There are no direct or competitive elections for national executive leaders. The National People’s Congress (NPC) formally elects the state president for five-year terms. The premier is nominated by the state president and confirmed by the NPC. In practice, both positions are determined in advance by the top CCP leadership and announced at the relevant party congress. The CCP’s seven-member Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), headed by the party’s general secretary, sets government and party policy.

Xi Jinping was appointed for a third five-year term as general secretary at the 20th Party Congress in 2022, paving the way for him to remain in power indefinitely. This marked a sharp break from the post–Cultural Revolution practice of maintaining a two-term limit for the country’s highest leadership position. In March 2023, General Secretary Xi secured a third term as state president with a unanimous NPC vote. Xi also serves as chairman of the state and party military commissions.

Li Qiang, a close ally of Xi, was named premier in March 2023.

The NPC has a maximum of 3,000 members. They are formally elected for five-year terms by subnational congresses, but the CCP vets all candidates in practice. Only the NPC’s standing committee meets regularly, with the full congress convening only briefly to approve proposed legislation; party organs and the State Council, or cabinet, effectively control lawmaking decisions. The incumbent NPC, with 2,977 members, was seated in March 2023 and most recently met for one week in March 2024.

Political positions are directly elected only at the lowest levels. Independent candidates who obtain the signatures of 10 supporters are by law allowed to run for seats in the county-level people’s congresses. Elections for village committees are also supposed to give residents the chance to choose their representatives. In practice, however, independent candidates for these posts are often kept off the ballot or out of office through intimidation, harassment, fraud, and sometimes detention.

Elections are not administered by an independent body. The indirect elections that populate people’s congresses at various levels are conducted by those congresses’ standing committees, while village-level elections are conducted by a village electoral committee that answers to the local party committee.

The CCP effectively monopolizes all political activity and does not permit meaningful political competition. Eight small noncommunist parties are represented in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an official advisory body, but their activities are tightly circumscribed. These parties must accept the CCP’s leadership as a condition for their existence.

Citizens who have sought to establish genuinely independent political parties or prodemocracy movements are nearly all in prison, under house arrest, or in exile. The authorities continue to hold prodemocracy activists and lawyers in various forms of detention and imprisonment.

China’s one-party system provides no institutional mechanism for organized political opposition. The CCP has ruled without interruption since winning a civil war against the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in 1949. Informal factions, sometimes based on personal connections, are known to exist within the CCP, but their functioning is opaque. Xi has steadily increased his personal power and authority within the party since 2012, notably by purging rivals and challengers as part of an anticorruption campaign.

The CCP is not accountable to voters and denies the public any meaningful participation in political affairs. The party uses a broad array of coercive tools and methods to suppress independent political engagement.

The political system is dominated in practice by ethnic Han Chinese. Nominal representatives of ethnic minority groups such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongolians hold administrative offices and participate in party and state bodies like the NPC, but their role is largely symbolic. Women are underrepresented in politics. Ethnic and religious minorities and LGBT+ people have no opportunity to gain meaningful political representation.

None of China’s national leaders are freely elected, and the legislature plays a rubber-stamp role in policymaking and the development of new laws. The concentration of power in Xi’s hands, a cult of personality centered on Xi, and his regular calls for greater ideological conformity and party supremacy have further reduced the limited space for policy debate, even within the CCP.

Since becoming CCP leader in 2012, Xi has pursued an extensive anticorruption campaign. Well over a million officials have been investigated and punished according to official figures, including senior state, party, and military officials. Anticorruption functions are currently managed by the National Supervisory Commission, which was established through a 2018 merger of state and party entities and is tasked with enforcing political and ideological discipline in addition to compliance with the law.

Anticorruption efforts originally focused on law enforcement agencies have extended to various other government entities. Nevertheless, corruption remains rooted in the one-party system, which does not tolerate the institutions necessary for effectively addressing graft—such as a free press, independent civil society groups, and impartial courts.

