Can China Improve Human Rights?

China has long been the great unknown when it comes to civil rights and prison conditions. When we talk about prison rates around the world or the number of people executed in 2008, it's accepted that the numbers reported by China are probably much lower than reality. Reports of torture in the country's prisons, of thousands being held without trial and of secret executions are rampant but unconfirmed.

This week, the Chinese government made sweeping promises to improve. By the end of 2010, Chinese officials said they will end torture, guarantee fair trials, strictly control executions and provide open access to prisons to journalists. This is an extraordinary admission from China that the country has work to do on human rights. (Read the full 52-page document here) It comes on the heels of an announcement earlier this month from Chinese officials that they intend to end "unnatural inmate deaths."

Will anything really happen?

Amnesty International praised China on releasing the report and setting goals with an 18-month deadline. But the plan doesn't address important areas like punishment for government dissent, said Amnesty's Asia Pacific Director Roseann Rife:

"There is an emphasis on economic and social rights at the expense of civil and political rights; several civil and political rights have not been addressed," she said.

She listed the lack of attention to the use of administrative detention and of education through labour, and the continuing vulnerability of human rights defenders.

"So there are a number of important omissions," she said.

Baby steps. This report sounds to me like a step in the right direction. Now, we need the United Nations, U.S. Government and other nations to continue to include human rights when engaging in economic and security negotiation with China. Maybe it would help if we improved our own record - by ending the death penalty and solitary confinement and moving to alternatives to incarceration. Journalists and NGOs have a role, too. China has promised to open its trials and prisons to observers. We need to take them up on it and investigate conditions. When access is denied, we need to make that public, too.

Chinese leaders have shown that they are willing to change - now we need to hold them to their promises.