, and subversion. The highest number of cases was documented in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR; “Uyghur Region”), homeland of the persecuted Uyghur Muslims. Additionally, Xi’s regime has repeatedly launched mass crackdowns on civil society. In 2015, the “709 Crackdown” led to the detention of over 300 civil rights lawyers and human rights advocates nationwide, some of whom are still imprisoned as of September 2025. Another similar crackdown on human rights lawyers began in April 2023, with the arrests of prominent names including Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi.
Recent estimates suggest that China has more than 880,000 registered civil society organizations (CSOs), a term that could refer to foundations, social groups, or private non-enterprise units such as trade and professional associations. Many domestic CSOs are either “government-organized non-governmental organizations” (GONGOs) directly managed by the regime or receive regime allocations and subsidies, making them heavily reliant on the regime. According to a 2016 statement by a regime representative, there are also approximately 7,000 foreign CSOs operating in the country. The 2016 Charity Law regulates domestic “charitable” organizations, while the 2017 Overseas NGO Law concerns foreign CSOs. Both of these instruments afford the regime sweeping powers to restrict and control the activities of foreign organizations, which mainly comprise charities and social service entities, by requiring them to “uphold the leadership of the Communist Party” and register with designated agencies to operate. Formal registration entails an obligation to adhere to party principles and expose organizations to surveillance and penalties when they engage in dissent. In the aftermath, various organizations that have worked for substantial periods in China reported challenges in registering, leading many of them to leave the country or stop operating altogether. They included those advocating for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, legal education and training, foreign entities working in social and economic development, and grassroots environmental and labor rights groups. According to an analysis published in September 2024, 758 foreign CSOs have registered, “although 86 later opted to leave and de-register their offices.”
The regime has seriously repressed protests or gatherings. Large-scale protests are extremely rare due to the risk of regime retaliation. One of the few instances in which the Chinese public has openly expressed their grievances took place in late 2022 against China’s censorship and “zero-COVID” policy, dubbed the White Paper protests. While the precise scale of the protests is unknown, they took place across several major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. At least 100 were arrested under the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (Article 293 of the PRC Criminal Law), ranging from journalists to students. The regime’s advanced censorship apparatus was used to erase text or image content that referred to the protests or public support for them. Various surveillance technologies, including “banner alarms” and other protest-related “alarms,” assisted police with detecting and identifying potential protests. Large police units were also sent to locations of planned protests ahead of time, leading to their cancellations. Participants of the White Paper protests and other smaller-scale demonstrations across China have reported being subjected to forced psychiatric care and erroneously diagnosed with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
The regime has systematically and disproportionately undermined the ability of marginalized groups to dissent. In 2014, Xi Jinping revived the “Strike Hard” campaign that facilitated the unjust criminalization of over half a million Uyghurs, as well as Tibetans, under the guise of fighting “violent terrorism.” This crackdown has continued to date, with the regime often accusing Uyghurs of being “separatists” or “terrorists” and forcing them to assimilate with the majority ethnic Han Chinese through blanket prohibitions on their cultural and religious expressions. Since 2017, over one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslim ethnic groups have been detained in concentration camps, where they were subject to mass surveillance, involuntary psychiatric and medical treatments, enforced disappearances, torture and inhumane treatment, extrajudicial killings, forced sterilizations, and forced abortions. Prominent Uyghur voices and survivors, including Tahir Hamut Izgil, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, Kalbinur Sidik, and Rebiya Kadeer, have spoken about their experiences with regime persecution at the Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF). ESS offenses are frequently invoked against Uyghurs. Professor Ilham Tohti, an Uyghur economist, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 for “separatism” over a website he built to foster dialogue and exchange between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. His daughter, Jewher Ilham, has continued to advocate for his release and Uyghur rights. While the Chinese regime has claimed to close these facilities, many have been reconverted into detention facilities and prisons. The Uyghur Region continues to have one of the highest incarceration rates in China. According to a 2019 report, the region experienced a surge in arrests, trials, and imprisonment, with an eightfold increase in arrests and a tenfold increase in sentences since 2017. Analysis from CSO reports a severe lack of transparency during trials and high levels of convictions for victims without “committing a genuine offense.” The regime also represses Uyghurs and other minority groups through the coercion of forced labor, both in internment camps and forced labor transfers. Many former detainees have been redirected into forced labor programs, where they report continued loss of civic freedoms, such as freedom of movement, religion, public assembly, and more.