Officials in anticorruption agencies have themselves been investigated for or accused of corruption. Li Gang, a senior inspector at the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), was placed under investigation in September 2024. In October, the CCDI said it was investigating Chen Xiaobo, an antigraft official in Hainan Province.

Defense Minister Li Shangfu was dismissed in late 2023 with no immediate explanation. In June 2024, state broadcaster CCTV reported that Li and former Defense Minister Wei Fenghe were both expelled from the CCP for corruption.

The Chinese government and the CCP are notoriously opaque. Regulations on “open government” do not effectively compel local party and state organs to share critical data or respond to citizen requests. Under Xi’s leadership, the government has developed increasingly sophisticated methods for controlling the diffusion of information and shaping public discourse.

In December 2023, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that the Supreme People’s Court would create a new database with approximately 2,000 cases. Observers feared that the new database would replace China Judgments Online, which had allowed far wider access to a larger number of documents. The court also disclosed that it had been adding fewer documents to China Judgments Online since late 2021. In January 2024, the court vowed that more items would be made available in the new database.

China is home to one of the world’s most restrictive media environments and its most sophisticated system of censorship, particularly online. The CCP maintains control over news reporting via direct ownership, accreditation of journalists, harsh penalties for comments that are critical of party leaders or the CCP, and daily directives to media outlets and websites that guide coverage of breaking news stories.

State management of the telecommunications infrastructure enables website blocks, removal of smartphone applications from the domestic market, and mass deletion of social media posts and user accounts that address banned topics. Thousands of websites have been blocked, many for years, including major news and social media hubs like The New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), YouTube, X, and Facebook.

Rules and regulations governing the media and internet usage include measures that restrict news dissemination and contribute to the banning of mobile apps focused on minority languages, Bible content, and foreign-language learning, among other topics. Censors have also removed large numbers of social media groups, accounts, or posts that dealt with LGBT+ issues, financial advice, critical views of CCP history, and celebrities. The country’s network of pro-CCP volunteer internet commentators and paid employees aggressively monitors and censors online communications.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 50 journalists were imprisoned in China as of December 2024, though the number of people held for uncovering or sharing newsworthy information is far greater. Numerous citizen journalists and bloggers have been detained, disappeared, or criminally charged in recent years. Zhang Zhan, an activist and citizen reporter from Shanghai who was sentenced to prison in 2020 and released in May 2024, was reportedly detained again in September. Dong Yuyu, formerly an editor of the state-run Guangming Daily, was detained in 2022 after meeting with a Japanese diplomat. Dong received a seven-year prison sentence for espionage in November 2024.

The party-state operates a multifaceted apparatus to control all aspects of religious activity, including by vetting religious leaders for political reliability, placing limits on the number of religious authorities such as priests and imams, requiring ideological conformity within religious doctrine, and installing security cameras inside religious establishments. The state recognizes Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestant Christianity, and Taoism. All religious groups must go through a rigorous process of certification to be officially recognized; those that refuse are labeled illegal and persecuted. Thousands of Buddhist, Taoist, and folk-religion temples and “house churches” across China have been completely or partially demolished by authorities.

A 2023 law regulating religious venues reinforced state control over the organizational structure and personnel of religious groups. Under the measures, religious groups must maintain files on staff activities, including contact with foreign entities.

Certain religions and religious groups, including Tibetan Buddhists, Muslim groups, Falun Gong practitioners, and Christian house churches, are persecuted harshly. In the XUAR, peaceful religious practices are routinely punished under charges of “religious extremism,” resulting in detention, prison sentences, and indoctrination for many Uyghur, Kazakh, and Hui Muslims. In February 2024, Beijing imposed new regulations on religious practices in the XUAR; among other things, religious groups must “practice the core values of socialism,” religious structures must physically “reflect Chinese characteristics and style” when being built or refurbished, and unauthorized groups are barred from offering religious education. The regulations also allow CCP cadres to monitor for unauthorized religious activity. The February 2024 regulations explicitly refer to “Sinicization,” a policy by which authorities restrict religious freedom and more directly influence the conduct of religious groups in China.

