Educational and Cultural Rights
Chuing Prudence Chou*
I. Preface
The right to education and culture is a fundamental and universal entitlement that is recognized as a prerequisite for the exercise of other human rights. In addition to advancing individual freedom and autonomy, education helps facilitate important social development and cultural enrichment. Millions of children and adults have been deprived of educational and cultural rights, however, due to their poverty and less fortunate status.
The United Nations (UN) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have strived in recent years to exercise their authority in international law to call for worldwide recognition of every person´s right to education and culture. It is hoped that this international effort will inspire more actions against discrimination and isolation in education and culture, which will eventually allow more people to receive better life opportunities. As a result, each government is expected to guarantee the right to education and culture for every citizen through the best possible allocation of political and legal resources. 1
The UN has already established different indices of educational and cultural human rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and several different agreements, declarations, recommendations, frameworks and action plans. 2
For example, Article 26(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes the following request of educators implementing the social order: “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality
and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.＂3
The second United Nations Millennium Development Goal and the World Education Forum of April 2000 both declared that before 2015, every country in the world should implement free and compulsory primary education. Additionally, Articles 13 and 14 of the United Nations´ International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (under UNCESCR) indicated that the most essential right of this century is the right to education.
Government guarantees of education can enhance the protection of other rights. That is, the right to education is not only a fundamental human right but also the basic threshold of achieving other rights, including cultural rights. Whether one is an adult or a child, education is the path out of poverty and gives one the ability to participate in community life. Education is also the means to help women to escape sexual slavery and the young to avoid exploitative child labor. The right to education serves as an important way to enhance the protection of human rights, democracy and the environment and prevent overpopulation.
In addition, the right to education can also preserve joy and self-worth, allowing each individual to engage in a society free from fear and bondage. Hence, in the UN´s words, “all education, whether public or private, formal or non-formal, shall be directed to the human personality's ｀sense of dignity'; it shall ｀enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society'; and it shall promote understanding among all ｀ethnic´groups, as well as nations and racial and religious groups.＂4
In educational human rights, therefore, the foremost matter is that every government must provide equal educational opportunities to each individual citizen. There are four aspects of educational opportunity: availability,
accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability.
First of all, on the primary school level, education must be compulsory and free of charge. When it comes to availability, people of different genders, ethnic groups, and so forth should all have the same opportunity to enter a safe learning environment with potable water, qualified teachers, books, curricula, equipment, computers, and hardware. All of these facilities should be qualitatively and quantitatively sufficient to facilitate learning and instruction within each class and school. Students should not be hindered from attending school due to their residence in remote areas, physical disabilities, economic factors, or family backgrounds. In addition, education must stay up-to-date so students can adapt to a multicultural and changing society.
In secondary education, the four aspects of opportunity must also be present to help integrate it with primary education and lay the foundation for life-long learning and career development.
The provision of a diverse and adjustable curriculum and instructional strategies should be available to meet the needs of each individual. Governments must gradually expand secondary education so until it is free and compulsory to all.
In technical and vocational education, the most important thing is to guarantee students´ rights to future opportunities for education and jobs by nurturing their ability to attain sustainable economic circumstances and social and cultural development. It is essential that school can prepare the young with employable skills, knowledge, and personal qualities so their independence and autonomy in the employment market as well as their productivity will be enhanced. Technical and vocational education must guarantee equality of opportunity so everyone has the same fair shot regardless of gender, ethnicity, or perceived disadvantages such as unemployment, previous withdrawal from school, being a refugee or child of a migrant worker, or physical disability.
the needs of students of different social and cultural backgrounds; offering more adjustable curricula, channels and systems suitable for different learning backgrounds; and adding facilities, such as by setting up distance learning centers. In other words, secondary and higher education should be accessible to students with different learning abilities, especially for those who are less qualified in academic expertise but have other qualifications in life experiences.
The right to fundamental education implies the offering of equal educational opportunity to people from all walks of life in society: not limited to those in the preceding four levels of formal schooling but open to dropouts and others who cannot enroll in school but still have the need to learn. Readily available continuing education opportunities for people of every age and gender allow every individual to fulfill their educational rights.
Moreover, each region should have a suitable school system with basic essentials such as the provision of subsidized tuition, qualified teachers, quality textbooks and curricula from primary to higher education.
The right to educational freedom means endowing parents and guardians with the freedom of knowing their sons and daughters´ equal treatment at school regardless of whether their ethnicity or religious beliefs deviate from the school´s mission statements or its principles in moral and civic education. Any school (public, private, or other) must be free from discrimination and prejudice on its campus and protect freedom of speech as well as religion. Parents have the right to choose their children's schools. Private individuals may establish their own charter schools ranging from preschools to universities.
Another anti-discriminatory educational principle is the creation of post- injury remedial measures to respond to all kinds of differential treatment and differences in standard practices. For example, remedial educational policies should be made for disadvantaged groups in remote areas where educational resources are not sufficient enough, which might cause lower student educational
achievement.
Academic freedom and institutional autonomy should be comprehensively protected, including all professors and staff in higher education who are vulnerable to any political or social pressure. This will allow faculty to have more freedom in pursuing knowledge and truth without fear and interference, which will eventually enhance the transparent circulation of knowledge, academic freedom of speech, and the right of professors to participate in the international scholarly community. Safeguarding university autonomy is the basic threshold of protecting academic freedom; it involves decision-making about power, standards, management, and related matters.
Finally, school discipline must respect the dignity of the individual, value human rights, and eschew public humiliation, illegal rules, and inappropriate punishments. The government should guarantee that every class of school and educational system will have an objective, fair, transparent, effective system and an environment to achieve all the educational goals above. 5
To summarize Articles 13 and 14 of the United Nations´ International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, to achieve the goal of providing every person the education to which he or she is entitled, each country should implement the following items: 6
1. Primary education should be compulsory and available free to all.
2. Secondary education of every form, including technical and vocational education, should be available to all by every appropriate means.
3. Higher education should be equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and higher education free of tuition should be gradually introduced.
4. All those who have not received or fulfilled their basic right to primary education should be encouraged to do so, and have opportunities available to them, to the utmost level the government can provide.
5. School systems of all levels should be actively developed. Fellowship systems should be established. Material conditions for teachers should be continuously improved.
6. Every country must respect parents´ and legal guardians´ right to select non-governmental schools for their children so long as the schools conform to state educational standards. They must also respect the freedom of such schools to offer religious and moral education according to the beliefs which these parents wish to nurture in their children.
