Full coverage: China 2012-2015 Human Rights Progress Review

IV. Rights of Ethnic Minorities, Women, Children, the Elderly and People with Disabilities

From 2012 to 2015, China has taken measures to effectively protect the rights and interests of ethnic minorities, women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities, and basically achieved the planned goals.

(1) Rights of ethnic minorities

The right of ethnic minorities to participate on an equal footing in the management of state and social affairs has been protected in accordance with the law. All 55 ethnic-minority groups in China have representatives in the National People's Congress. All the ethnic-minority groups with a population of more than one million have members on the NPC Standing Committee. In each of the 155 ethnic autonomous areas, among the chairpersons and vice-chairpersons of the standing committee of the people's congresses there was one or more citizens of the ethnic group or groups exercising regional autonomy in the area concerned, and the head of any autonomous region, autonomous prefecture or autonomous county (banner) has to be a citizen of the ethnic group exercising regional autonomy in the area concerned. The proportion of ethnic minority civil servants in the national total has surpassed that of the ethnic minority population in the national total.

Cultivation of ethnic minority talents has steadily progressed. Since 2012, relevant state organs have selected more than 2,100 cadres from Western China and other ethnic regions and dispatched them to organs of the CPC Central Committee and the state as well as to regions with a comparatively prosperous economy where they assume a temporary post for personal training and development. The state carried out "Light of the West", "The Special Cultivation Plan for Leading Professionals of Science and Technology in Ethnic Minority Regions" and other major talent development policies and projects, training more than 3,000 technological professionals for Tibet, Xinjiang and other western regions. Medical undergraduate students expected to provide general practices in targeted ethnic minority regions are educated free of charge, with the government offering a subsidy at a standard rate of 6,000 yuan per student per annum (for 5-year undergraduate programs). Since 2013, the state has launched training projects in ethnic areas, including training of rural health workers in major practices, training of leading doctors in county-level hospitals and training of general practitioners in job transfers.

The right of ethnic minority groups to develop their economy has been guaranteed. Between 2012 and 2015, the central government arranged an ethnic minority development fund of 14.824 billion yuan, in exclusive support of the actions to enrich border areas and their residents, efforts to develop ethnic minorities with a relatively small population, efforts to promote ethnic minority style villages and stockade villages, and efforts to preserve and develop ethnic minorities' traditional handicraft. The state appropriated 5.8 billion yuan from the central budget to help the construction of infrastructure, improvement of production and living conditions of the general population and the development of social undertakings in border regions and areas inhabited by people of ethnic minorities with a comparatively small population. The number of poverty-stricken people in the 5 autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Tibet, Ningxia and Xinjiang and the 3 provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai plummeted from 31.21 million in 2012 to 18.13 million in 2015. In the same period, the GDP of the eight ethnic minority regions increased from 5850.5 billion yuan to 7473.6 billion yuan, and the per capita disposable income of permanent residents in cities and towns soared from 20,542 yuan to 26,901 yuan.

The development of education among ethnic minorities has gained speed. Boarding school students from ethnic groups with a relatively small population who receive compulsory education in rural areas are provided with a living allowance at a standard rate of 250 yuan per person per annum. The policy of free board, lodging and tuition is applied to children of farmers and herdsmen in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and the standard of expenses has steadily increased with the current standard being 3,000 yuan per person per annum. Every year, a separate compulsory education aid of 20 million yuan is set aside for the special purpose of subsidizing the living allowances of poverty-stricken students in boarding schools in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The government launched the standard high school construction project in ethnic minority regions with a weak educational infrastructure, with 7 billion yuan appropriated from the central budget from 2012 to 2015 in support of the construction of 318 standard high schools in ethnic minority regions. The state continues to implement the preferential policy in favor of ethnic minority students in national entrance exams. From 2012 to 2015, institutions of higher-learning directly under the State Ethnic Affairs Commission planned a total enrollment of over 124,000 undergraduate students, including more than 46,000 from the eight ethnic minority regions. Institutions of higher-learning affiliated with other central departments and local institutions of higher-learning planned a total enrollment of 185,000 ethnic minority students in preparatory classes. Between 2012 and 2015, projects for the cultivation of high-level talents from ethnic minority groups recruited and trained a total of 16,000 post-graduate students and 4,000 PHD students.

Bilingual education has made steady headway. In 2015, the schools that offered bilingual education, ranging from preschools to standard high schools, numbered more than 12,000 with 225,400 bilingual teachers and 3.4912 million students. Every year, more than 3,500 types of secondary and primary school textbooks in ethnic minority characters were published with more than 100 million copies printed.

Teaching conditions in ethnic minority regions have been further improved. From 2012 to 2015, the central government allocated 1.025 billion yuan in support of the middle and western China projects and kindergarten teacher projects under the National Cultivation Plan in 5 ethnic autonomous regions, providing training to more than 870,000 teachers of secondary and primary schools and kindergartens. Normal universities directly under the Ministry of Education offer free education and provide 42,000 teachers to ethnic minority regions. "The Plan of Cultivation of Postgraduate Teachers in Rural Education" provided 4,364 rural teachers to ethnic minority regions. Between 2011 and 2015, 528 projects in aiding Xinjiang education were carried out, with an investment of 10.8 billion yuan, and offering training to 130,000 teachers. 5,300 teachers were selected and dispatched from other regions to Xinjiang for the projects. By the end of 2015, the number of various projects to support education in Tibet had reached 405, with the funding adding up to 938 million yuan, providing training to 6,829 people and moving 3,585 people to Tibet to support the projects. The number of various projects to support education in Qinghai had reached 134, with a total funding of 670 million yuan.

The cultures of ethnic minorities are protected. By the end of 2015, 9 natural and cultural sites scattered in ethnic minority regions including the Potala Palace had been added to the World Cultural Heritage List. 14 ethnic minority arts including Uygur Muqam of Xinjiang had been added to the UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and another 4 including Qiang New Year Festivals had been added to the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. 10 experimental zones for cultural protection in ethnic minority regions have been established. 479 ethnic minority heritage items and 524 inheritors from ethnic minority groups have been put respectively on the four national representative lists of intangible cultural heritage and the four national lists of representative inheritors of intangible cultural heritage that have been made public. The book series of explanatory notes on ancient books of ethnic minority groups, entitled Synopsis on the General Catalogue of Ancient Books of Ethnic Minority Groups of China, was published in 2014.

The spoken and written languages of ethnic minority groups have been protected and developed. Efforts have been made to promote the regulation, standardization and computerized processing of these languages. Projects have been initiated for the research and formulation of regulations on the transliteration of people's names to Mandarin from Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazakh, Yi and other minority languages. Work has been done on the research and formulation of the table on commonly used Mongolian words, the regulation of translation between Tibetan and Latin, and the standards on determining correct characters and pronunciations in modern Uygur literature language. Databanks on minority languages on the brink of extinction have been set up. The Project on the Protection of Chinese Language Resources has been initiated and implemented. By the end of 2015, 54 ethnic minority groups were using more than 80 spoken languages of their own ethnic groups, and 21 ethnic minority groups were using 29 written languages of their own ethnic groups. Up to 200 radio stations nationwide broadcast in 25 ethnic minority languages. 32 publishing houses of various types publish books in ethnic minority languages. 11 film dubbing centers have been set up throughout the country, using 17 ethnic minority languages and 37 ethnic minority dialects. From 2012 to 2015, they finished the dubbing of a large number of movies into minority languages amounting to more than 3,000 versions.