| China |
| Human rights development goals | |
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![]() Wanling Ancient Town, a popular scenic spot in Chongqing Municipality, on June 13 (XINHUA)
The recently released National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2026-30) sets out the country's objectives, tasks and measures for respecting, protecting and promoting human rights in the next five years. Key facts and figures follow:
China will implement its food crop production strategy based on improved farmland management and application of technology, and intensify efforts to advance a new round of initiatives for increasing grain production capacity by 50 million tons. The government will build and renovate approximately 175,000 km of urban water supply pipelines. It will promote standardized construction, management and maintenance of water supply in rural areas, aiming to bring tap water coverage to 98 percent of the countryside by 2030. The government will continue to renovate dilapidated rural housing for rural residents that are at risk of lapsing or relapsing into poverty, and renovate 500,000 units of dilapidated and old urban housing and 115,000 aging residential communities. An improved transportation network will enable 75 percent of the population to commute to work within one hour in major metropolitan areas. The social security card will integrate all public services, and 90 percent of the total population will hold the electronic social security card. The government will strive to increase the average life expectancy to 80 years and reduce the neonatal mortality rate to 3 per 1,000 live births, the infant mortality rate to 3.5 per 1,000, the under-five mortality rate to 6 per 1,000 and the maternal mortality rate to below 12 per 100,000. The number of practicing doctors will reach 3.77 per 1,000 people and that of registered nurses will grow to 5.1 per 1,000. The government will improve the mechanisms for psychological crisis intervention, and improve diagnosis, reporting, medical treatment and follow-up management services for severe mental disorders to cover over 90 percent of patients with such disorders. The proportion of people who regularly engage in physical exercise will be increased to approximately 40 percent of the total population. The gross enrollment rate of senior secondary education will be increased to 93 percent. The average years of schooling for the working-age population will increase to 11.7 years and that for new entrants to 14.7 years. The government will work to ensure that general budget spending on education increases year by year and is not cut and that fiscal spending on education remains above 4 percent of GDP. China will prevent acts infringing upon citizens' information rights and interests such as large-scale data leaks, the collection and misuse of personal information beyond the authorized scope and user profiling attacks. It will step up efforts to guide online platforms, self-media and multi-channel networks and ensure that platforms fulfill their principal responsibilities in protecting citizens' personal information rights and interests. Procedures and mechanisms for public participation in social governance will be improved. Clear time frames and responsible entities will be specified for handling reasonable suggestions made by the public. Both online and offline platforms will be integrated to fully improve the effectiveness of public participation in social governance. The government will diversify the channels of oversight by the media through news reporting and by the public through public opinion. It will put in place a secure mechanism for public scrutiny feedback and a system for ensuring the confidentiality and safety of whistleblowers. The concentration of fine particulate matter PM2.5 in cities at the prefecture level and above will reduced to below 27 micrograms per cubic meter. The proportion of surface water and nearshore waters with good to excellent water quality will be raised to 85 percent. The government will upgrade and transform urban household garbage sorting, collection and transport facilities, aiming for a daily garbage collection and transport capacity of 750,000 tons. It will promote zero-waste initiatives in around 200 cities. China will strengthen ecological protection and restoration, as well as law enforcement and oversight to ensure that the land area under ecological protection remains above 3.15 million square km and that the total area of China's farmland does not fall below the red line of 120 million hectares. The forest and grassland coverage in the shelterbelt areas in northeast, north and northwest China will be increased to 40.9 percent, and the overall vegetation coverage of desertified land to 22 percent. Forest coverage will be increased to 25.8 percent, and protected areas, which mainly consist of national parks, will cover 18 percent of China's total land area, while the area undergoing soil and water conservation will be increased to 74 percent by 2030. By 2030, water consumption per unit of GDP will be reduced by 10 percent. The government will ensure that all ethnic groups, including those with very small populations, will have at least one deputy representing them at the National People's Congress (NPC), the highest organ of state power. The government will ensure citizens can learn and use standard spoken and written Chinese. It respects and ensures the study and use of spoken and written ethnic minority languages, and will advance their normalization, standardization and digitalization. China will encourage women to participate in whole-process people's democracy more extensively, and further increase the proportion of women among deputies to people's congresses and members of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) committees at all levels, with particular focus on raising the proportion of women among the deputies and CPPCC committee members at provincial and city levels. The CPPCC is the political advisory branch within China's system of governance. The state will steadily increase the proportion of women in villagers' and urban residents' committees, ensuring that they account for more than 30 percent of villagers' committee members and more than 40 percent of urban residents' committee directors. The vaccination rate for children of appropriate age under the national immunization program will be maintained above 90 percent, and the HPV vaccination initiative under this program will be implemented, including providing the bivalent HPV vaccine free of charge to girls aged 13 and older. The number of practicing pediatricians (including assistant physicians) will be increased to 1.12 per 1,000 children and that of pediatric beds to 3.17 per 1,000 children. China will upgrade community-based eldercare services, enhance care and service capacity, and expand service functions, aiming to achieve a 70 percent coverage rate for community-based eldercare institutions and facilities. China will refine the laws, regulations, policies, systems, application standards and ethical codes in the field of AI. It will strengthen the systems for algorithm registration, transparency management, and safety and security assessment to ensure that AI systems are fairer, more transparent and non-discriminatory. Copyedited by G.P. Wilson Comments to yanwei@cicgamericas.com |
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