The principal spheres of this report on educational human rights are primary, secondary, and higher education. Its standard for assessing human rights is whether students at all levels enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment in the learning process regardless of their social background, such that they can consequently receive equal employment opportunities after graduation.
With respect to cultural human rights, according to Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, every country should “recognize the right of everyone: (a) to take part in cultural life; (b) to enjoy benefits of any scientific progress and its applications; (c) to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he/she is the author.＂
The UN's Covenant of Civil and Political Rights states that minority groups should be protected so they can enjoy and preserve their own culture. Under the international law of the time (1966), cultural human rights were always discussed from the perspective of protection and promotion. Today, with technology and science holding sway, religious freedom can be seen as the basis of protecting human dignity.
The pursuit of a cultural identity for a nation, people, or society amidst the rising tide of economic globalization, which is causing the loss of local culture in many places, with certain traditions no longer being passed on from one generation to the next, is a struggle against a cultural vacuum.
Hence, in international law, where human rights are being increasingly emphasized, countries are providing greater defense for indigenous people while reasserting their sovereignty. Minorities are refusing to be discriminated against and isolated again, and from the protection for ethnic consciousness, self-determination and autonomy, they are increasingly calling for governments to provide legal protection of their cultural heritage, including the use of their native languages. 7
From these examples, one can see that full protection of cultural human rights requires the guarantee of the freedom prerequisite to cultural development. After all, cultural exchanges and mutual understanding will allow people to respect different types of civilization and thus coexist with each other. 8
II. Educational Human Rights
(A) Preschool and Primary Education
Preschool refers to education before primary school, including kindergarten and unofficial education such as homeschooling. Primary education refers to the first six years of compulsory education in elementary or primary school in China.
1. Excessive Tuition Fees
(1) School Choice Fees
Arbitrary tuition fees have been a longstanding source of criticism in every level of mainland Chinese education, with variations in “school choice fees＂ most frequently derided. The national and local governments have recently placed bans on excessive fees of this kind, but schools everywhere and at every level have found unusual pretexts to circumvent these restrictions. For example, some preschools have established specialized, special interest, and experimental classes and charged parents fees for admitting their children. 9 This violates
China's Education Law, which states that the nation should not use any mandatory or covert means to force students to buy school materials. Schools should not encourage students to purchase materials from any free agent services provided in their name and then make a profit out of those purchases.10
(2) Grant Fraud
In addition, Chinese primary schools have seen the rise of grant fraud. As early as 2007 in Anhui Province, staff members who had not worked as teachers for a long period of time were still receiving teachers´ salaries fraudulently. Later, in Hunan Province, another scandal broke out when it was found that over 100 teachers were receiving illegal excessive subsidies. Not long before in Anhui, it was discovered that some schools in agricultural villages had overstated their attendance by one to two hundred students. 11 In Shaanxi Province, a
primary school principal overstated the attendance of his school to receive a larger subsidy for custard.12
In Hubei Province, most of the teachers in a certain school were involved in grant fraud.13
This kind of behavior undoubtedly stretches already-scarce resources for basic education even thinner. It indirectly crowds out room to pay for and admit students in other institutions, dilutes their resources, and reduces their chance to receive a fair education.
2. Insufficient Kindergarten Resources
(1) High tuition due to shortage of public kindergartens
Statistics indicate that at the end of 2011, enrollment in Guangdong Province kindergartens was less than 90 percent. The rate was still lower for public kindergartens. Why? With entrance examinations forbidden, public kindergartens have by and large used “school choice fees＂, “ sponsorship fees＂, and “placeholder fees＂to filter out students. The lower-quality public kindergartens charge 20-30,000 RMB, while the top-class schools charge as much as 60,000
RMB.14
The imbalance of school supply and community demand has led the government to water down its standards by legalizing some undocumented private kindergartens. These schools´ teacher and resource quality do not compare to those of public and well-established private schools, however.
Given the systemic limits on enrollment, private kindergartens´ tuition fees have risen steadily, and fee standards have become difficult to control. Preschool education seems to be drifting further and further from advancing the public welfare. These high charges are straining family budgets; monthly tuition takes up as much as half a blue-collar family's pay.15 Families must accept this
unreasonable system, however, to get their children into class. Entering a public kindergarten has increasingly become a question of“who your father is, and how much is in your wallet,＂ a game played with money and personal connections.16
(2) Unqualified Teachers
Kindergartens are now difficult to enter and difficult to pay for, yet many of their teachers are unqualified. According to a China National Radio report, the phenomenon of undocumented teachers is widespread. In Zhejiang at the end of October 2012, the case of a female teacher abusing a student attracted a great deal of attention,17 not only because of her misconduct, but also because it raised
the issue of a lack of qualified teachers: the provincial education department announced that about 40 percent of Zhejiang's kindergarten teachers, or about 40,000 educators, were not certified. The Shandong Provincial Education Department surveyed 194 kindergartens in 17 cities and found that 53 percent of the teachers and 17 percent of the principals did not have certification for their posts from the Ministry of Education.18
The distribution of educational resources has been uneven for years. Recently, however, governments at every level have worked to rectify that. Over the last two years, the Guangzhou government has done more to build up kindergartens, with over 700 inclusive non-governmental kindergartens receiving
grants to help children with family difficulties get education. 19 The Shandong
Provincial Price Bureau, Department of Education, and Department of Finance jointly promulgated a notice on the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Finance's interim measures to manage kindergarten tuition payments as a part of national development reform. The agencies clearly defined tuition standards in order to keep kindergartens from arbitrarily deciding their own fees.20
These provisions show that governments on every level are interested in intervening to adjust the long-term supply and demand imbalance and inappropriate tuition fees of public and private kindergartens to improve the public welfare with respect to preschool education.
To calm parental anxiety about the suitability of the country's teachers and the students´ right to receive a good education, the government must step forward and develop provisions to encourage the development of excellent, qualified kindergarten educators and strictly control kindergarten employment. The results of the policies the government is currently implementing cannot yet be evaluated.
3. Age-Inappropriate Curricular Demands on Students
The most modern kindergarten boarding schools in China, which best adhere to international standards, often give their students coursework more appropriate for primary school students. This early indoctrination turns preschool into elementary school and is known as teaching beyond a student's grade level. Since students cannot be made to age faster, it is possible such methods could backfire by causing burnout. The seriousness of this problem is outlined below.