Expressions of a distinct Tibetan identity, including Tibetan Buddhism, language, history, and heritage, are met with severe repression and “sinicization.” The regime restricts Tibetans’ right to communicate with one another and members of their community abroad. Tibetan-Canadian human rights activist Chemi Lhamo testified about the struggles and resilience of Tibetans under Chinese occupation and in exile at the 2022 OFF. Other leading advocates for the Tibetan cause, including former prisoner of conscience Palden Gyatso and former president of the Tibetan government-in-exile Lobsang Sangay, have similarly provided detailed accounts of the Tibetan persecution. In October 2024, officials arrested four Tibetans in a county in Sichuan for contacting someone outside of Tibet to dedicate prayers. Tibetan Buddhist schools have faced forced closures, and students were transferred to CCP-administered colonial boarding schools. Between July and October 2024 alone, at least 1,600 students underwent such transfers. Uyghurs and Tibetans cannot freely exercise their freedom of movement, and have long been subjected to passport confiscations. Christians also face systematic persecution and have repeatedly been targeted with crackdowns. The latest of these crackdowns took place in October 2025, when officials arbitrarily detained 30 pastors and members of the underground Zion Church nationwide.
The regime has engaged in transnational repression against dissidents abroad. China is responsible for the “most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign” of transnational repression involving various tactics, including surveillance, deployment of proxies, recruitment of foreign agents, smear campaigns, and physical attacks. A key actor in foreign influence operations is the Overseas United Front Work Department (UFWD), an agency that co-opts overseas Chinese individuals and communities, among others, to conduct influence operations to reign in oppositional targets according to party lines. Members and affiliates of UFWD engage in a variety of intimidating behaviors, including political interference, economic espionage, and academic censorship. Overseas Chinese students have reported being monitored by regime-affiliated student unions, or other Chinese students at the regime’s behest, leading many of them to live and study in constant fear of being targeted.
The regime reportedly runs over 100 “overseas police stations” – which the Chinese government claims are “service centers” – around the world. While these centers do provide various forms of support for overseas Chinese communities, some have also reportedly aided the regime in monitoring and intimidating dissidents abroad, including coaxing suspected “criminals” to return to China. Some of these police stations were established by exploiting bilateral security arrangements, while others were set up illegally without the consent of host countries. According to a 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders, while the regime does not directly run these stations, it actively provides guidance to encourage their proliferation and influence their policies. There has been increasing evidence that foreign citizens are involved in aiding China’s transnational repression, including through the operation of its overseas police stations. During the 2023 APEC summit in San Francisco, CA, for example, these organizations mobilized en masse to suppress anti-Xi protesters, in several instances physically attacking dissidents and tearing down protest signage. Some of these groups received logistical and financial support coordinated by Chinese diplomatic missions. In December 2024, a Chinese-American pled guilty before an American court to assisting the Chinese regime in running the first known secret police station of this kind on US soil, which was tasked with identifying pro-democracy activists based in the US. In September 2025, a naturalized US citizen in Queens, New York, pled guilty to “conspiring to act” as an illegal agent in the US for the Chinese regime by regularly reporting on the whereabouts of individuals and groups considered to be a threat to the CCP’s interests. Pro-regime diaspora organizations also routinely aid the regime’s transnational repression, suggesting a concerted, multi-layered strategy to silence dissent abroad.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have systematically contributed to the governing authority’s transnational repression of dissidents abroad. GONGOs are also regime proxies that routinely aid in intimidating dissidents and voicing support for the regime in international forums, including United Nations conferences. An April 2025 investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into 106 CSOs with consultative status at the UN headquarters in Geneva revealed that 59 had links to the CCP and at least 46 were led by individuals with positions within the CCP. Uyghur and Tibetan diaspora regularly face harassment, intimidation, and extraditions. In February 2025, for example, Thailand deported at least 40 Uyghurs back to China after holding them in immigration detention for over a decade. In August 2025, an art exhibition organized by exiled Burmese artist Sai and his wife at a coveted gallery in Bangkok was interrupted after Thai police were sent to search for the couple at China’s behest. The exhibition featured works by Tibetan, Uyghur, and Hong Kong artists. While initially at risk of being shut down, the exhibition was ultimately allowed to continue after artists’ names were blacked out and works considered politically sensitive were removed. Adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, who have long faced persecution in China, face similar levels of targeting abroad. Ahead of Xi Jinping’s state visit to Malaysia in May 2025, the Malaysian police arrested over 70 Falun Gong practitioners and detained them until Xi’s departure.