Authorities have also used digital surveillance to suppress the religious activities of Uyghur and Turkic Muslims. Police have been known to interrogate residents who keep text from the Quran in their smartphones’ storage.

Academic freedom is heavily restricted. Efforts to police classroom discussions are present at all levels of education, including via installation of surveillance cameras in some classrooms, large-scale recruitment of student informants, and the creation of special departments to supervise the political thinking of teaching staff. The CCP controls the appointment of top university officials, and CCP committees and party branches have significant formal authority over university administration. Many scholars self-censor to protect their careers and personal safety.

Political indoctrination, including the study of “Xi Jinping Thought,” is a required component of the curriculum at all levels of education. A number of universities have removed references to “freedom of thought” from their charters, replacing them with pledges of loyalty to the CCP. Professors and students face reprisal for expressing views that are deemed critical of the CCP’s governance or Xi’s leadership.

In September 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that Zhu Hengpeng, who was the deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was detained after he criticized government policies earlier in the year.

Though Chinese citizens are active on the internet and have been known to be quite vocal about public issues, citizens continue to be charged and imprisoned for critical or satirical social media posts on a variety of subjects, and criticism or perceived criticism of Xi or the CCP. Internet users also face account deletions, job dismissals, arbitrary detention, and police interrogation over such posts.

The government’s vast ability to monitor citizens’ lives and communications inhibits online and offline conversations. Administrators of social media applications like WeChat closely monitor user discussions to ensure conformity with government content restrictions. Surveillance cameras, frequently augmented with facial-recognition software, cover many urban areas and public transportation, and these networks are expanding into rural regions. Devices used by police to quickly extract and scan data from smartphones, initially deployed in the XUAR, have spread nationwide.

Police have access to the personal details of broad categories of individuals. China’s Cybersecurity Law obliges companies to store Chinese users’ data domestically and submit to often intrusive security reviews. Telecommunications companies must obtain facial scans of new internet or mobile phone users as part of the real-name registration process, which is combined with mass surveillance tools to closely monitor all residents. Electronic surveillance is supplemented with offline monitoring by neighborhood party committees and “public security volunteers” who are visible during large events.

The Counterespionage Law was revised in 2023 to restrict the transmission of information related to national security, which is not clearly defined; it also allows authorities to inspect electronic equipment and data. After the revised law took effect, the Ministry of State Security called on ordinary citizens to engage in counterespionage activity.

Amendments to the Law on Guarding State Secrets were announced in February 2024 and took effect in May. Implementation guidelines were published by the State Council in July. The revised law restricts the dissemination of “work secrets” which are not classified. The law also obligates telecommunications companies to stop the transmission of offending material and report incidents to state security authorities.

There is an especially heavy police presence in ethnic minority regions, particularly the XUAR. The ability of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in the XUAR to express themselves freely, even in private, has been further undermined in recent years by a policy of having Chinese officials live in their homes to monitor and indoctrinate them.

The constitution protects the right of citizens to demonstrate, but in practice protesters seldom obtain approval and risk punishment for assembling without permission. Spontaneous demonstrations have provided some outlet for local grievances, though they are frequently met with police violence and criminal prosecution. Solitary protests—in which an individual holds a placard in public, for example—can be criminally punished. Armed police have been accused of opening fire during protests, particularly in the XUAR.

Domestic and foreign NGOs lack meaningful autonomy. While hundreds of thousands of NGOs are formally registered, many effectively operate as government-sponsored entities and focus primarily on service delivery. Nearly all prominent NGOs that focused on policy advocacy, including in previously less politically sensitive areas, have been shuttered under government pressure in recent years. Engaging in unsanctioned work is risky, and many NGO workers have been detained and jailed.

The only legal labor union organization is the government-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which has long been criticized for failing to defend workers’ rights. Efforts to organize independent trade unions are swiftly shut down by authorities, and the activists involved face harsh penalties. Workers have nevertheless engaged in largely spontaneous strikes, assemblies, or other forms of public action, with over 1,500 cases being recorded in 2024 per the Hong Kong–based China Labour Bulletin.