According to media reports, ten publicly recognized primary schools around China had entrance exams. They included math problems featuring subtraction and even English-language interviews.21 The questions asked of the 6-year olds
in these interviews go far beyond the knowledge they should be expected to have. This negatively impacts their emotional development and harms students
with an age-appropriate education by putting them at a relative disadvantage. Excessive education is related to excessive tuition fees. A case in Henan Province shows that more than a few kindergartens give their teachers primary school materials in advance. And more than a few offer specialized, special interest, and experimental classes, then take supplementary resource and teacher payments from parents.22
This author believes these problems may harm each area government's ability to deliver on its guarantees of compulsory and age-appropriate education. Some experts indicate that one of the cruxes of turning kindergartens into quasi- primary schools is that the time spent teaching Pinyin Romanization in the first grade of actual primary school has been decreased. “Pinyin education＂ has been truncated into “Pinyin review,＂ forcing other parents to demand their own children's kindergartens have Pinyin reading and writing practice, as well.23
In order to prevent such problems, the Ministry of Education has reportedly promulgated a guidebook for teaching children ages 3-6. It stipulates what children in three age levels—3-4, 4-5, and 5-6—should know at the end of the school year, what they are able to do, and to what level of development they can more or less progress to.24 The Henan Provincial Government promulgated trial/
interim measures for kindergarten management which stipulated that preschools should stop providing elementary school-level education; preschool education should fundamentally take the form of games; there should not be experimental classes or special classes with special tuition charges; and special group activities for children with participation fees should not make a profit.25
Although governments on every level are beginning to understand the seriousness of the problem, as long as deep-rooted cultural attitudes captured in sayings like “wanting your son to become a dragon and your daughter a phoenix＂; “only studying is valuable; everything else is beneath contempt＂; and “don't let your child lose at the starting line＂ are not changed, this problem will be difficult to resolve. It harms age-appropriate growth for students and
jeopardizes equality of educational opportunity for children of low-income families.
4. Inappropriate Disciplinary Methods
Article 29 of the Compulsory Education Law of the People's Republic of China states: “Teachers shall respect the personalities of students. No teacher shall discriminate against any student, or use corporal punishment or corporal punishment in disguise on any student, or commit any other act that may insult the personal dignity of any student, or infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of any student.＂26
In reality, cases of students suffering lasting physical or emotional damage because of corporal punishment or another inappropriate method of classroom management continue. For example, a Shanghai elementary school teacher damaged a nine-year old student's cornea during a dispute with him by throwing a pen at him while reprimanding him. 27 In Jiangsu Province, a
teacher accidentally tore a student's ear.28 In a Guangzhou elementary school, a
teacher was accused of giving a female class cadre member the right to beat male students´ derrieres with a ruler, causing serious injury to many of them.29
According to the PRC's Law of the Protection of Minors,“teaching and administrative staff in schools and kindergartens shall respect the personal dignity of the minors, and may not enforce corporal punishment or corporal punishment in disguised forms, or any other act that humiliates the personal dignity of minors…Where teaching and administrative staff in schools, nurseries, or kindergartens subject minor students or children to corporal punishment or corporal punishment in disguised forms, and if the circumstances are serious, disciplinary sanctions shall be given by their units or the authorities at higher levels.＂30
Chinese law already expressly prohibits corporal punishment, but such punishment and other kinds of inappropriate discipline are still prevalent. This
shows that public power in China does not yet protect the physical and emotional health of minors. In addition, the victims cannot smoothly continue their studies, which damages their right to education.
5. Inequality of Opportunity for Rural and Migrant Students
The PRC rules a vast expanse of territory, and there is a pronounced development gap between rural and urban areas. With the growth of the capitalist economy in recent years, this divide has expanded in recent years, harming students´right to educational equality. Here are a few examples to illustrate the point.
In poor rural elementary schools, the vast majority of students suffer from shortages in musical, physical, and artistic education equipment. Studies indicate that 43% of students do not have art supplies, while 13.1% have only sketchbooks. Four fifths of students do not have musical instruments, while 10% have only harmonicas and flutes.
Moreover, the form and content of students´ musical, physical, and artistic education are very poor. Art class basically consists of the teacher drawing a picture on the blackboard and the students copying it. Music class means learning to sing pop songs. P.E. is taking the class outside to run together. 30 Under the
name of “work study,＂ students in Yifu Elementary School in southern Shaanxi had their class canceled so they could pick tea leaves for a factory. They worked from 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. and collected 5 kilograms of leaves, for which they received meager payment. The school used the proceeds to improve teachers´ benefits. 31 This shows that the educational rights of students in poor areas are
not sufficiently protected.
In addition, the children of migrant workers from rural areas face discrimination. China's migrant population is projected to exceed 120 million people. As many as 9.3% of the children who come to the city with their parents are not in school; close to a million school-age children cannot enroll in school in
a timely manner.
The main reason for this problem is China's hukou (household registration) system, which confers differing rights to urban and rural citizens, essentially putting them in different social classes, with the latter able to find work in the city but confined to live as the new urban poor.32
Children from rural provinces are barred from entering urban public schools; they must enter schools specifically opened to migrant children. Yet these schools are often closed to make way for urban development.
Migrant workers are contributing to the rise of China's economy, and their children should be properly cared for and treated fairly.33 Yet they cannot
enjoy the same education as children born in the city because their household registration cannot be changed.
(B) Secondary Education
This category includes junior high and high schools, covering six years of education generally given from ages 12 to 18. The issues which will be discussed include excessive tuition fees, insufficient gender education, and funding misdistribution.
1. Excessive Tuition Fees
Tuition charges are disordered at every level of Chinese education. Relevant agencies are promulgating countermeasures, but their effects are limited. For example, several Chongqing City secondary schools not only charge tens of thousands of RMB in “school choice fees＂ but also stipulate that any admitted student who decides not to attend the school and asks for that fee to be refunded
must give up a percentage of that amount as a “handling fee＂, which could run in excess of 10,000 RMB.34 Under this pretense, a Banan District secondary
school´s cancellation fee is 30 percent of the school choice fee.35 According to
the fee is paid.36 These fees could potentially run afoul of the law, but because
the distribution of educational resources is very unequal all over China, to get their children into a good school, parents can only accept schools´ unreasonable demands. Supervisory authorities can also use the parents´ signatures on the consent forms to skirt legal action.37
Excessive fees for remedial education are also assessed. In Anyuan Secondary School of Ganzhou City, Shaanxi Province, remedial, uniform, and student fees add up to 1,700 RMB per person. This violates the Education Law's stipulation that service and substitution payments must be free and voluntary for students and must not be charged together with administrative fees. It also violates policies forbidding remedial education fees.