Institutions largely or completely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. All branches of government operate within the framework of the party-state and enjoy no formal separation of powers. Judicial personnel are closely vetted for loyalty. Judges are also restricted in their ability to decide on politically sensitive cases. The regime has carried out sweeping purges of senior officials to reinforce obedience towards the leadership and combat corruption.
The judiciary is not independent and fails to serve as a check on the regime. The power to conduct judicial appointments, control judicial salaries and finances, and call for the reconsideration of court cases is vested with the CCP people’s congresses at the national and local levels. There is no formal separation of powers between the judiciary, known as the people’s court system, and other branches of government. As a result of this institutional framework, courts do not function as a check on the regime.
Courts have systematically, frequently, and unfairly failed to check, and enable, the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. China has a conviction rate of over 99%, meaning nearly all dissidents who are charged with spurious crimes are likely to be found guilty and face stiff sentencing. Many guilty verdicts of dissidents were secured by relying on forced confessions involving torture and inhumane treatment. These forced confessions are, in many cases, televised for deterrence effect. Convictions, wrongful or not, are difficult to overturn: lower court judges frequently consult senior or appellate judges to reach a decision, diminishing the effectiveness of existing appeals procedures. Moreover, trials are routinely held in secret, and judgments in politically sensitive cases are not publicized, immunizing judges from public scrutiny. A 2025 report by Amnesty International additionally found that courts frequently deny defendants access to legal representation of their choice, subject them to prolonged pre-trial detention, and forcibly admit them into “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL), a practice tantamount to enforced disappearance. Convictions have been handed to dissidents coming from various backgrounds, including journalists, human rights advocates, foreigners, and Uyghur and Tibetan detainees. An illustrative case concerns Tibetan environmental activist A-Nya Sengdra, who was arrested on September 4, 2018, for peacefully campaigning against regime corruption. He was sentenced to seven years and was expected to be released in September 2025. That month, however, a court extended his sentence until February 2026 for unclear reasons. In January 2025, an Uyghur woman was reportedly sentenced to 17 years for teaching Islam to her children and a neighbor. Her two sons, whose ages are unknown, were sentenced to seven and 10 years, respectively, for receiving “illegal religious education,” along with her neighbor, who received a nine-year sentence.
Judicial, legislative, and executive institutions following top-down orders hold regime officials accountable to maintain a certain image of propriety. Under President Xi Jinping, the regime has launched an extensive anti-corruption campaign that has led to more than four million officials being prosecuted between 2012 and 2023. Many former party officials have been forcefully disappeared, arbitrarily detained, or tortured in the CCP’s “liuzhi” system. In 2023, 26,000 individuals were placed into the system. The regime claimed to have prosecuted a further 23,000 officials in 2024. Anti-corruption rhetoric is also frequently invoked to purge officials and reinforce party discipline. At least 58 high-ranking officials were purged in the first three quarters of 2024, along with 642,000 cadres at various levels of party administration. Among the most well-known CCP figures to have been punished are Bo Xilai, former minister of commerce, who was sentenced to life on embezzlement, bribery, and murder charges in 2013. Former Defense Minister Li Shangfu was also removed in October 2023, before being expelled from the CCP in June 2024. He has since disappeared from the public eye. In November 2024, ex-securities regulation official Zhu Congjiu, the latest high-ranking official to be purged, was expelled from the CCP, sentenced to life, and deprived of his political rights and personal property for a bribery conviction he received.
