Coping with a Bad Global Image

Book excerpt: This book assesses the human rights condition in the People's Republic of China during 1993-94, focusing on how abuses have engendered difficulties for Bejing in international relations. It considers changes in the political and legal systems and Communist ideology (more correctly, its demise) in its appraisal. These, the authors contend, are causative factors of human rights abuses and need to be understood to put the human rights situation in its proper perspective. Such matters as crime, forced labor, and executions are examined in detail to deliniate the worst kinds of human rights abuses as well as current trends. Dissidents, religious advocates, and intellectuals are also a focus of attention. Copublished with the East Asia Research Institute.