In Xuzhuang Secondary School, Dali County, Weinan City, Shaanxi Province, six teachers at registration time asked students to come to their bookstore and buy school supplies in bulk, at a cost of 30 RMB per student. The Dali County Board of Education allows schools to extend and advertise student insurance and allows insurance companies to do business on school grounds. The school provides the students collective insurance, but it does not give them a guarantee slip or receipt. This violates the Education Law, which stipulates that when service fees are obtained or supplementary materials bought in bulk, students´ free will must be respected, and compulsory or covert fee charges are forbidden.
In First Secondary School, Tumed Right Banner, Baotou City, Inner Mongola, night remedial classes were planned for first-year high school students, and 422 RMB were charged from every student. However, the Ministry of Education's guidance directive on primary and secondary school management prohibits these schools from organizing collective remedial classes and charge fees for them. This type of behavior violates bans on charging money for remedial classes.38
Guanqiao Secondary School, Anxi County, Fujian Province illegally signed a wholesale contract with Fengcheng Hefeng Culture Products establishing that its affiliated elementary school would from 2011 buy subscriptions of its magazine Education Weekly. Through March 2012, the school had its over 900 elementary school students read Education Weekly three times, with each student paying 32 RMB. Fengcheng paid the school back by donating it 50,000 RMB and establishing radio facilities there in the run-up to its 90th anniversary.
Xinzhou Teachers College, Shanxi Province collected tuition in advance from students enrolled for their incoming class who were from outside Shanxi Province and canceled the admissions of those who did not pay on time. 39
Natives of Shanxi Province received their notification of admission by telephone together with a request to come to school early to pay tuition and subsequently receive their notice of admission.40
In this case of out-of-control tuition collection, students´enrollment was based on whether or not they made an improper payment. This was not only a violation of Chinese education law but also a serious infringement upon the students´right to receive education.
2. Tuition Reform Measures for Each Level of Education
Every level of government has put forward response and improvement measures to address the tuition fee problem. To take action against illegal and excessive fee collection for learning materials, Fujian, Beijing, and Shanxi's city governments have implemented the following policies.
Starting in the fall of 2012, Fujian's government has intervened to control the prices of major educational materials. Under this standard, the prices of most of these materials fell 40-50%, saving provincial students an estimated 287 million RMB per year.41
The Beijing Municipal Education Commission established that henceforth, primary and secondary schools may not uniformly recommend certain brands´
school supplies, and they should provide all class exercise, summer and winter vacation homework, exam papers, and review materials free of charge, with no extra payments required.42
The Shanxi Ministry of Education strictly forbids provincial primary and secondary schools from marketing or mandating purchases of educational materials. 43 Economically developed areas of the province must offer course
materials to economically disadvantaged families for free. Each school must, according to reasonable wishes of students and principles of student instruction, purchase supplementary materials for students free of charge.44
Beijing and Shanxi also crafted policies in 2012 in response to compulsory schools illegally administering entrance exams and charging registration, testing, and school choice fees. 45 Beijing prohibited schools from connecting
any payments or donations to admissions or matriculation. All donations would henceforth be received by a city or district government-determined educational administration department for unified audit. The regulations stipulated that donors give all their gifts to that level of government for inclusion in its budgeting. Donations for primary and secondary school facility improvements must be included in fixed asset management by all higher-level educational authorities and implemented according to their procedures.46 Shanxi, meanwhile,
forbade the organization of entrance examinations on that level of education and denied regional governments and related groups and schools the ability to connect donations to admissions.
From this we can see that although tuition abuse is a serious problem in mainland China, governments are taking steps to address it. Besides stricter scrutiny of school fees, free school materials are being given to children in compulsory education in many areas. From the perspective of educational human rights, wiping out such fees is a major target for providing universal education. The government countermeasures outlined above are worthy of praise. However, truly poor districts and areas are not providing any measures to help finance
education, and this is often where tuition fees are the worst. Children there are seriously hampered in their efforts to receive the education they deserve.
3. Insufficient Gender Equity Education
Sex education is still insufficient in mainland China. Related policies have been improving for 20 years, but implementation has always been sorely lacking.
47 Besides a lack of qualified teachers and appropriate class resources, under
the country's exam-oriented system, admissions to the next level reign supreme, so adolescent sex education is considered useless and isn't written into in many curricula. Here are some examples of disdain for gendered.
With college entrance examinations soon to begin, one Hangzhou secondary school ordered that male and female students should not be alone together, as any “romance＂ would negatively affect their exam scores. Furthermore, they could be no closer to each other than 50 centimeters; could not eat at the same table; and could not be on campus in pairs. 48 These rules backfired by preventing
students from discussing coursework and studying together, damaging their right to education in the name of preventing romance.
In addition, there are students who are forced to have their hair cut so they will concentrate on schoolwork, affecting their health and development. 49 One
female student in Shandong leapt from a building in response to a hairstyle ban, ending her own life.50
These inappropriate policies display schools robbing students of their personal freedom. Students who do not follow these policies are fined, have their hair cut, are glared at by teachers, administrators, and other students, or are even forbidden from coming to school and learning. Furthermore, some secondary schools force students who do not obey their rules to keep short hair to stop attending night study sessions. In order to carry out hairstyle policies, they also take photos of “model students＂ and recommend their hairstyles to other students.51
4. Funding in Disadvantaged Areas
In recent years, to help ameliorate the serious educational resource shortfall in western regions, the Chinese government has provided scholarships to excellent students from poor families. For example, since 2000, the “Western Development Project＂ has helped 100 high-performing high school students from economically disadvantaged families and 80 poor students who have tested into high-level universities to pay for their education. Each student receives 3000- 5000 RMB annually, with greater gifts given to those with greater needs and special attention given to members of ethnic minorities.52
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region extended its free textbooks program to benefit 2.37 million students in primary and secondary schools.53
Starting in the fall of 2012, the national scholarship program was expanded to offer free secondary- and tertiary-level vocational education. Priority is given to those specializing in agriculture and those from disadvantaged families. All students in agricultural villages and townships are now eligible, as are urban students specializing in agriculture or hailing from disadvantaged families. Student allocations were divided into two classes. Students from secondary vocational schools in the 11 struggling districts of the Liupanshan area of Ningxia and Gansu, as well as Tibet and the ethnic Tibetan regions of four other provinces (Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Gansu), are all eligible for this scholarship.54
The Hainan Provincial Party Committee and Government have invested in vocational education for years, with about 5,528,000,000 RMB invested since 2007. Since 2006, the number of secondary vocational schools has increased from 81 to 100, and the number of students at these schools has more than doubled, from 78,000 to 174,000. Low-income students specializing in agriculture are all able to attend tertiary vocational school free of charge as of 2012. All higher vocational education will be free beginning in 2013.