Legislative and executive institutions are not independent. They instead form part of the party-state framework. All the seats in the National People’s Congress, the national legislature, are held by the CCP and political parties and organizations approved by it. In addition to criminal prosecution, the regime heavily relies on party discipline as a tool of accountability and to reinforce political loyalty. In 2017, the regime instituted a new four-tier party discipline system, which is enforced based on the severity of the offenses an official is alleged to have committed. First- to third-tier violators are subject to penalties ranging from making public self-criticisms to major demotions. Only those subject to the fourth tier will face criminal prosecutions. In 2024, the regime’s revised “Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment” went into effect. The regulations include prohibiting “political rumors undermining Party unity,” “twisting the law for personal gain,” among other requirements to “resolutely preserve General Secretary Xi Jinping’s status as the core of the Party Central Committee and the core of the entire Party.” Party officials are also prohibited from “making decisions or speaking publicly without authorization on major policy issues that should be the purview of the party center.” CCP officials are subject to a wide range of other restrictions, including “reading or possessing banned publications,” joining unauthorized groups, and “causing a deterioration of the political ecology in the (party member’s) region, department, or unit.”
HRF classifies China as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the sole ruling party and retains absolute control over all branches of government. Incumbent President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping began his third term in March 2023 after successfully abolishing the presidential term limits in 2018 prescribed by the Constitution, without opposition.
Xi’s regime is characterized by his political vision, dubbed the “Chinese Dream,” which centers on making China a global powerhouse and revitalizing its national pride through the strengthening of party discipline. As a result, under his leadership, the regime has dramatically scaled up its repression of dissenting voices, both domestically and overseas. Additionally, part of Xi’s rhetoric is to turn China into a homogenous nation-state, which the regime has endeavored to achieve through the systematic repression of ethnic and religious minorities, including, but not limited to, Uyghurs and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Tibetans, and Christians.
National elections are absent, rendering moot any assessment of electoral competition. The General Secretary of the CCP, appointed from among and by the party’s most powerful elites known as the Politburo Standing Committee, automatically becomes the President of China. The national legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), is indirectly elected by people’s congresses at local levels.
Civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. While repression of dissent has long been a hallmark of the CCP’s leadership, it has escalated under President Xi Jinping, both within and outside the country. His regime has operated large-scale influence operations online and offline to skew China-related narratives in the regime’s favor, often with assistance from regime-affiliated non-state actors such as hired cybertroops, foreign individuals, and even foreign states. Regime retaliation against dissidents is well-documented and is conducted through a variety of means, including imprisonment, surveillance, movement restrictions, and forced psychiatric care. The regime systematically undermines the ability of marginalized groups, particularly Tibetans and Uyghurs, to dissent. Furthermore, the regime operates one of the world’s largest transnational repression networks that enables it to intimidate, censor, and retaliate against thousands of dissidents abroad.
Institutions largely or completely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. All branches of government operate within the framework of the party-state and enjoy no formal separation of powers. Judicial personnel are closely vetted for loyalty. Judges are also restricted in their ability to decide on politically sensitive cases. The regime has carried out sweeping purges of senior officials to reinforce obedience towards the leadership and combat corruption.
National elections are absent, rendering moot any assessment of electoral competition. Elections in China are governed by the Electoral Law of the National People’s Congress and Local People’s Congresses, an instrument that heavily manipulates the electoral process to afford the CCP absolute monopoly power. This law recognizes the NPC as the national legislature, as well as several levels of local people’s congresses. The NPC, which has a maximum membership of 3,000 deputies, is indirectly elected by provincial people’s congresses one level below it. While China recognizes eight minor political parties aside from the CCP, they must support the CCP leadership, and their leaders are vetted by the CCP. All deputies of the NPC must accept CCP supremacy; members belonging to parties other than the CCP are subject to the same indirect election process administered entirely by the CCP, eliminating any room for opposition. The NPC, in turn, elects individuals and approves nominations to all key governmental positions, including the president and vice president, the premier — the constitutional head of government — vice premiers, and ministers.
Since 1993, the offices of the President and the General Secretary of the CCP — the highest rank in the party’s hierarchy — have been held concurrently. Therefore, anyone who helms the CCP automatically assumes China’s top political office. The General Secretary of the CCP is typically appointed from among and by the members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the CCP’s core decision-making organ. The Politburo is also in charge of determining most high-level political, social, and economic agendas.
Direct elections are held at grassroots levels, such as in villages and neighborhoods. Independents often face significant hurdles in registering and campaigning. Voters are given a single candidate or very limited choice, typically one vetted by the ruling party. Election committees in charge of overseeing these elections are formed by the CCP standing committees in localities.
Civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Independent media is virtually absent, and narratives on the regime are heavily manipulated through systematic influence operations and blanket censorship. The regime obstructs civil society work through mass crackdowns and registration laws requiring firm political loyalty. Heavy restrictions on the freedom of assembly render protests a rare occurrence. The regime has systematically persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, including Uyghurs and Tibetans, under the pretext of national security. The regime also operates one of the world’s largest transnational repression networks that enables it to retaliate against thousands of dissidents abroad.
The regime heavily manipulates media coverage in its favor. The Xi administration has mandated the principle of “Party control over the media,” which it considers the cornerstone of Chinese national security. It pushes for four “adherences” applicable to Chinese journalism and public opinion work, which include prioritizing party spirit and “positive propaganda.” All local media outlets must reflect the CCP’s agenda and endorse unequivocal support for the party line. The regime conducts extensive influence operations both online and offline. Between 2023 and early 2025, for example, Meta published at least three reports exposing coordinated inauthentic behavior linked to China, targeting audiences in the U.S., India, and the Tibetan diaspora – particularly in Nepal, India, and Bhutan – across multiple platforms. Extensive research published by think tanks and civil society groups also found that these networks amplified pro-CCP narratives during Taiwan’s 2024 elections, underscoring their role in manipulating public opinion to advance Beijing’s broader geopolitical and ideological agendas. The regime employs the “Great Firewall,” widely regarded as the largest and most sophisticated censorship mechanism, to block access to a wide range of online sites and content through a combination of tactics, including IP blocking, packet filtering, and supplemented by AI-powered surveillance and proprietary content removal. Mainstream search engines and social media platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram, are banned in China and replaced by platforms developed by local companies that must comply with censorship laws, which aid in monitoring and barring access to content prohibited by the regime.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have contributed to heavily manipulating media coverage in favor of the regime. A network of nationalist online trolls known as wu mao (translated to “50 cents”) actively operates in the digital space to attack critical voices and spread pro-regime propaganda. Wu mao are generally considered to be paid by the regime, hired to guide public opinion by posing as ordinary internet users and amplifying large amounts of deceptive content at the regime’s behest. “Wu mao” maintains a significant presence on Chinese social media platforms, but has also infiltrated Western platforms to attack critics overseas. There are indications that wu mao is involved in the escalation of cyber-attacks against activists, particularly those working on the Uyghur, Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong causes. It is increasingly difficult to identify whether pro-regime online commentary is posted by paid actors, volunteers, or average Chinese citizens, due to little differentiation between party ideology and national pride.
The regime has seriously intimidated media, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public, or otherwise seriously and unfairly obstructed their work. The CCP has an extensive record of imprisoning dissidents, including activists, journalists, lawyers, academics, religious and ethnic minorities, internet users, and protesters. Between 1980 and March 2025, China imprisoned at least 49,589 individuals on various politically motivated charges, of whom 7,157 were still detained as of the end of the covered period, according to the Dui Hua Foundation. The most frequently cited offenses in these cases are “picking quarrels and provoking trouble (Article 293 of the Criminal Law), “organizing and using a cult to undermine implementation of the law” (Article 300 of the Criminal Law), which is often weaponized against religious minorities; and endangering state security (ESS) offenses, including inciting splittism, espionage, and subversion. The highest number of cases was documented in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR; “Uyghur Region”), homeland of the persecuted Uyghur Muslims. Additionally, Xi’s regime has repeatedly launched mass crackdowns on civil society. In 2015, the “709 Crackdown” led to the detention of over 300 civil rights lawyers and human rights advocates nationwide, some of whom are still imprisoned as of September 2025. Another similar crackdown on human rights lawyers began in April 2023, with the arrests of prominent names including Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi.