The CCP dominates the judicial system, with courts at all levels supervised by party political-legal committees that have influence over the appointment of judges, court operations, and verdicts and sentences. CCP oversight is evident in politically sensitive cases, and most judges are CCP members. Judges are expected to conform to CCP ideology and uphold the principle of party supremacy over the judiciary. Many judges complain about local officials interfering in cases to protect powerful litigants, support important industries, or avoid their own potential liability.

Violations of due process are widespread in practice. Trials of human rights activists, religious dissidents, and other human rights defenders are routinely held in secret, with even family members being denied information or entry. While adjudication of routine civil and administrative disputes is considered more fair, cases that touch on politically sensitive issues or the interests of powerful groups are subject to decisive “guidance” from party political-legal committees.

Legal counselors are ultimately meant to serve the state, not the client. Clients do not benefit from an expectation of attorney-client privilege.

Prosecutions rely heavily on confessions, many of which are obtained through torture despite laws prohibiting such practices. Forced confessions are often televised. A crackdown on human rights lawyers has left many defendants without effective or independent legal counsel.

Extrajudicial forms of detention remain widespread. The practice of “residential surveillance in a designated location” allows the police to hold individuals in secret detention for up to six months and has been deployed against human rights defenders and lawyers, and government critics. Several individuals are known to have died under residential surveillance. In late 2023, businessman Xing Yanjun was seized in Beijing and placed under residential surveillance in a designated location in Inner Mongolia in December. Xing died in April 2024; police claimed he died by suicide but Xing’s relatives disputed that conclusion.

Conditions in places of detention are harsh, with reports of inadequate food, regular beatings, and deprivation of medical care. In addition to their use to extract confessions, torture and other forms of coercion are widely employed in efforts to force political and religious dissidents to recant their beliefs. Impunity is the norm for police brutality and suspicious deaths in custody. Citizens and lawyers who seek redress for such abuse are often met with reprisals or imprisonment. Peaceful protesters are regularly beaten by police or hired aggressors.

The government has gradually reduced the number of crimes that carry the death penalty. The Rights Practice, a British NGO, said that 46 crimes could be punished with death in a 2021 report to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The government does not publish the number of executions it carries out. In Death Sentences and Executions 2023, released in May 2024, Amnesty International reported that Chinese authorities likely executed thousands of people in 2023. Individuals can be executed for nonviolent crimes; Li Jianping, an official in Inner Mongolia who had been convicted of corruption, was sentenced to death in 2022 and executed in December 2024.

Police recorded a total of 19 mass attacks against strangers in public places, or “revenge on society” attacks, in China by late December 2024, over three times the annual number between 2019 and 2023. In late September 2024, a single assailant stabbed 18 people, killing 3 of them, in a Shanghai supermarket. In November, a driver rammed his car into an exercise group near a sports facility in Zhuhai, killing 35 people in what is believed to be the worst such attack in decades. (The driver, Fan Weiqiu, was sentenced to death in late December.) Also in November, a former student killed eight people at a vocational college in the city of Wuxi, reportedly angered by his inability to graduate and by his pay at an internship.

Chinese laws formally prohibit discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, or health condition, but these protections are often violated in practice. Several laws bar gender discrimination in the workplace, and some indicators of gender equality have reportedly improved in recent years. Nevertheless, bias remains endemic, including in job recruitment and college admissions.

Women’s rights activists and individuals who campaign against sexual harassment and assault have themselves faced harassment, detention, and sometimes criminal prosecution. In September 2023, Sophia Huang Xueqin, a prominent #MeToo advocate, was tried for state subversion along with labor rights campaigner Wang Jianbing. In June 2024, Huang was sentenced to five years; Wang received a three-and-a-half-year sentence.