To serve distant areas, Tsinghua University has in recent years sent two thousand volunteers to 14 regions, including Qinghai, Tibet, Guizhou, and Xinjiang, to teach. This student organization was formed five years ago and has already recruited over 400 different students and volunteers in 34 echelons to go to primary and secondary schools in the west's nine provinces and 17 areas and provide educational services.55
The above programs show that the government has recently devoted effort to giving students in the disadvantaged west the education they deserve, but it is yet to be seen whether these policies will be implemented and achieve their intended results, and there is room for greater effort.56
(C) Higher Education
Higher education covers college, university, and graduate education. Its major issues in 2012 can be divided into four parts: (1) professorial violation of academic ethics, (2) professorial neglect of teaching quality, (3) maldistribution of resources, and (4) the increasingly disadvantaged position of female students.
The first two issues can be attributed to the rising influence of worldwide university rankings in China. Since these rankings are largely based on academic papers produced by university faculty, professors are pressured to spend ever more time on their research and give secondary importance to teaching and social concerns. Worse still, several teachers have been caught for plagiarism, even for plagiarizing their students´ work, damaging both the quality of higher education and their universities´reputation. There were also a number of negative reports in 2012 about campus learning environments being poor, creating ill effects for students´education and educational rights.
1. Violation of Academic Ethics
Both professors and students are guilty of misconduct. Professors plagiarize academic papers and published works, while students pay others to write papers
for them, a problem that is growing worse by the day.
Such papers and dissertations are one of the major factors determining school distribution of scholarships and the selection of personnel for employment. The existence of the paper ghostwriting problem for even a single day makes it impossible for higher education to attain the goal of being fair and open to all on the basis of each person's achievements.
On the teachers´ side, in March 2012, a Luoyang City Intermediate People's Court ruled that Zhang Li, a university professor of physical education, had plagiarized the graduation thesis of a Beijing Sport University undergraduate. She was ordered to cease and desist her rights violations and fined 1000 RMB.57
The chair of the Department of Industrial Design at the Hubei University of Technology School of Art and Design was found by his school to have plagiarized his Red Dot Design-award winning project from a student graduation project.58
With respect to student fraud, there are already over 800 websites in mainland China catering to students who want to have their theses written for them. One, “China Thesis Download Center＂, publicly announces: “an undergraduate thesis costs 1500 RMB, a graduate thesis 4000. For a doctoral thesis, please call us by telephone for consultation.＂59 Many of the contributors
to these sites are current master's and doctoral students. The sites advertise the strength of their teams´ abilities and market aggressively to gain clients.
The Communist Party's Internet controls do not yet extend to these websites, however. 60 Neither the Education Code, nor the Copyright Law, nor
the Intellectual Property Law clearly prohibits the purchase and sale of theses. Universities can discipline their own students according to their policies, but no government agency has the standing to investigate or punish the writers, sellers, or intermediaries of these papers, which are seriously affecting academic discipline.61
2. University Neglect of Quality of Instruction
Universities throughout the greater Chinese community are chasing rankings, which is leading them to overemphasize research and underemphasize teaching. Professors neglect their classes, harming the students´ right to education.
This has instigated fervent discussion on the mainland. Professors have admitted they devote no more than 20% of their efforts to their students, saying they are too busy with lecturing on and off campus and aiming for lecturing and research awards. They may publish as many works as they like, but these publications will not greatly influence their teaching.62
While there are more than a few professors who are great teachers and great researchers at the same time, evaluations place the most emphasis on quantity of publications, leading people to put less and less focus on teaching, making professors less willing to teach undergraduates. The following reasons can also be named: (1) Professors are too busy: they have too many graduate students and social lectures and too much research responsibility. (2) Mistaken government policy: evaluations overemphasize research and underemphasize teaching. (3) Distorted values: compensation for teaching does not compare to that for research or giving outside lectures.
For this reason, the Ministry of Education has now expressly stipulated that professors must teach undergraduate students in their department, or else their employment will be terminated. 63 Wuhan University has invested 215
million RMB to address its poor undergraduate education, stipulating that every professor, including those on the top level, must teach undergraduate classes.64
These moves show that the Chinese academy is beginning to address its undergraduate education problem. Unless the professorial evaluation system changes, however, these cases will continue to occur because the incentives are the same. This state of affairs hurts students´ right to education.
3. Maldistribution of Resources
Because educational resources are not evenly distributed, universities in economically disadvantaged areas lag far behind their urban counterparts, be it in professorial qualifications or hardware and facilities. Students in these areas have a truly low probability of testing into China's major universities, not to mention the top tier of Beijing and Tsinghua Universities.
Research indicates that rural students have a much lower chance than urban students of matriculating to universities. The former have a slightly lower chance than the latter of getting into a provincial/area university and a higher chance of matriculating to a provincial/area vocational institute. An urban student has 310% the chance of matriculating to a major university that a rural student has, as well as a 140% better chance of making a general undergraduate school. The urbanite has 67% the chance of a rural student of going to a technical and vocational college. The higher the university's prestige, the lower the probability that a rural student can go there. From 1995-2005, scions of the social and governmental elite made up 23.5 percent of university students, while children of first-tier industrial producers (this tier includes farming, fishing, forestry, and animal husbandry) took only 2.3% of places in college.65
Faced with the yawning urban-rural development gap and unfair distribution of resources, at the end of April 2012, five national government agencies—the Ministry of Education, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and State Council Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development— jointly published a plan for recruiting students from impoverished areas, identifying 680 counties in 21 regions to support. Institutes of higher education participating in this plan were to increase opportunities for aspiring students of agricultural, forestry, water conservation, mining, teaching, and medicine from these regions to attend their schools. 66 This program seems certain to help these disadvantaged students, but
its results must be continuously studied.