Recent estimates suggest that China has more than 880,000 registered civil society organizations (CSOs), a term that could refer to foundations, social groups, or private non-enterprise units such as trade and professional associations. Many domestic CSOs are either “government-organized non-governmental organizations” (GONGOs) directly managed by the regime or receive regime allocations and subsidies, making them heavily reliant on the regime. According to a 2016 statement by a regime representative, there are also approximately 7,000 foreign CSOs operating in the country. The 2016 Charity Law regulates domestic “charitable” organizations, while the 2017 Overseas NGO Law concerns foreign CSOs. Both of these instruments afford the regime sweeping powers to restrict and control the activities of foreign organizations, which mainly comprise charities and social service entities, by requiring them to “uphold the leadership of the Communist Party” and register with designated agencies to operate. Formal registration entails an obligation to adhere to party principles and expose organizations to surveillance and penalties when they engage in dissent. In the aftermath, various organizations that have worked for substantial periods in China reported challenges in registering, leading many of them to leave the country or stop operating altogether. They included those advocating for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, legal education and training, foreign entities working in social and economic development, and grassroots environmental and labor rights groups. According to an analysis published in September 2024, 758 foreign CSOs have registered, “although 86 later opted to leave and de-register their offices.”
The regime has seriously repressed protests or gatherings. Large-scale protests are extremely rare due to the risk of regime retaliation. One of the few instances in which the Chinese public has openly expressed their grievances took place in late 2022 against China’s censorship and “zero-COVID” policy, dubbed the White Paper protests. While the precise scale of the protests is unknown, they took place across several major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. At least 100 were arrested under the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (Article 293 of the PRC Criminal Law), ranging from journalists to students. The regime’s advanced censorship apparatus was used to erase text or image content that referred to the protests or public support for them. Various surveillance technologies, including “banner alarms” and other protest-related “alarms,” assisted police with detecting and identifying potential protests. Large police units were also sent to locations of planned protests ahead of time, leading to their cancellations. Participants of the White Paper protests and other smaller-scale demonstrations across China have reported being subjected to forced psychiatric care and erroneously diagnosed with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
The regime has systematically and disproportionately undermined the ability of marginalized groups to dissent. In 2014, Xi Jinping revived the “Strike Hard” campaign that facilitated the unjust criminalization of over half a million Uyghurs, as well as Tibetans, under the guise of fighting “violent terrorism.” This crackdown has continued to date, with the regime often accusing Uyghurs of being “separatists” or “terrorists” and forcing them to assimilate with the majority ethnic Han Chinese through blanket prohibitions on their cultural and religious expressions. Since 2017, over one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslim ethnic groups have been detained in concentration camps, where they were subject to mass surveillance, involuntary psychiatric and medical treatments, enforced disappearances, torture and inhumane treatment, extrajudicial killings, forced sterilizations, and forced abortions. Prominent Uyghur voices and survivors, including Tahir Hamut Izgil, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, Kalbinur Sidik, and Rebiya Kadeer, have spoken about their experiences with regime persecution at the Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF). ESS offenses are frequently invoked against Uyghurs. Professor Ilham Tohti, an Uyghur economist, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 for “separatism” over a website he built to foster dialogue and exchange between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. His daughter, Jewher Ilham, has continued to advocate for his release and Uyghur rights. While the Chinese regime has claimed to close these facilities, many have been reconverted into detention facilities and prisons. The Uyghur Region continues to have one of the highest incarceration rates in China. According to a 2019 report, the region experienced a surge in arrests, trials, and imprisonment, with an eightfold increase in arrests and a tenfold increase in sentences since 2017. Analysis from CSO reports a severe lack of transparency during trials and high levels of convictions for victims without “committing a genuine offense.” The regime also represses Uyghurs and other minority groups through the coercion of forced labor, both in internment camps and forced labor transfers. Many former detainees have been redirected into forced labor programs, where they report continued loss of civic freedoms, such as freedom of movement, religion, public assembly, and more.
Expressions of a distinct Tibetan identity, including Tibetan Buddhism, language, history, and heritage, are met with severe repression and “sinicization.” The regime restricts Tibetans’ right to communicate with one another and members of their community abroad. Tibetan-Canadian human rights activist Chemi Lhamo testified about the struggles and resilience of Tibetans under Chinese occupation and in exile at the 2022 OFF. Other leading advocates for the Tibetan cause, including former prisoner of conscience Palden Gyatso and former president of the Tibetan government-in-exile Lobsang Sangay, have similarly provided detailed accounts of the Tibetan persecution. In October 2024, officials arrested four Tibetans in a county in Sichuan for contacting someone outside of Tibet to dedicate prayers. Tibetan Buddhist schools have faced forced closures, and students were transferred to CCP-administered colonial boarding schools. Between July and October 2024 alone, at least 1,600 students underwent such transfers. Uyghurs and Tibetans cannot freely exercise their freedom of movement, and have long been subjected to passport confiscations. Christians also face systematic persecution and have repeatedly been targeted with crackdowns. The latest of these crackdowns took place in October 2025, when officials arbitrarily detained 30 pastors and members of the underground Zion Church nationwide.