Members of ethnic and religious minority groups, LGBT+ people, people with disabilities, and people with illnesses such as HIV, AIDS, and hepatitis B face discrimination in employment and access to education. Members of religious and ethnic minorities are disproportionately targeted and abused by security forces and in the criminal justice system.

Despite China’s international obligation to protect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, law enforcement agencies continue to repatriate North Korean defectors, who face imprisonment or execution upon return. In April 2024, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that at least 60 North Koreans were repatriated after being detained by police in the provinces of Jilin and Liaoning.

While China’s constitution gives individuals the right to petition the government concerning a grievance or injustice, in practice petitioners are routinely intercepted in their efforts to travel to government centers, forcibly returned to their hometowns, or extralegally detained.

The hukou (household registration) previously prohibited 295 million internal migrants from enjoying full legal rights as residents in the cities where they work. However, local governments have loosened their enforcement in recent years. In July 2024, the State Council published a plan to abolish hukou in cities with fewer than three million registered residents, while the system would be loosened in cities with three to five million residents.

Police checkpoints throughout the XUAR limit residents’ ability to travel or even leave their hometowns.

Millions of people are affected by government restrictions on their access to foreign travel and passports, with Uyghurs and Tibetans experiencing the greatest difficulty. Many overseas Chinese nationals who engage in politically sensitive activities abroad are prevented from returning to China, while those who seek refuge abroad often face forced repatriation and arrest.

In general, border control rules have been arbitrarily imposed. The revised Counterespionage Law allows authorities to stop individuals from leaving or entering China on national security grounds. In September 2024, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council disclosed that a senior Taiwanese businessperson was prevented from leaving China. In November, professor Liang Xingguo and his wife were prevented from traveling to Hong Kong; authorities cited national security concerns. Public-sector employees and high-ranking CCP members face increasingly strict exit restrictions or conditions.

The authorities dominate the economy through state-owned enterprises in key sectors such as banking and energy, state ownership of land, and political and regulatory control. Chinese citizens are legally permitted to establish and operate private businesses. However, all enterprises are vulnerable to political interference, arbitrary regulatory obstacles, debilitating censorship, negative media campaigns, demands for bribes, and other forms of corruption.

An ongoing government crackdown on private businesses, particularly large technology and social media firms, has ostensibly been aimed at curbing monopolistic practices, uncontrolled growth, and other economic ills, but has also brought the private sector more firmly under CCP control.

Property rights protection remains weak. Urban land is owned by the state, with only the buildings themselves in private hands. Rural land is collectively owned by villages. Farmers enjoy long-term lease rights to the land they work, but they have been restricted in their ability to transfer, sell, or develop it. Low compensation and weak legal protections have facilitated land seizures by local officials, who often evict residents and transfer the land rights to developers. Corruption is endemic in such projects, and local governments rely on land development as a crucial source of revenue.

Following regulatory changes in 2021 allowing couples to have up to three children, out of concern over falling fertility rates, the government in 2022 launched a campaign instructing local family planning officials to limit the number of abortions, including by discouraging abortions for “nonmedical” reasons. While ethnic minority couples were already permitted to have up to three children prior to 2021, ethnic Tibetans as well as Uyghurs and other Muslims in the XUAR face abusive policies aimed at limiting their reproduction in practice.

Domestic violence continues to affect a large number of Chinese women, though a State Council report released in August 2023 noted that domestic violence fell since the 2015 introduction of the Anti-Domestic Violence Law. That law does not criminalize spousal rape.

Chinese law defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman, denying marriage rights to same-sex couples. Muslims in the XUAR face restrictions and penalties related to aspects of their appearance with religious connotations, such as headscarves on women or beards on men.

While workers in China are afforded important protections under existing laws, violations of labor and employment regulations are widespread. Exploitative employment practices such as wage theft, excessive overtime, student labor, and unsafe working conditions are pervasive in many industries. Forced labor and human trafficking are common, affecting internal migrants as well as Chinese nationals who are trafficked abroad. Forced labor is the norm in prisons and other detention facilities.