Human Rights

The US State Department published its annual report on human rights situations around the world and said that rights conditions had worsened in China in 2005, reversing a modest trend toward improved respect for rights that the department had observed earlier. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman rejected the US report, claiming that Chinese people are "satisfied" with China's human rights progress.

In response to the American report, the Information Office of the Chinese State Council issued a 2005 report on the human rights record of the US, accusing the US of "hypocrisy and double standard on human rights issues". "The issue of human rights should become a theme of social development in all countries and of international cooperation, rather than a slogan for exporting ideologies or even a tool of diplomacy to fix others out of one's own political needs", the report concluded.