The regime has engaged in transnational repression against dissidents abroad. China is responsible for the “most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign” of transnational repression involving various tactics, including surveillance, deployment of proxies, recruitment of foreign agents, smear campaigns, and physical attacks. A key actor in foreign influence operations is the Overseas United Front Work Department (UFWD), an agency that co-opts overseas Chinese individuals and communities, among others, to conduct influence operations to reign in oppositional targets according to party lines. Members and affiliates of UFWD engage in a variety of intimidating behaviors, including political interference, economic espionage, and academic censorship. Overseas Chinese students have reported being monitored by regime-affiliated student unions, or other Chinese students at the regime’s behest, leading many of them to live and study in constant fear of being targeted.
The regime reportedly runs over 100 “overseas police stations” – which the Chinese government claims are “service centers” – around the world. While these centers do provide various forms of support for overseas Chinese communities, some have also reportedly aided the regime in monitoring and intimidating dissidents abroad, including coaxing suspected “criminals” to return to China. Some of these police stations were established by exploiting bilateral security arrangements, while others were set up illegally without the consent of host countries. According to a 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders, while the regime does not directly run these stations, it actively provides guidance to encourage their proliferation and influence their policies. There has been increasing evidence that foreign citizens are involved in aiding China’s transnational repression, including through the operation of its overseas police stations. During the 2023 APEC summit in San Francisco, CA, for example, these organizations mobilized en masse to suppress anti-Xi protesters, in several instances physically attacking dissidents and tearing down protest signage. Some of these groups received logistical and financial support coordinated by Chinese diplomatic missions. In December 2024, a Chinese-American pled guilty before an American court to assisting the Chinese regime in running the first known secret police station of this kind on US soil, which was tasked with identifying pro-democracy activists based in the US. In September 2025, a naturalized US citizen in Queens, New York, pled guilty to “conspiring to act” as an illegal agent in the US for the Chinese regime by regularly reporting on the whereabouts of individuals and groups considered to be a threat to the CCP’s interests. Pro-regime diaspora organizations also routinely aid the regime’s transnational repression, suggesting a concerted, multi-layered strategy to silence dissent abroad.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have systematically contributed to the governing authority’s transnational repression of dissidents abroad. GONGOs are also regime proxies that routinely aid in intimidating dissidents and voicing support for the regime in international forums, including United Nations conferences. An April 2025 investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into 106 CSOs with consultative status at the UN headquarters in Geneva revealed that 59 had links to the CCP and at least 46 were led by individuals with positions within the CCP. Uyghur and Tibetan diaspora regularly face harassment, intimidation, and extraditions. In February 2025, for example, Thailand deported at least 40 Uyghurs back to China after holding them in immigration detention for over a decade. In August 2025, an art exhibition organized by exiled Burmese artist Sai and his wife at a coveted gallery in Bangkok was interrupted after Thai police were sent to search for the couple at China’s behest. The exhibition featured works by Tibetan, Uyghur, and Hong Kong artists. While initially at risk of being shut down, the exhibition was ultimately allowed to continue after artists’ names were blacked out and works considered politically sensitive were removed. Adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, who have long faced persecution in China, face similar levels of targeting abroad. Ahead of Xi Jinping’s state visit to Malaysia in May 2025, the Malaysian police arrested over 70 Falun Gong practitioners and detained them until Xi’s departure.
Institutions largely or completely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. All branches of government operate within the framework of the party-state and enjoy no formal separation of powers. Judicial personnel are closely vetted for loyalty. Judges are also restricted in their ability to decide on politically sensitive cases. The regime has carried out sweeping purges of senior officials to reinforce obedience towards the leadership and combat corruption.