4. Discrimination Against Female Students
As mentioned above, China´s gender education is insufficient. This is also true in higher education. Here are some examples:
(1) Uniform Policies and Hairstyle Restrictions
Southern Women's College, in response to past students wearing clothing it considered overly revealing in public, which it considered bad for its male teachers and guests, instituted the following policy: “Students must display a dignified demeanor and civilized conduct. They must dress neatly, decently, and elegantly. They may not wear shoulderless tops, sandals, or strap or slip dresses to class or in public. They should not wear jewelry inappropriate for students. They should behave decently toward men in public.＂ 67 These rules inspired
heated debate among the students, with some saying they did not understand.68
South China Normal University has had hairstyle restrictions for years. In 2012, after new students were told they had to get bowl cuts, students held a vote on the question online and called for the school to halt this “inhuman＂ rule. Close to 80 percent of voting students declared they opposed the rule.69 Yet on
the first day of school, some students were still notified they would be forced to cut their hair.
(2) Double Standards for Entrance Examinations
When the national university entrance examination results were announced, many university departments set different minimum scores for male and female students because the latter scored higher than the former on average. For military and police academies and other universities recruiting national security students, the gap topped 40 points in some cases. The China University of Political Science and Law science department accepted only women scoring 632 points or higher and men scoring 588 points or higher, a difference of 44. The Chinese People's Armed Police Forces Academy science department set its cutoff at 620
for women and 585 for men, a 35-point gap.
Some major non-security universities and departments have gotten in on the act, as well. The humanities department of Beijing Foreign Studies University set its cutoff for women 14 points higher than its cutoff for men, and the science department made the difference one point greater. 70 When Renmin University
varied its cutoff by department for the first time, it gave men a lower standard to enter its humanities department: they would need 601 points, women 614.71
For South China University of Technology's science department, the gap was 37 points: 622 for women and 585 for men.72
One reason for this discrepancy is that women are considered to have natural advantages in languages and performing arts. In several departments of foreign languages, women already make up over 70% of students. In defense, military, and police schools, however, the reasoning is that these positions are traditionally male-dominated, so women would be at a disadvantage in the employment market after graduation.73
This displays a clear double standard. In traditionally female-dominated fields like language, broadcasting, and performance, male enrollment quotas are established to protect “gender equality.＂ On the other hand, in fields where women are traditionally at a disadvantage, like national defense, the military, and the police force, “women aren´t welcome＂ and “women would have trouble finding work, so they should go into another field＂ are given as excuses to deny women the rewards they deserve for their hard work.
The Ministry of Education announced in a 2006 provision that without its permission, institutions of higher education may not set gender ratios for admissions. 74 Although this law is laudable, it has not been strictly enforced,
and several universities have set different admissions thresholds for people of different genders. This is undeniably harmful to women's education.
In a health-care related department of one Hunan institute of higher education, female students were forced to strip for an examination. Their male professor ordered many female students to expose their private parts and participate in a breast and inguinal lymph nodes checkup. 75 During the test,
the male professor even touched the students´privates, causing them great psychological damage.76
The test was a part of the university syllabus. Called “rigorous training to strengthen bedside nursing operations,＂ there were 21 potential items for inspection in this lesson, with each student drawing one by lot. The students were required to expose their breasts for chest and heart examinations; for the inguinal lymph node tests, they had to take off their skirts or pants and expose their groins. During this testing, co-organized by two examining professors, two students would make a group, with each one inspecting the other. 77 This
apparently made the nudity legal.
The controversy in this case was that during this test, instead of drawing lots as called for by the syllabus, the professors decided for themselves which items would be checked. When the students did not immediately communicate to the teachers that their rights were being infringed upon, they continued to experience apparent sexual harassment during the test.
This case showed that both gender relations and student-teacher relations in Chinese universities are unequal. Women's rights, minds, and bodies were damaged.
III. Cultural Human Rights
(A) Religious and Ethnic Cultural Issues
Communist Party has infringed upon Tibetans and believers of Falun Gong, Islam, and Christianity numerous times, and circumstances are even worsening. The Party has long acted to strictly control well-organized religions with strong membership, and it has attempted to manage the five state-approved religions (Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and Taoism) itself to better facilitate its command over religious activities.78
The Party's attitude toward all religious organizations has hardened over the years, especially during leadership changes. With the 18th National Congress of the
Communist Party taking place in 2012, control over approved religious became very tight, and large-scale suppression campaigns were orchestrated against unapproved faiths like Falun Gong. The Guangzhou government had citizens sign cards promising they would not participate in cults. Beijing disseminated a proposal of the same kind to its citizens. Chongqing called a meeting of its department of the interior and then held a crackdown on Falun Gong members in advance of and until the end of the Party Congress.79
The following are cultural human rights issues of note in 2012:
1. Falun Gong
The Chinese government's treatment on Falun Gong has in recent years exposed its religious and cultural human rights violations most visibly. According to the Epoch Times, many mainland Chinese suffered persecution from the government from February 20 to March 4 of 2012. Here are the most well-known cases:
Dalian Ocean University associate professor Liu Rong-hua was sent to a forced labor camp by the Party for two years for practicing the faith. After her release, in September 2011, she was sentenced by the Party again. Her parents appealed for her everywhere but had nowhere to turn.
At least five Falun Gong members in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, including Liu Jian-jun, Wang Feng-yi, Gao Yu-qin, and Yang Gui-qin, were
illegally apprehended at the end of February 2012 by seven or eight public security personnel offering no identification. The police ransacked their living quarters to seize Liu´s Falun Gong-related books, printers, and notebook computer, along with 40,000 RMB and other possessions. Liu is now on a hunger strike, and Gao and Yang are being held in the Qiaodong District brainwashing center.80
2. Tibetan Ethnic and Religious Issues
Tibet is very tense at the moment. The famous Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser is forbidden from going to the Dutch Embassy to receive the Prince Claus Award which she won in 2011. The prize is co-sponsored by the Dutch foreign ministry. According to the Voice of America, the Prince Claus Fund called her a courageous Tibetan writer who is actively committed to Tibetan autonomy, liberty, and development. Yet the Ministry of State Security has ordered her not to go anywhere without its permission. The fund director was himself denied a visa to China, so he could not go to Beijing herself to give the prize, either.81
In March 2012, an 18-year old man who identified himself as Dorje burned himself alive in Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, a part of Sichuan Province and historically a part of the Tibetan region of Amdo. While dying, Dorje called for Tibetan freedom and protested the Chinese government's occupation.
Since March 2011, many Tibetans have used self-immolation to fight for their“basic human rights as Tibetan people.＂ In the year following that month, 26 Tibetans burned themselves alive while calling for the return of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan freedom.82
In response, the Communist Party began to strengthen its reeducation campaigns in the region, closing temples for as long as half a year.83 Since the
monk Tapey´s 2009 self-immolation in Ngawa, military and police stationed in Tibet have equipped themselves with fire extinguishers, with up to two of every
five people in a patrol carrying them.84
Lhasa is holy ground for Tibetans. More than a few have come from other provinces to self-immolate there. This has given the Chinese reason to expel Tibetans who are not native to the city. Many have exposed the double standard online: all Kang people without a temporary residence permit have been ordered to leave the city, while Han and other groups can stay without these permits.
