The Chinese government intensified its repression in China in 2025, leading rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its 2026 World Report. Chinese President Xi Jinping directed the government to impose ideological conformity and loyalty to him and the Chinese Communist Party, the HRW report highlighted. Uyghurs, Tibetans and other communities with different identities, including members of unofficial churches, face the most severe suppression of rights. Chinese authorities have also intensified repression in Hong Kong, it said. Maya Wang, Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, said, “The Chinese government under Xi Jinping has amassed an increasingly disastrous human rights record, expanding and deepening its crackdown on fundamental freedoms. Foreign governments have largely been unwilling to push back against the threats the Chinese government poses to the international human rights system, let alone within China,” she stated.
In the 529-page World Report 2026, HRW reviews human rights practices in over 100 nations. According to the HRW statement, Xi Jinping visited Tibet in August and Xinjiang in September, largely to showcase his government’s strong control. The Chinese government is expected to pass a draft law to justify repression of minorities, facilitate increasing ideological control and foster control abroad. As per the report, thousands of Uyghurs continue to remain imprisoned unfairly in China. The Chinese government also banned celebrations of Tibetan religious leader Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday in Tibet. Repression has increased after Chinese authorities imposed the National Security Law on Hong Kong. “The Chinese government’s campaign to ‘sinicize’ religions — retooling them so they propagate Party ideology — has led to intensified crackdown on ‘house churches,’ Protestant congregations that resist joining the official church. In April, a court in Shanxi province reportedly sentenced over a dozen people affiliated with the Linfen Golden Lampstand Church for ‘fraud’,” HRW stated.
“In October, authorities also arrested nearly 30 affiliates of Zion Church including its pastor. The authorities have arbitrarily detained and imprisoned people for exercising their basic rights,” the report mentioned. China, it said, has also intensified efforts to silence diaspora communities who have been raised voice against government abuses, harassing their families and friends in China, and detaining those who return to the country, with arrest of France-based student activist Tara Zhang Yadi being the latest example.
The HRW urged Chinese government to end its crimes against humanity and other abuses in Xinjiang, revoke Hong Kong’s national security laws, allow independent observers access to Tibet and Xinjiang, and release detained human rights defenders in China.