The judiciary is not independent and fails to serve as a check on the regime. The power to conduct judicial appointments, control judicial salaries and finances, and call for the reconsideration of court cases is vested with the CCP people’s congresses at the national and local levels. There is no formal separation of powers between the judiciary, known as the people’s court system, and other branches of government. As a result of this institutional framework, courts do not function as a check on the regime.
Courts have systematically, frequently, and unfairly failed to check, and enable, the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. China has a conviction rate of over 99%, meaning nearly all dissidents who are charged with spurious crimes are likely to be found guilty and face stiff sentencing. Many guilty verdicts of dissidents were secured by relying on forced confessions involving torture and inhumane treatment. These forced confessions are, in many cases, televised for deterrence effect. Convictions, wrongful or not, are difficult to overturn: lower court judges frequently consult senior or appellate judges to reach a decision, diminishing the effectiveness of existing appeals procedures. Moreover, trials are routinely held in secret, and judgments in politically sensitive cases are not publicized, immunizing judges from public scrutiny. A 2025 report by Amnesty International additionally found that courts frequently deny defendants access to legal representation of their choice, subject them to prolonged pre-trial detention, and forcibly admit them into “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL), a practice tantamount to enforced disappearance. Convictions have been handed to dissidents coming from various backgrounds, including journalists, human rights advocates, foreigners, and Uyghur and Tibetan detainees. An illustrative case concerns Tibetan environmental activist A-Nya Sengdra, who was arrested on September 4, 2018, for peacefully campaigning against regime corruption. He was sentenced to seven years and was expected to be released in September 2025. That month, however, a court extended his sentence until February 2026 for unclear reasons. In January 2025, an Uyghur woman was reportedly sentenced to 17 years for teaching Islam to her children and a neighbor. Her two sons, whose ages are unknown, were sentenced to seven and 10 years, respectively, for receiving “illegal religious education,” along with her neighbor, who received a nine-year sentence.
Judicial, legislative, and executive institutions following top-down orders hold regime officials accountable to maintain a certain image of propriety. Under President Xi Jinping, the regime has launched an extensive anti-corruption campaign that has led to more than four million officials being prosecuted between 2012 and 2023. Many former party officials have been forcefully disappeared, arbitrarily detained, or tortured in the CCP’s “liuzhi” system. In 2023, 26,000 individuals were placed into the system. The regime claimed to have prosecuted a further 23,000 officials in 2024. Anti-corruption rhetoric is also frequently invoked to purge officials and reinforce party discipline. At least 58 high-ranking officials were purged in the first three quarters of 2024, along with 642,000 cadres at various levels of party administration. Among the most well-known CCP figures to have been punished are Bo Xilai, former minister of commerce, who was sentenced to life on embezzlement, bribery, and murder charges in 2013. Former Defense Minister Li Shangfu was also removed in October 2023, before being expelled from the CCP in June 2024. He has since disappeared from the public eye. In November 2024, ex-securities regulation official Zhu Congjiu, the latest high-ranking official to be purged, was expelled from the CCP, sentenced to life, and deprived of his political rights and personal property for a bribery conviction he received.
Legislative and executive institutions are not independent. They instead form part of the party-state framework. All the seats in the National People’s Congress, the national legislature, are held by the CCP and political parties and organizations approved by it. In addition to criminal prosecution, the regime heavily relies on party discipline as a tool of accountability and to reinforce political loyalty. In 2017, the regime instituted a new four-tier party discipline system, which is enforced based on the severity of the offenses an official is alleged to have committed. First- to third-tier violators are subject to penalties ranging from making public self-criticisms to major demotions. Only those subject to the fourth tier will face criminal prosecutions. In 2024, the regime’s revised “Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment” went into effect. The regulations include prohibiting “political rumors undermining Party unity,” “twisting the law for personal gain,” among other requirements to “resolutely preserve General Secretary Xi Jinping’s status as the core of the Party Central Committee and the core of the entire Party.” Party officials are also prohibited from “making decisions or speaking publicly without authorization on major policy issues that should be the purview of the party center.” CCP officials are subject to a wide range of other restrictions, including “reading or possessing banned publications,” joining unauthorized groups, and “causing a deterioration of the political ecology in the (party member’s) region, department, or unit.”