Tibetans now say Tibet is the most inconvenient place for them to live, and they periodically face inspections. Han and other people, however, can freely enter and exit and live in Lhasa. 85 This is proof that Tibetans are living under
apartheid.86
Given the antagonism and conflicts in Tibet, the Chinese government has begun to forbid foreigners to travel or participate in traditional religious ceremonies there. One forbidden time to visit is the Saga Dawa Festival, a celebration of the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha (known as “the Buddha＂ in the West) which takes place in the fourth month of Tibet's traditional calendar (which begins in February or March each year). Traditionally, this season attracts a great number of travelers to the region, but in both 2011 and 2012 the borders were shut to foreigners at this time, as they were during other religious festivals and times of unrest. 87 These policies deny even foreigners
fundamental cultural human rights.
These cases reveal that Woeser was forbidden from receiving her award because she has long worked for Tibetan autonomy and development and fought for religious freedom there. Tibetan self-immolations are part of the struggle for human rights. Because Tibet has historically had a theocracy, the person Tibetans consider the reincarnation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara, the Dalai Lama, is a spiritual leader governing in exile. This state of affairs greatly affects Tibetans´ state of mind. China has long seen the Dalai Lama as a threat to territorial integrity. Apart from violating Tibetan independence advocates´
human rights, the Communist Party is not respecting the Tibetan people's cultural human rights.
According to statistics, what the great majority of Tibetans are fighting for is the political human right to a high level of self-rule and the cultural human rights to practice the Tibetan Buddhist faith and venerate the Dalai Lama, which are part of their right as a people to preserve their culture. Hence, what the Communist Party calls “ethnic separatism＂ is actually the Tibetan pursuit of the universal values and fundamental human rights of religious freedom, equality, and democracy.
3. Christian Religious Issues
Since 1949, the mainland Chinese government has been officially atheist, and its basic policies on religion have been unchanged until today, over 30 years after the Cultural Revolution ended. While every religion has its own corresponding official state organization, this undoubtedly places religion under the scope of politics. Under China's policy of having a state-approved association and conference for each church, Catholics, for example, are under the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church in China. Without papal approval, they have modified many traditional rites and selected their own clergy.
In 2012, Shanghai auxiliary bishop Ma Da-qin was removed from his post by the government and put under house arrest. Because China is officially atheist and pragmatic, the state sees all religions as external forces seeking to intervene in internal politics. In its eyes, it is protecting the dignity and autonomy of the country at all costs. The reason Ma lost all communication with the outside world, the Wall Street Journal reported, is that he announced his intent to resign from the Patriotic Catholic Association to focus more on ministry.88
The Party method of making religion submit to the government violates not only international standards but also the stipulation in the Chinese constitution
itself that the nation's people have the right to freedom of religion. Article 37 states that “the freedom of person of citizens of the People's Republic of China is inviolable…unlawful deprivation or restriction of citizens´ freedom of person by detention or other means is prohibited.＂ Bishop Ma Da-qin, while pursuing the freedom to better practice his faith, instead was deprived of his personal freedom.89
The pressure on Protestant churches on the mainland is equally unstinting. For example, Christian meetings in private residences of Beijing have been raided and pastors taken into custody.
State-approved churches, Protestant and Catholic alike, must all hang the following banner: “Love the Lord; Love Your Country.＂ The national government appoints church personnel and approves all expansion projects. 90
4. Xinjiang Ethnic and Religious Issues
Likewise, the Islamic religion of the people of Xinjiang is seen as taboo by Party authorities, which frequently consider expressions of faith to be connected to “foreign ｀East Turkistan independence´ forces.＂ (East Turkistan is a separatist name for the region.) The Communist Party frequently uses “the possibility or intent of secession＂ as a reason to infringe upon the political and cultural rights of the people of Xinjiang. Many aspects of party control over religious life there have drawn criticism from abroad.
In 2012, a house mosque in Urumqi called “Children's Summer Quran School＂ was shut down by the government, with seven teachers arrested. The principal, teachers, and parents were questioned, and the community's gathering place was shuttered. Other house mosques in the area have suffered similar harassment.91
In February and March of the same year, each Xinjiang governmental organization demanded its members sign a“national civil servants´ pledge to put an end to religious belief, a “pledge not to participate in religious activities,＂
and the like, guaranteeing that they would not have faith, would not evangelize, would not participate in religious activities, and would not wear religious clothing. Civil servants found to have religious beliefs or act on them would have their education declared invalid, required to stop working, have their wages suspended, or be removed from the civil service. 92
According to an Agence France-Presse report, nine Uyghurs were sentenced to between 7 and 10 years in prison for holding extreme religious beliefs and holding unsanctioned religious activities. The World Uyghur Congress declared that these decisions did not follow basic legal procedures and were fabricated to produce the result the government wanted. It also called the ruling political persecution of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, most of whom believe in Islam.93
Although this case provides no damning evidence, it is a sign that politics affect judicial rulings. With the severe popular and religious conflicts between Han and Uyghur people especially severe at the moment, the Communist authorities should treat cases like this more cautiously, asking for clarifications from outside sources in a timely fashion, in order to lower tensions.
(B) Internet and Book Circulation Issues
The circulation of published works and Internet news is an important index of a country's cultural human rights regime. The following is an analysis of the Communist Party's online information blockade and censorship of publications.
1. Book and Periodical Circulation
On March 1, 2012, Hong Kong's New Century Press planned to release a new book by former Central Party School professor Du Guang titled Return
to Democracy – Discussing 13 Problems with National People's Congress Chairman Wu Bang-guo. To its surprise, the Communist Party banned the book
before it could go on the shelves.
socialism with Chinese characteristics and “five noes,＂ meaning five reforms that cannot be undertaken (no multi-party election; no diversification of guiding principles, no separation of powers, no federal system, and no privatization). The book challenges sensitive issues which have emerged since the opening of the country such as monopoly and tyranny.
Professor Du's Weibo account was subsequently shut down, as were his microblog posts introducing the book and his friends´ blog posts recommending it.
The Party is doing everything it can to restrict print media's freedom of speech. In September 2012, two Hong Kong journalists went to Shaoyang, Hunan to interview people about the mysterious death of pro-democracy advocate Li Wang-yang, which had captured Hongkongese people's attention. The journalists were instead detained in a hotel by the local police for 44 hours.
On September 16, a photojournalist for the Hong Kong paper The South
China Morning Post attempting to interview anti-Japanese protestors in
Shenzhen was beaten by Public Security forces, suffering injury.95 Hong Kong
news workers collectively protested against Chinese threats in response.96
Even as the mainland and Taiwan have gradually moved towards reconciliation, Taiwanese media and publishers have been unable to publish and broadcast in the mainland in a manner that meets international human rights standards. Mainland China is still failing to deliver not only the ability to publish and broadcast there but also protection of copyright and freedom of speech.
2. Internet Information Blockades
The Chinese government's strict control of online communications is ubiquitous. According to related reports, one of its major projects last year was its investigation of Sina Weibo. Since March 16, the government has been requiring all Internet users as well as users of the services Sina, Sohu, Tencent, and Netease to register with their real names. On May 8, Sina Weibo published
new terms of service which outlined proper submission content, instigating an intense backlash online.
The user agreement establishes that “threats to national unity, authority, and territorial integrity, the divulgence of state secrets, and undermining social stability,＂ among other things, will not be tolerated. 97 At the same time, the
service announced that five sensitive messages will get one silenced; that is, an account which releases five or more messages of a sensitive nature will be forbidden from posting for 48 hours, and the information in question will be deleted. 98 Those who release five or more sensitive messages with malicious
intent will be silenced for 48 hours or more and could have their account shut down. Those who circulate five or more obscene messages could have their accounts canceled, as well.99
The night before the Party Congress opened, the Beijing government ran a tight network blockade. Everything related to the “known sensitive words＂ and sites which could help the people access correct information was shut down. Nothing escaped the ban, including the world's most popular social networks, like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Chinese Internet users tried several methods to “get over the wall＂ and attain freedom, including taking advantage of a control site failure to contact the outside world.100
Human rights advocates and groups worldwide have commented on this freedom of speech infringement. The following is one example. A member of the Committee to Protect Journalists based in the U.S. said that the new Sina Weibo user agreement reflects the CPJ Propaganda Department's rationalization of press censorship: it is overly general and vague and could be applied to any content considered sensitive. 101
The editor of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong also criticized the agreement, saying that on the surface, it seems
the Party moved to “deal with rumors,＂ but really it sought to strengthen its control. 102 The Wang Li-jun incident which eventually brought down Bo Xi-lai
and the successful escape of human rights lawyer Chen Guang-cheng, as well as the transfer of power at the 18th Party Congress, a sensitive time, especially pushed the Party to tighten its grip and take away Internet users´rights.103
3. Control of Artists and Cultural Activities
Less than three hours into the ninth Beijing Independent Film Festival's curtain-raising on August 18, 2012, the event was forcibly brought to a halt when the movie projector was put out of commission and the arts world members and supporters in attendance driven out by Party authorities. The art world vociferously criticized this affair. 104 Yet the 2011 festival was suppressed by
authorities in a similar manner.105
The Chinese government's control of dissidents has not loosened a bit as its international influence has grown. For example, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the important pro-democracy dissident Liu Xiao-bo, has not been able to receive his award because he is a prisoner of the state. 106 Since the prize
announcement, Liu's wife, Liu Jia, has been under house arrest herself. 107 This
case makes Communist authorities´ restrictions of the freedoms of dissidents within Chinese borders evident.
Liu Xiao-bo refuses to leave China after his prison term ends in 2020 because he wishes to preserve his status as a dissident; others who have become expatriates have gradually lost their authority to oppose the government while abroad.108
In contrast to 2010 Nobel winner Liu's suffering, however, the government openly celebrated and extolled Mo Yan for receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, showing how closely intertwined it is with a so-called “patriotic writer.＂ 109 When Mo Yan was asked about Liu Xiao-bo's
relatively reserved.110
From this, one can see the government's pressure on the cultural sphere. This has not changed even as the economy has been opened up and reformed. Somehow affording the cultural world more free space, defending dissidents´ rights, and creating a win-win situation for all in the international arena is a goal that must be worked toward in the future.
IV. Conclusion
By the standards of the UN outlined above, the China of 2012 has much room for improvement on educational human rights. With respect to the government's guarantee of its citizens´ fundamental right to receive education, including the aspects of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability, there are still many cases of educational resource shortages, limits on the usage of education, tuition disparity and excessive school fees, and systemic inflexibility.
Whether it's high tuition or migrant children's difficulties in attaining education, primary education, which should be compulsory and free to all, must be improved.
Availability signifies giving students of each gender and every ethnic group a safe and secure school environment. Discrimination, however, is robbing girls of opportunities. Meanwhile, students with disadvantaged backgrounds often have no way of receiving fair educational opportunities because they live so far from the place of their household registration.
In secondary and vocational education, varied and flexible curricula and learning styles are still hard to come by. Vocational education especially needs to address inequalities of opportunity stemming from several factors, including gender, previous unemployment or withdrawal from school, status as a migrant worker's child or refugee, or physical disability.
Although admissions to higher education are increasing, the quality of tertiary schools is uneven. Hence, the competition to enter Beijing or Tsinghua University is fierce, and the effect of yawning socioeconomic and urban-rural gaps on students´ opportunities is climbing.
Flexible curricula and supporting measures to meet the educational needs of students with different social and cultural backgrounds are too few. Basically, there is still no way to meet the needs of students who study differently. In other words, although China is called an educational powerhouse, basic structural elements of school systems, such as reasonable public subsidies of the cost of education, restriction of teaching positions to qualified, certified teachers, appropriate curricula, and educational resources, are still painfully lacking in many places because of resource maldistribution and lack of transparency. This leads to poor educational performance and a lack of equity of opportunity on a national level.
Turning to the educational freedom of parents and guardians on behalf of their children, for the time being, school choice is dependent on a household's economic means. Respect for minority ethnicities and religions must still be strengthened on all levels. In particular, although there is a special education system, remedial measures for over-education and discrimination are clearly insufficient.
Due to the Higher Education Law, universities are under the university president responsibility system, meaning the principal is subject to the campus's Communist Party leadership. Thus, in addition to the currents of the market economy, universities are under both an administrative bureaucracy and the party authority. They are especially limited by the new institutional evaluation standards, which indirectly influence academic freedom and self-regulation. Finally, when it comes to school management, personal dignity and student rights are not sufficiently protected, with public humiliations of students and various
